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General consultancy is an extremely crowded space. As a startup CEO, I get at least 3 emails per week from software agencies and consultants. On top of that, th

General consultancy is an extremely crowded space. As a startup CEO, I get at least 3 emails per week from software agencies and consultants. On top of that, they're usually located in India/Ukraine and the rates they offer are very low, so I assume it's very difficult to compete. My advice would be to differentiate yourself: - Become an expert in 1 thing, and one thing only: either start an open source project, or become the main collaborator in one. And be an EXPERT in that ONE thing. Not a generalist. - Go personal: I can't see who you are or where are you based in your website. If I want to hire an EXPERT (see point before) consultant, I want to see their face and why they're different. I need a feeling of trust. - Network the hell out of it: once you're an expert on one thing and you have a face, people will recognize you and recommend you

dustingetz 6mo ago
+1 about overseas freelancers. And US customer to European freelancer is not the arb it used to be. The California SaaS sector has collapsed in the wake of venture capital rotating into AI-native, saas budgets (salaries) are down, the dollar is down, and remote European salaries are up. Zoom latency across 7-8h timezone difference is workable, the current arb is to hire from further and further east. Unless there is a war disruption such as an attack on the trans Atlantic internet pipes.
- OJFord 6mo ago
  Are you using 'arb' to mean something like cheat or trick, or cost-saving technique?
  - dummydummy1234 6mo ago
    Arbitrage I assume
    - OJFord 6mo ago
      I know, I just don't see the arbitrage in what's described? If I order online because it's cheaper than the high street, that's not an arbitrage – the arbitrage would include then selling it on the high street afterwards, getting paid to close the gap until it reflects only delivery fees and the value of immediacy.
      - le-mark 6mo ago
        I assumed from the context the arb was California salary vs their local salary.
        OJFord 6mo ago
        And to make that an arbitrage you'd need to subcontract someone local to do the job you've taken the California pay for. It doesn't mean 'get a better deal in a non-obvious way/place', it's taking both sides of the trade in different markets.
      - altmanaltman 6mo ago
        they might hire them to work on the project and then sell the project themselves hence the arb, or outsourcing basically.
        goldfish_gemma4 6mo ago
        Good point about the project lifecycle. In my experience, open source contributions often get repurposed this way. The key is clear licensing from the start.
samiv 6mo ago
Becoming an expert in one thing also narrows down the potential suitable work tremendously. Also these days nobody wants to pay the expert prices since.. Claude can so the expert stuff with a non-expert (at least in their mind)
- arcbyte 6mo ago
  This is not true at all. Not even a sliver of truth. There must be a word for this style of post where you take your own inadequacies and fears and project them on to others?
  - chrisweekly 6mo ago
    Not OP but I feel compelled to reply. It's indisputable (borderline tautological) that specialization trades breadth for depth. This (obviously?) implies the risk of targeting a narrower market, and the upside of being more attractive to that smaller population. It's a typical "quality over quantity" tradeoff. To say there's no "sliver of truth" in pointing that out (let alone w/ an unwarranted jab about projecting fears) is... strange and maybe hypocritical. TLDR your response came across as emotional and passive-aggressive, and confusing.
    - swiftcoder 6mo ago
      > It's indisputable (borderline tautological) that specialization trades breadth for depth I do not necessarily agree with this as stated. A specialist will have access to many roles within their speciality that are not open to a generalist. The market for generalists without deep expertise is also extremely crowded.
- konradha 6mo ago
  This is a strong assertion that's directionally wrong. No matter the economy's state or any AI progress, experts are always searched for.
- jacknews 6mo ago
  Even if it's true that AI can replace an expert, and I really don't think it is, except in the simplest minds, the AI training companies are aggressively hiring experts...
assimpleaspossi 6mo ago
>>I get at least 3 emails per week from software agencies and consultants. On top of that, they're usually located in India/Ukraine and the rates they offer are very low, so I assume it's very difficult to compete. One place hired me thinking I could fix some software they farmed out to India. I was not aware of that when they hired me. Afterwards they said they wanted it fixed in two weeks and fired me when I told them it wasn't possible. The software was in a language I'd never used on hardware I never programmed for. They hired someone locally who was something of an expert in the area who claimed he could fix it in a month. It took him six months to fix the problems. Lesson of hiring cheap overseas.
- voakbasda 6mo ago
  And a lesson in the psychology of sunk costs. They probably did not suddenly wake up after six months and realized the Indian developers were mot getting the job done. They probably lied about how long it would take. The consultant that said they could do it in a month probably also lied about their estimate. Now, might think I should be generous here and give them the benefit of the doubt. However I once had the chance to talk with the CTO of a major embedded consultancy about how to get those first few jobs where you really can’t be confident about any estimate, and that was the explicit and unambiguous advice he offered to me: lie. Tell them you can do it. Once a company hires a consultant, it can take a lot of pain to make them go back to the drawing board. They do not want to admit they made a mistake hiring someone, so they will accept less than they expect… but only up to a point.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
aerhardt 6mo ago
> Become an expert in 1 thing I endorse this. I've been doing generalist consulting for about six years, and I love flying solo. I've been successful in landing some big customers and interesting projects, but I'm tired of the inefficiency that comes with being a generalist, so I've decided to specialize vertically. I had a super-interesting project in executive search in the last couple years, and I've decided to settle around that area: executive search and recruitment firms. Maybe later, as an extension I'll target other B2B, relationship-driven professional service firms tha share a common core of processes. I've only recently pivoted but I'm already starting to see the fruits. It's commercially efficient. Many potential customers seem happy to open the door and chat. I know where to find them, online and off. And then it's operationally efficient. I'm confident I could jump on a customer project and recognize most of their processes and systems immediately and have a quick impact. I already have a base of IP (documented business procedures, code, etc.) and only intend to grow it in the coming years and even turn it into a "productized service". I think people refuse to specialize for three main reasons. The first is for lack of a clear thesis. That's fine, you need to explore for a bit. The second is for a fear of lack of opportunities, which is often unfounded. The third is due to psychological reasons related to the image of self. On this last one I can only advise that (a) even in specialization there is way more variety than you think, (b) you can always keep growing as a generalist with side projects and self-directed learning and (c) nothing is ever fixed in stone, everything is in flow - you can always pivot out into other interesting directions.
- guzfip 6mo ago
  How? This is what I never understood. Every domain expert I’ve ever knowing is because they’ve already I can spend all the time I have reading and toying around in a subject, but until I have real concrete experience to guide me, it’s usually pretty difficult to become an “expert” in anything. I know how to become an advanced hobbyist, but thats never in my life translated to someone being willing to pay me over say, and already established expert
  - aerhardt 6mo ago
    I've drifted across projects in different industries (FMCG, investment funds, ad agencies, startups of various sorts) and like I said I had a long project (over two years) for an executive search firm and got to see the ins and outs of how everything works from strategy to technology. I could be drifting to find clients in yet another vertical but I've decided to stay put for at least a few years. So to answer your question, in my particular case: I drifted, stumbled upon something by chance, and then took a conscious decision to stay.
Aurornis 6mo ago
> As a startup CEO, I get at least 3 emails per week from software agencies and consultants. On top of that, they're usually located in India/Ukraine and the rates they offer are very low, so I assume it's very difficult to compete. This is why cold outreach is rarely effective. Until you’ve seen it, you don’t realize the volume of incoming freelancing pitches coming from all of the freelancers. It’s getting worse with AI automation, now. Any real networking at all will set you apart. It has to be more than sending someone a LinkedIn request because that’s what all of the other agencies are doing too. You have to establish yourself as a real and trusted person.
- f3b5 6mo ago
  Re cold outreach: it depends. The bar is abysmally low, and most outreach is just an untargeted spam cannon. Don't be like those people. If you manage to make the outreach warmer, it can work surprisingly well. I built a tool to identify high-intent leads on LinkedIn which gets me acceptance rates of 60%+ by finding people that comment on relevant content to my niche: https://www.getibex.com https://www.getibex.com
skeeter2020 6mo ago
+3 for focus / personal and networking. I don't consult anymore, but for an extended period I did so at a premium rate and as an independent. I remember a hiring manager's boss saying something to me like "I could get 2 or more consultants for the same money" and I replied, " I don't really see myself as competing with those organizations, but if you can get the job done it makes sense to take that path." It was both cocky and true (not sure today-me would say that). The thing I understood well was that differentiating as a skilled individual makes you much harder to displace; there are countless "$TECH programmer with N years of experience in $FOOBAR" while there are very few "$YOU".
gizzlon 6mo ago
> Become an expert in 1 thing Any suggestions to what that could be? I'm a backend developer looking to specialize in something with a clear demand. Top-of-the-head ideas are things like: Kubernetes, Postgres, Caddy, Self-hosting, Go or Google Cloud Obviously, one has to try to gauge the demand before spending too much time on it
- raw_anon_1111 6mo ago
  Absolutely none of those are “specialties” that will set you apart
- InexSquirrel 6mo ago
  My take on it is more around domain speciality, than a purely technical focus. I'm a web developer / designer-lite (amongst other things in previous lives), and have embedded myself as the web-tech guy for an embedded / hardware team. I help provide better customer facing interfaces (through websites, apps, etc) to both end users and manufacturer that the company uses. I've made small, simple tools that can be packaged up along in a device's flash (it's ~2KB), that allows a user to interrogate the device via serial, capture all the commands + responses, & trivially email them to an engineer. It's designed for troubleshooting devices remote, without needing to ship JLink's or debuggers or what not to clients. It's a very small thing, but it's cool to hear people using it to help troubleshoot with users, in a way that's much simpler than trying to jump on the phone with them & guess what they're seeing on their screen. I also specifically help make manufacturing test systems which sit closer to a web-app like experience (in terms of usability and visuals), because I've observed that providing end-of-line manufacturing staff with poorly cludged together test systems leads to a bunch of errors which don't need to exist (they're often just quickly thrown together CLIs, which are unpleasant to use and buggy all round - especially for less tech savvy manufacturing staff). I also happen to really like embedded engineers, they're fun to hang around with - and I get genuine satisfaction out of being able to help them out in areas they haven't specialised in.
  - gizzlon 6mo ago
    > My take on it is more around domain speciality, than a purely technical focus. Yeah, I think that is good advice. You just need "an in", somewhere to start.
calvinmorrison 6mo ago
> Become an expert in 1 thing, Or one vertical, or space. IE: you act as a CTO for companies that are in manufacturing but are a liiitle to small to hire someone.
altmanaltman 6mo ago
2 and 3 are great but 1 will not work great if you're a consultant, unless the 1 thing is broad enough to have actual demand that you can tap into. Finding that 1 thing is also extremely challenging, esp. if you're trying to make it the main revenue play. I can be the world's leading expert on Brainfuck, but that doesn't mean I'll get my bills paid. It's much better to be the "I can call this guy to figure out whatever I need to figure out" person than "this guy only does X well, I'm not sure if i need that, might have to hire the general guy to figure this out first" guy.

dustingetz 6mo ago

+1 about overseas freelancers. And US customer to European freelancer is not the arb it used to be. The California SaaS sector has collapsed in the wake of venture capital rotating into AI-native, saas budgets (salaries) are down, the dollar is down, and remote European salaries are up. Zoom latency across 7-8h timezone difference is workable, the current arb is to hire from further and further east. Unless there is a war disruption such as an attack on the trans Atlantic internet pipes.

OJFord 6mo ago
Are you using 'arb' to mean something like cheat or trick, or cost-saving technique?
- dummydummy1234 6mo ago
  Arbitrage I assume
  - OJFord 6mo ago
    I know, I just don't see the arbitrage in what's described? If I order online because it's cheaper than the high street, that's not an arbitrage – the arbitrage would include then selling it on the high street afterwards, getting paid to close the gap until it reflects only delivery fees and the value of immediacy.
    - le-mark 6mo ago
      I assumed from the context the arb was California salary vs their local salary.
      - OJFord 6mo ago
        And to make that an arbitrage you'd need to subcontract someone local to do the job you've taken the California pay for. It doesn't mean 'get a better deal in a non-obvious way/place', it's taking both sides of the trade in different markets.
    - altmanaltman 6mo ago
      they might hire them to work on the project and then sell the project themselves hence the arb, or outsourcing basically.
      - goldfish_gemma4 6mo ago
        Good point about the project lifecycle. In my experience, open source contributions often get repurposed this way. The key is clear licensing from the start.

samiv 6mo ago

Becoming an expert in one thing also narrows down the potential suitable work tremendously. Also these days nobody wants to pay the expert prices since.. Claude can so the expert stuff with a non-expert (at least in their mind)

arcbyte 6mo ago
This is not true at all. Not even a sliver of truth. There must be a word for this style of post where you take your own inadequacies and fears and project them on to others?
- chrisweekly 6mo ago
  Not OP but I feel compelled to reply. It's indisputable (borderline tautological) that specialization trades breadth for depth. This (obviously?) implies the risk of targeting a narrower market, and the upside of being more attractive to that smaller population. It's a typical "quality over quantity" tradeoff. To say there's no "sliver of truth" in pointing that out (let alone w/ an unwarranted jab about projecting fears) is... strange and maybe hypocritical. TLDR your response came across as emotional and passive-aggressive, and confusing.
  - swiftcoder 6mo ago
    > It's indisputable (borderline tautological) that specialization trades breadth for depth I do not necessarily agree with this as stated. A specialist will have access to many roles within their speciality that are not open to a generalist. The market for generalists without deep expertise is also extremely crowded.
konradha 6mo ago
This is a strong assertion that's directionally wrong. No matter the economy's state or any AI progress, experts are always searched for.
jacknews 6mo ago
Even if it's true that AI can replace an expert, and I really don't think it is, except in the simplest minds, the AI training companies are aggressively hiring experts...

assimpleaspossi 6mo ago

>>I get at least 3 emails per week from software agencies and consultants. On top of that, they're usually located in India/Ukraine and the rates they offer are very low, so I assume it's very difficult to compete. One place hired me thinking I could fix some software they farmed out to India. I was not aware of that when they hired me. Afterwards they said they wanted it fixed in two weeks and fired me when I told them it wasn't possible. The software was in a language I'd never used on hardware I never programmed for. They hired someone locally who was something of an expert in the area who claimed he could fix it in a month. It took him six months to fix the problems. Lesson of hiring cheap overseas.

voakbasda 6mo ago
And a lesson in the psychology of sunk costs. They probably did not suddenly wake up after six months and realized the Indian developers were mot getting the job done. They probably lied about how long it would take. The consultant that said they could do it in a month probably also lied about their estimate. Now, might think I should be generous here and give them the benefit of the doubt. However I once had the chance to talk with the CTO of a major embedded consultancy about how to get those first few jobs where you really can’t be confident about any estimate, and that was the explicit and unambiguous advice he offered to me: lie. Tell them you can do it. Once a company hires a consultant, it can take a lot of pain to make them go back to the drawing board. They do not want to admit they made a mistake hiring someone, so they will accept less than they expect… but only up to a point.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

aerhardt 6mo ago

> Become an expert in 1 thing I endorse this. I've been doing generalist consulting for about six years, and I love flying solo. I've been successful in landing some big customers and interesting projects, but I'm tired of the inefficiency that comes with being a generalist, so I've decided to specialize vertically. I had a super-interesting project in executive search in the last couple years, and I've decided to settle around that area: executive search and recruitment firms. Maybe later, as an extension I'll target other B2B, relationship-driven professional service firms tha share a common core of processes. I've only recently pivoted but I'm already starting to see the fruits. It's commercially efficient. Many potential customers seem happy to open the door and chat. I know where to find them, online and off. And then it's operationally efficient. I'm confident I could jump on a customer project and recognize most of their processes and systems immediately and have a quick impact. I already have a base of IP (documented business procedures, code, etc.) and only intend to grow it in the coming years and even turn it into a "productized service". I think people refuse to specialize for three main reasons. The first is for lack of a clear thesis. That's fine, you need to explore for a bit. The second is for a fear of lack of opportunities, which is often unfounded. The third is due to psychological reasons related to the image of self. On this last one I can only advise that (a) even in specialization there is way more variety than you think, (b) you can always keep growing as a generalist with side projects and self-directed learning and (c) nothing is ever fixed in stone, everything is in flow - you can always pivot out into other interesting directions.

guzfip 6mo ago
How? This is what I never understood. Every domain expert I’ve ever knowing is because they’ve already I can spend all the time I have reading and toying around in a subject, but until I have real concrete experience to guide me, it’s usually pretty difficult to become an “expert” in anything. I know how to become an advanced hobbyist, but thats never in my life translated to someone being willing to pay me over say, and already established expert
- aerhardt 6mo ago
  I've drifted across projects in different industries (FMCG, investment funds, ad agencies, startups of various sorts) and like I said I had a long project (over two years) for an executive search firm and got to see the ins and outs of how everything works from strategy to technology. I could be drifting to find clients in yet another vertical but I've decided to stay put for at least a few years. So to answer your question, in my particular case: I drifted, stumbled upon something by chance, and then took a conscious decision to stay.

Aurornis 6mo ago

> As a startup CEO, I get at least 3 emails per week from software agencies and consultants. On top of that, they're usually located in India/Ukraine and the rates they offer are very low, so I assume it's very difficult to compete. This is why cold outreach is rarely effective. Until you’ve seen it, you don’t realize the volume of incoming freelancing pitches coming from all of the freelancers. It’s getting worse with AI automation, now. Any real networking at all will set you apart. It has to be more than sending someone a LinkedIn request because that’s what all of the other agencies are doing too. You have to establish yourself as a real and trusted person.

f3b5 6mo ago
Re cold outreach: it depends. The bar is abysmally low, and most outreach is just an untargeted spam cannon. Don't be like those people. If you manage to make the outreach warmer, it can work surprisingly well. I built a tool to identify high-intent leads on LinkedIn which gets me acceptance rates of 60%+ by finding people that comment on relevant content to my niche: https://www.getibex.com https://www.getibex.com

skeeter2020 6mo ago

+3 for focus / personal and networking. I don't consult anymore, but for an extended period I did so at a premium rate and as an independent. I remember a hiring manager's boss saying something to me like "I could get 2 or more consultants for the same money" and I replied, " I don't really see myself as competing with those organizations, but if you can get the job done it makes sense to take that path." It was both cocky and true (not sure today-me would say that). The thing I understood well was that differentiating as a skilled individual makes you much harder to displace; there are countless "$TECH programmer with N years of experience in $FOOBAR" while there are very few "$YOU".

gizzlon 6mo ago

> Become an expert in 1 thing Any suggestions to what that could be? I'm a backend developer looking to specialize in something with a clear demand. Top-of-the-head ideas are things like: Kubernetes, Postgres, Caddy, Self-hosting, Go or Google Cloud Obviously, one has to try to gauge the demand before spending too much time on it

raw_anon_1111 6mo ago
Absolutely none of those are “specialties” that will set you apart
InexSquirrel 6mo ago
My take on it is more around domain speciality, than a purely technical focus. I'm a web developer / designer-lite (amongst other things in previous lives), and have embedded myself as the web-tech guy for an embedded / hardware team. I help provide better customer facing interfaces (through websites, apps, etc) to both end users and manufacturer that the company uses. I've made small, simple tools that can be packaged up along in a device's flash (it's ~2KB), that allows a user to interrogate the device via serial, capture all the commands + responses, & trivially email them to an engineer. It's designed for troubleshooting devices remote, without needing to ship JLink's or debuggers or what not to clients. It's a very small thing, but it's cool to hear people using it to help troubleshoot with users, in a way that's much simpler than trying to jump on the phone with them & guess what they're seeing on their screen. I also specifically help make manufacturing test systems which sit closer to a web-app like experience (in terms of usability and visuals), because I've observed that providing end-of-line manufacturing staff with poorly cludged together test systems leads to a bunch of errors which don't need to exist (they're often just quickly thrown together CLIs, which are unpleasant to use and buggy all round - especially for less tech savvy manufacturing staff). I also happen to really like embedded engineers, they're fun to hang around with - and I get genuine satisfaction out of being able to help them out in areas they haven't specialised in.
- gizzlon 6mo ago
  > My take on it is more around domain speciality, than a purely technical focus. Yeah, I think that is good advice. You just need "an in", somewhere to start.

calvinmorrison 6mo ago

> Become an expert in 1 thing, Or one vertical, or space. IE: you act as a CTO for companies that are in manufacturing but are a liiitle to small to hire someone.

altmanaltman 6mo ago

2 and 3 are great but 1 will not work great if you're a consultant, unless the 1 thing is broad enough to have actual demand that you can tap into. Finding that 1 thing is also extremely challenging, esp. if you're trying to make it the main revenue play. I can be the world's leading expert on Brainfuck, but that doesn't mean I'll get my bills paid. It's much better to be the "I can call this guy to figure out whatever I need to figure out" person than "this guy only does X well, I'm not sure if i need that, might have to hire the general guy to figure this out first" guy.