5 ms·

So you want to be a consultant?

65 points by kurtmansperger 13y ago

atiffany 13y ago
I am the author of this article, and I'm happy to answer any questions about tech consulting right here.
- philbarr 13y ago
  For options #2 and #3, how do you go about getting your very first client? I can imagine the dialogue when you've done a few projects and you've got a portfolio and perhaps references, but how do you get the very first person when you're just "some bloke who thinks he knows how to write software." ?
  - atiffany 13y ago
    A couple options: - Work as a fulltime employee doing the same type of work you want to be paid to do as a consultant. It's a legitimate way to get the kind of experience you want to sell. - Be your own first client. Build something that interests you, and sell that experience.
    - tommyo 13y ago
      And one of the best resources: from industry connections that you worked with before, then have moved on to other projects. If they hear of a project need that fits your skill set, and you've been getting coffee with them at least 2 times a year, they'll probably call you first.
  - EC1 13y ago
    Cold call. Cold talk. Networking events. Developer meetups. It's honestly so easy. Handout business cards, have a decent site with a portfolio + some sort of automated contact form, maybe even an automated quote generator. Have one buddy do all the networking and bring you clients, you do the work, make money, reinvest in remote employees, keep doing this, get an office, hire some in person staff and boom, you have a consultancy.
    - Revex 13y ago
      You make it sounds super easy. Do you have your own consultancy?
      - EC1 13y ago
        I'm working on it. I quit my job and have a few friends working for me. Working on getting a front facing website out now.
        Revex 13y ago
        Nice work. Are you profitable?
        EC1 13y ago
        I have a few contracts for about 50k yeah. Want to work together? What do you do? Email me: m [at] (e|v|e|o) [dawt] ~(o|r|g)~ (sorry spam bots are getting ridiculous).
- doctorcroc 13y ago
  Just a question on #1. What are the opportunities for a new grad going into one of these companies like Accenture, Deloitte or IBM? Do you just take a spot as a cog in the machine, or do you actually get valuable consulting/client experience?
  - kurtmansperger 13y ago
    I have interned at PWC and Deloitte and then after graduation, I worked at Deloitte for 5 years. I found that I was able to do valuable work right after joining and even as an intern. As an intern at PWC I did ethical hacking and had a good deal of oversight, but was able to own writing up documentation and participated in client calls. For a later project that summer, I had direct client contact and was seen as a strong contributor to the team. At Deloitte, my experience was similar as an intern but with slightly more ownership. Once joining Deloitte after graduation, I was holding one on one meetings and design sessions on a regular basis with the client about 4 months in. Initially, my project was more focused on data analysis and while I did have interactions with the client, they were limited as I did not need to interact with them much. Experience will certainly vary from person to person as the responsibility given to someone will change by project and also with how well management knows you, at least earlier in your career. After about a year or two, it is not uncommon to be owning an entire piece of the project and it goes up from there. They probably wouldn't hire you if they didn't feel they could put you in front of a client early on.
    - doctorcroc 13y ago
      Thanks for the reply - I asked because I'm considering an offer for entry-level consulting at a big IT firm, and I wanted to have a sense of what I'd be doing. My background is in petrochemicals, so I figure I'll be in that domain for a bit. Ideally, I'd like to move around in different domains and see what I like best. Do you think an entry-level hire would get a decent chance to explore?
  - djKianoosh 13y ago
    It's been a while, but I went straight into Accenture out of school (Andersen Consulting at the time actually). It all depends on your manager. If you have a good manager/partner, then once you show you're not just another cog, you'll have plenty of opportunities. And if you're technically good and put in the hours, and your senior manager/partner has pull among his/her peers, then you will be taken care of in raises/promotions/etc. As soon as you notice the senior management can't go to bat for you for the things you want, then IMHO you should look to make a move. Ideally you can make a move internally, but you dont want to be stuck.
jgable 13y ago
Question for author and others on HN: How feasible is it to have remote employees when most of your work is on embedded systems? I recently started a software consulting group with a couple of partners, and we are starting to hire. I'd like to offer remote positions, but since most of our work is on embedded systems (e.g. medical devices), I don't think this is really feasible. For any given system, there's so much pain in wiring, setting up and debugging a test and development environment, etc. that it doesn't seem worth it. However, maybe I'm overestimating the difficulty and underestimating the benefit. Anyone else have success with remote work that is not primarily on web systems?
- atiffany 13y ago
  Is it cost-prohibitive to ship test devices to each of your engineers? I have worked on an embedded systems team where some of the employees were remote. The biggest challenges were with sharing details for reproducing specific issues, but emailing videos and lots of conference calls made it a functional environment.
  - jgable 13y ago
    No, for most of our projects, the test systems are small enough so that it's not cost-prohibitive to ship. I just know that every time we bring up a new system or board, there can be days of debugging stupid problems, and that's with everyone and all our electronics gear in the same building. You say the environment was "functional". For you, did the advantages of having the larger applicant market outweigh the disadvantages?
    - atiffany 13y ago
      For me, it's hard to say because a lot of other issues led to problems. The project had poor management overall, and we were also dealing with language barriers and vastly different timezones. I think in our case it wasn't worth it because were located in San Jose and there was plenty of talent we could have hired locally. So, if you're based somewhere crawling with tech talent and the nature of your product already attracts it, then it very well might be a net-negative to operate your team remotely. Otherwise, I think you'll find it's worth navigating some of these setup issues to be able to hire the best from wherever you're based.
nchuhoai 13y ago
Some comments and questions as well here (total noobie): 1) I can't comment on the viability of getting great clients by going big consulting firms, but it feels quite indirect. And probably can't expand developing experience as noted. 2) Seems very ideal and in fact something I'm trying to pursue right now, but I suffer from the classic chicken-egg problem where I can't get clients without having prior clients. 3) Seems more like a natural extension once you grow your network enough 4) Sweet spot. I'd love to find a small consultancy, you'd get the best of both worlds, steady flow of clients, but nearly the same flexibility as being an independent consultant. Are there resources to finding those unicorn consultancies? I'm doing mostly Rails/full-stack work, but most consultancies seem to be either local or not that flexible with part-time/remote
- atiffany 13y ago
  "Are there resources to finding those unicorn consultancies?" Great question. AFAIK, there are not. I have tended to only find out about them by word of mouth after spending some time in a particular area of specialization. Back when I was doing Flex, Universal Mind and Digital Primates were well-known in that arena. You tended to see them in conferences, and some of their employees were the ones who authored the best known technical books on Flex. So there is one idea: find out where some of the renowned bloggers, authors, and developers in your field of interest do their consulting.
mindcrime 13y ago
I don't want to get too caught up in quibbling over definitions, but I do feel like there's a point worth making here: There is a difference between a "consultant" and a "contractor", and I think it's worth being aware of. It may or may not matter to any given individual, but to some it will. And to be fair, some of this is subjective, but here's the way I've observed it over the years... First of all, what do I mean by "difference between consultant and contractor"? Well, if you go off as a freelance / solo developer, your business card may say "consultant" but you'll still be "just another developer" in the eyes of most clients, and in that role you're really just a contractor. That is to say, you're contract labor... just a cog in the machine, another brick in the wall if you will. If you're on a 6+ month engagement where you show up every day from 8-5 and write code in a cubicle all day, you're probably more contractor than consultant. OTOH, a "consultant" is seen as having valuable and highly prized insights and knowledge, and is paid to help solve a problem, or work through a situation... which may or may not involve writing code.. if it does, it would probably be highly specialized code that only a small number of people could write. But ideally, if your "consulting" you would be doing just that - working with a high level executive (CTO, CIO, VP) or at least a mid-level manager, and providing them knowledge and insights to deal with a situation. If your work product for an engagement is a report or presentation of some sort, and one or more recommendations about what the firm should do, or what choice they should make between a set of competing alternatives, then you're in more of a "consulting" role. Anyway, that's my take. Like I said, some people won't care about any of this. But it matters in that a "consultant" (per the above definition) is seen as more of a colleague / peer to management, isn't necessarily sitting in a cube from 8-5, and generally isn't seen as "hired labor". If that kind of thing is important to you, I suggest specializing in something where you can be paid to sharing your insights, not just for writing code.
- atiffany 13y ago
  I'm not sure if I see your point as it relates to the article. Are you saying that you think I should be describing another path apart from the ones I have listed? I get that the difference between the level of services you're describing for a "consultant" vs. a "contractor," but I think that has more to do with the capacity of the individual contractor/consultant than the label itself.
ashsyn 13y ago
I'm a technical project manager now (used to be a web stack developer). Does this advice apply to PMs as well?
- atiffany 13y ago
  I am a tech lead & developer who wrote this based on my own experience, so I can't guarantee that all of it does.
Oculus 13y ago
Could anyone point to some good resources for drafting contracts (templates, apps, ect.)?
- mindcrime 13y ago
  http://www.amazon.com/Consultant-Independent-Contractor-Agreements-Stephen/dp/1413316220/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396981975&sr=1-3&keywords=contractor+nolo http://www.amazon.com/Consultant-Independent-Contractor-Agre... http://www.amazon.com/Service-Agreements-SMB-Consultants-Services/dp/0976376024/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396982054&sr=1-2&keywords=consultant+agreements http://www.amazon.com/Service-Agreements-SMB-Consultants-Ser...
- nodata 13y ago
  https://properapp.com/ https://properapp.com/ http://www.docracy.com/ http://www.docracy.com/
mindcrime 13y ago
BTW, two fun books for consultants, and would-be consultants, to read are House of Lies[1] and The Firm[2]. Both are more about "management consulting" (aka, McKinsey, Deloitte, etc.) than what most of us probably have in mind, but they are both entertaining reads in their own respective right. House of Lies is a sort of retrospective "tell all" from a former management consultant, and inspired a TV program of the same name. At times it's hard to tell how serious he is, and the TV show is clearly not meant to be a completely accurate documentary (although it may be more truthful than you'd think) but it's a fun read. The Firm is basically the history of McKinsey, and while that might sound pretty dry and boring, it turns out to be fairly fascinating. Lots of interesting characters involved, and some fun drama and what-not. And it's interesting to see how McKinsey grew from basically nothing, to being the behemoth it is today. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/House-Lies-Management-Consultants-Steal/dp/B001QFY1SA/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396981696&sr=1-1&keywords=house+of+lies http://www.amazon.com/House-Lies-Management-Consultants-Stea... [2]: http://www.amazon.com/Firm-McKinsey-Influence-American-Business/dp/1439190976/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396981759&sr=1-2&keywords=the+firm http://www.amazon.com/Firm-McKinsey-Influence-American-Busin...
- stfu 13y ago
  Since we are talking about Consulting a must read is the work on professional service firms by former HBS Prof. David Maister. His website is super ugly ( http://davidmaister.com/ http://davidmaister.com/ ) but his advice is timeless, esp. since his writing is a lot about building the long-term client-consultant relationship.
protomyth 13y ago
I went through a placement person for my time as a consultant. He handled the accounting, medical insurance, taxes (all withholding), and paid me 70% of the bill rate. If you went full up 1099 he passed on 90%. It was a pretty nice arrangement for me at that time in my life. Do remember, many of the employees you deal with will think you are a member of the true oldest profession (Genesis 3:1).
- nchuhoai 13y ago
  Do you know how you would go about these days to find a placement person?
  - protomyth 13y ago
    No idea, I happened into to it by being invited by a friend.

I am the author of this article, and I'm happy to answer any questions about tech consulting right here.

philbarr 13y ago
For options #2 and #3, how do you go about getting your very first client? I can imagine the dialogue when you've done a few projects and you've got a portfolio and perhaps references, but how do you get the very first person when you're just "some bloke who thinks he knows how to write software." ?
- atiffany 13y ago
  A couple options: - Work as a fulltime employee doing the same type of work you want to be paid to do as a consultant. It's a legitimate way to get the kind of experience you want to sell. - Be your own first client. Build something that interests you, and sell that experience.
  - tommyo 13y ago
    And one of the best resources: from industry connections that you worked with before, then have moved on to other projects. If they hear of a project need that fits your skill set, and you've been getting coffee with them at least 2 times a year, they'll probably call you first.
- EC1 13y ago
  Cold call. Cold talk. Networking events. Developer meetups. It's honestly so easy. Handout business cards, have a decent site with a portfolio + some sort of automated contact form, maybe even an automated quote generator. Have one buddy do all the networking and bring you clients, you do the work, make money, reinvest in remote employees, keep doing this, get an office, hire some in person staff and boom, you have a consultancy.
  - Revex 13y ago
    You make it sounds super easy. Do you have your own consultancy?
    - EC1 13y ago
      I'm working on it. I quit my job and have a few friends working for me. Working on getting a front facing website out now.
      - Revex 13y ago
        Nice work. Are you profitable?
        EC1 13y ago
        I have a few contracts for about 50k yeah. Want to work together? What do you do? Email me: m [at] (e|v|e|o) [dawt] ~(o|r|g)~ (sorry spam bots are getting ridiculous).
doctorcroc 13y ago
Just a question on #1. What are the opportunities for a new grad going into one of these companies like Accenture, Deloitte or IBM? Do you just take a spot as a cog in the machine, or do you actually get valuable consulting/client experience?
- kurtmansperger 13y ago
  I have interned at PWC and Deloitte and then after graduation, I worked at Deloitte for 5 years. I found that I was able to do valuable work right after joining and even as an intern. As an intern at PWC I did ethical hacking and had a good deal of oversight, but was able to own writing up documentation and participated in client calls. For a later project that summer, I had direct client contact and was seen as a strong contributor to the team. At Deloitte, my experience was similar as an intern but with slightly more ownership. Once joining Deloitte after graduation, I was holding one on one meetings and design sessions on a regular basis with the client about 4 months in. Initially, my project was more focused on data analysis and while I did have interactions with the client, they were limited as I did not need to interact with them much. Experience will certainly vary from person to person as the responsibility given to someone will change by project and also with how well management knows you, at least earlier in your career. After about a year or two, it is not uncommon to be owning an entire piece of the project and it goes up from there. They probably wouldn't hire you if they didn't feel they could put you in front of a client early on.
  - doctorcroc 13y ago
    Thanks for the reply - I asked because I'm considering an offer for entry-level consulting at a big IT firm, and I wanted to have a sense of what I'd be doing. My background is in petrochemicals, so I figure I'll be in that domain for a bit. Ideally, I'd like to move around in different domains and see what I like best. Do you think an entry-level hire would get a decent chance to explore?
- djKianoosh 13y ago
  It's been a while, but I went straight into Accenture out of school (Andersen Consulting at the time actually). It all depends on your manager. If you have a good manager/partner, then once you show you're not just another cog, you'll have plenty of opportunities. And if you're technically good and put in the hours, and your senior manager/partner has pull among his/her peers, then you will be taken care of in raises/promotions/etc. As soon as you notice the senior management can't go to bat for you for the things you want, then IMHO you should look to make a move. Ideally you can make a move internally, but you dont want to be stuck.

Question for author and others on HN: How feasible is it to have remote employees when most of your work is on embedded systems? I recently started a software consulting group with a couple of partners, and we are starting to hire. I'd like to offer remote positions, but since most of our work is on embedded systems (e.g. medical devices), I don't think this is really feasible. For any given system, there's so much pain in wiring, setting up and debugging a test and development environment, etc. that it doesn't seem worth it. However, maybe I'm overestimating the difficulty and underestimating the benefit. Anyone else have success with remote work that is not primarily on web systems?

atiffany 13y ago
Is it cost-prohibitive to ship test devices to each of your engineers? I have worked on an embedded systems team where some of the employees were remote. The biggest challenges were with sharing details for reproducing specific issues, but emailing videos and lots of conference calls made it a functional environment.
- jgable 13y ago
  No, for most of our projects, the test systems are small enough so that it's not cost-prohibitive to ship. I just know that every time we bring up a new system or board, there can be days of debugging stupid problems, and that's with everyone and all our electronics gear in the same building. You say the environment was "functional". For you, did the advantages of having the larger applicant market outweigh the disadvantages?
  - atiffany 13y ago
    For me, it's hard to say because a lot of other issues led to problems. The project had poor management overall, and we were also dealing with language barriers and vastly different timezones. I think in our case it wasn't worth it because were located in San Jose and there was plenty of talent we could have hired locally. So, if you're based somewhere crawling with tech talent and the nature of your product already attracts it, then it very well might be a net-negative to operate your team remotely. Otherwise, I think you'll find it's worth navigating some of these setup issues to be able to hire the best from wherever you're based.

nchuhoai 13y ago

Some comments and questions as well here (total noobie): 1) I can't comment on the viability of getting great clients by going big consulting firms, but it feels quite indirect. And probably can't expand developing experience as noted. 2) Seems very ideal and in fact something I'm trying to pursue right now, but I suffer from the classic chicken-egg problem where I can't get clients without having prior clients. 3) Seems more like a natural extension once you grow your network enough 4) Sweet spot. I'd love to find a small consultancy, you'd get the best of both worlds, steady flow of clients, but nearly the same flexibility as being an independent consultant. Are there resources to finding those unicorn consultancies? I'm doing mostly Rails/full-stack work, but most consultancies seem to be either local or not that flexible with part-time/remote

atiffany 13y ago
"Are there resources to finding those unicorn consultancies?" Great question. AFAIK, there are not. I have tended to only find out about them by word of mouth after spending some time in a particular area of specialization. Back when I was doing Flex, Universal Mind and Digital Primates were well-known in that arena. You tended to see them in conferences, and some of their employees were the ones who authored the best known technical books on Flex. So there is one idea: find out where some of the renowned bloggers, authors, and developers in your field of interest do their consulting.

mindcrime 13y ago

I don't want to get too caught up in quibbling over definitions, but I do feel like there's a point worth making here: There is a difference between a "consultant" and a "contractor", and I think it's worth being aware of. It may or may not matter to any given individual, but to some it will. And to be fair, some of this is subjective, but here's the way I've observed it over the years... First of all, what do I mean by "difference between consultant and contractor"? Well, if you go off as a freelance / solo developer, your business card may say "consultant" but you'll still be "just another developer" in the eyes of most clients, and in that role you're really just a contractor. That is to say, you're contract labor... just a cog in the machine, another brick in the wall if you will. If you're on a 6+ month engagement where you show up every day from 8-5 and write code in a cubicle all day, you're probably more contractor than consultant. OTOH, a "consultant" is seen as having valuable and highly prized insights and knowledge, and is paid to help solve a problem, or work through a situation... which may or may not involve writing code.. if it does, it would probably be highly specialized code that only a small number of people could write. But ideally, if your "consulting" you would be doing just that - working with a high level executive (CTO, CIO, VP) or at least a mid-level manager, and providing them knowledge and insights to deal with a situation. If your work product for an engagement is a report or presentation of some sort, and one or more recommendations about what the firm should do, or what choice they should make between a set of competing alternatives, then you're in more of a "consulting" role. Anyway, that's my take. Like I said, some people won't care about any of this. But it matters in that a "consultant" (per the above definition) is seen as more of a colleague / peer to management, isn't necessarily sitting in a cube from 8-5, and generally isn't seen as "hired labor". If that kind of thing is important to you, I suggest specializing in something where you can be paid to sharing your insights, not just for writing code.

atiffany 13y ago
I'm not sure if I see your point as it relates to the article. Are you saying that you think I should be describing another path apart from the ones I have listed? I get that the difference between the level of services you're describing for a "consultant" vs. a "contractor," but I think that has more to do with the capacity of the individual contractor/consultant than the label itself.

ashsyn 13y ago

I'm a technical project manager now (used to be a web stack developer). Does this advice apply to PMs as well?

atiffany 13y ago
I am a tech lead & developer who wrote this based on my own experience, so I can't guarantee that all of it does.

Oculus 13y ago

Could anyone point to some good resources for drafting contracts (templates, apps, ect.)?

mindcrime 13y ago
http://www.amazon.com/Consultant-Independent-Contractor-Agreements-Stephen/dp/1413316220/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396981975&sr=1-3&keywords=contractor+nolo http://www.amazon.com/Consultant-Independent-Contractor-Agre... http://www.amazon.com/Service-Agreements-SMB-Consultants-Services/dp/0976376024/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396982054&sr=1-2&keywords=consultant+agreements http://www.amazon.com/Service-Agreements-SMB-Consultants-Ser...
nodata 13y ago
https://properapp.com/ https://properapp.com/ http://www.docracy.com/ http://www.docracy.com/

mindcrime 13y ago

BTW, two fun books for consultants, and would-be consultants, to read are House of Lies[1] and The Firm[2]. Both are more about "management consulting" (aka, McKinsey, Deloitte, etc.) than what most of us probably have in mind, but they are both entertaining reads in their own respective right. House of Lies is a sort of retrospective "tell all" from a former management consultant, and inspired a TV program of the same name. At times it's hard to tell how serious he is, and the TV show is clearly not meant to be a completely accurate documentary (although it may be more truthful than you'd think) but it's a fun read. The Firm is basically the history of McKinsey, and while that might sound pretty dry and boring, it turns out to be fairly fascinating. Lots of interesting characters involved, and some fun drama and what-not. And it's interesting to see how McKinsey grew from basically nothing, to being the behemoth it is today. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/House-Lies-Management-Consultants-Steal/dp/B001QFY1SA/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396981696&sr=1-1&keywords=house+of+lies http://www.amazon.com/House-Lies-Management-Consultants-Stea... [2]: http://www.amazon.com/Firm-McKinsey-Influence-American-Business/dp/1439190976/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396981759&sr=1-2&keywords=the+firm http://www.amazon.com/Firm-McKinsey-Influence-American-Busin...

stfu 13y ago
Since we are talking about Consulting a must read is the work on professional service firms by former HBS Prof. David Maister. His website is super ugly ( http://davidmaister.com/ http://davidmaister.com/ ) but his advice is timeless, esp. since his writing is a lot about building the long-term client-consultant relationship.

protomyth 13y ago

I went through a placement person for my time as a consultant. He handled the accounting, medical insurance, taxes (all withholding), and paid me 70% of the bill rate. If you went full up 1099 he passed on 90%. It was a pretty nice arrangement for me at that time in my life. Do remember, many of the employees you deal with will think you are a member of the true oldest profession (Genesis 3:1).

nchuhoai 13y ago
Do you know how you would go about these days to find a placement person?
- protomyth 13y ago
  No idea, I happened into to it by being invited by a friend.