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When I was a consultant, the saying was A consultant is someone who borrows the client's watch, tells them the time, and keeps the watch. In doing consultin

by pjsg 4y ago

When I was a consultant, the saying was A consultant is someone who borrows the client's watch, tells them the time, and keeps the watch. In doing consulting, my biggest failure was turning down a class A network for the client (the client ended up with 6 /16s equivalents -- worth far more than what they paid me). I turned down $600M worth of IPv4 space at today's prices.

AndrewStephens 4y ago
I started my career as a programmer in the late 90s, the golden age of consultants. Two jokes from that era that reveal how they were viewed by the rank-and-file: --- A young zookeeper walks into the zoo on her first day of work. As she was being given the tour she notices 3 cages each containing a monkey and a computer. "What's with these monkeys?" she asked her new boss. "An amazing experiment. Look at this one" he said, pointing at the first cage. The monkey was sitting beside a small pile of bananas while happily typing on the keyboard - occasionally stopping to take a bite. "This monkey will produce over 200 lines of Visual Basic a day so long as it gets a few bananas." "Wow! What about this one", said the new hire, pointing the to second cage where the monkey was typing faster next to a larger pile of bananas. "That monkey eats more but produces over 300 lines of fully debugged Java a day" The trainee was astounded and pointed to the last cage, where the monkey was sitting on top of a huge pile of bananas, seemingly asleep. "What about that last monkey? He has the most bananas but doesn't appear to be doing anything." "We don't know what that monkey does," explained the boss, "but he calls himself a consultant" --- What is the difference between a shopping cart with a broken wheel and a consultant? The shopping cart seems to have a mind of its own but you can fit a lot more food and drink inside the consultant.
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
  Sounds like the third monkey had the most apeeling job.

by pjsg 4y ago

AndrewStephens 4y ago

I started my career as a programmer in the late 90s, the golden age of consultants. Two jokes from that era that reveal how they were viewed by the rank-and-file: --- A young zookeeper walks into the zoo on her first day of work. As she was being given the tour she notices 3 cages each containing a monkey and a computer. "What's with these monkeys?" she asked her new boss. "An amazing experiment. Look at this one" he said, pointing at the first cage. The monkey was sitting beside a small pile of bananas while happily typing on the keyboard - occasionally stopping to take a bite. "This monkey will produce over 200 lines of Visual Basic a day so long as it gets a few bananas." "Wow! What about this one", said the new hire, pointing the to second cage where the monkey was typing faster next to a larger pile of bananas. "That monkey eats more but produces over 300 lines of fully debugged Java a day" The trainee was astounded and pointed to the last cage, where the monkey was sitting on top of a huge pile of bananas, seemingly asleep. "What about that last monkey? He has the most bananas but doesn't appear to be doing anything." "We don't know what that monkey does," explained the boss, "but he calls himself a consultant" --- What is the difference between a shopping cart with a broken wheel and a consultant? The shopping cart seems to have a mind of its own but you can fit a lot more food and drink inside the consultant.

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
Sounds like the third monkey had the most apeeling job.