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This is purely an advert for the company. I don't count any of these to be "Great": * You are outside the company hierarchy - That means you actually have 0 po

This is purely an advert for the company. I don't count any of these to be "Great": * You are outside the company hierarchy - That means you actually have 0 power normally. Most consultants / contractors I've worked with have to do exactly what they are hired for no more or less. Permies generally have a bit of wiggle room and you should get more the further up the pole you go * You have to keep learning - That's right slow down for even a year and you can be left behind in consulting. At least as a permie I can catch up at my own pace * You get more exposure - For the types of companies that hire consultants this is a downside. The exposure you be getting is to toxic workplaces. They even admit this in the JD "the customers we work with will use legacy practices and technologies. " * You meet lots of people - I already have plenty people in my life this isn't a positive for most programmers it's a negative. You know who's the first to be fired when times are a bit more rough...

jasonkester 5y ago
You have to keep learning - That's right slow down for even a year and you can be left behind in consulting. That's not what this means. You're not being brought in for your knowledge of new tech X. You're there because you've demonstrated that you're smart. They know that they can drop you in sideways to a broken project in an unfamiliar stack, with confidence that you'll be committing code the first day. That's where the "learning new things" comes is. Fast, and on the fly.
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  I'm not convinced consultant style learning is THAT useful. I know my AWS, I can be tossed into learning whatever product a client needs. The problem is that AWS is such a varied product that has its individual quirks that might not actually mesh properly with other services. Sure I can probably deploy completely unfamiliar product fairly quicky, but without owning the product medium-longish term, you have no idea if it was actually properly deployed, meaning whatever you learned probably wasn't the best way to do a thing
  - AitchEmArsey 5y ago
    Throwing something together based on unfamiliar components is indeed a bad move and likely to get you a bad reputation as a consultant. On the flip side, a permanent employee who wallows in analysis paralysis isn't adding any value to the company. It all just depends on where the client culture fits on the "move fast and break things" spectrum.

jasonkester 5y ago

You have to keep learning - That's right slow down for even a year and you can be left behind in consulting. That's not what this means. You're not being brought in for your knowledge of new tech X. You're there because you've demonstrated that you're smart. They know that they can drop you in sideways to a broken project in an unfamiliar stack, with confidence that you'll be committing code the first day. That's where the "learning new things" comes is. Fast, and on the fly.

NikolaeVarius 5y ago
I'm not convinced consultant style learning is THAT useful. I know my AWS, I can be tossed into learning whatever product a client needs. The problem is that AWS is such a varied product that has its individual quirks that might not actually mesh properly with other services. Sure I can probably deploy completely unfamiliar product fairly quicky, but without owning the product medium-longish term, you have no idea if it was actually properly deployed, meaning whatever you learned probably wasn't the best way to do a thing
- AitchEmArsey 5y ago
  Throwing something together based on unfamiliar components is indeed a bad move and likely to get you a bad reputation as a consultant. On the flip side, a permanent employee who wallows in analysis paralysis isn't adding any value to the company. It all just depends on where the client culture fits on the "move fast and break things" spectrum.