10 ms·

Consulting

328 points by dopeboy 12y ago

zerr 12y ago
Finding gigs gets tough when you want to break out of web dev, to e.g. C++/systems/desktop stuff.. And also add REMOTE constraint to that. Network[ing] gets mentioned quite a lot, but, from my experience, if you truly want to work on really different project/domain, you have to search elsewhere.
- shubb 12y ago
  I'd be interested to hear where. I'd like to try freelancing, but my skills are in embedded, so I figured I'd need to get good at web? Where are you finding your customers?
  - zerr 12y ago
    You mean in web dev? It's been many years since I left this domain, but you can find a lot of remote/freelance postings in HN hiring threads, and other similar sources.
ujjain 12y ago
In London us DevOps consultants make only £60k yearly, but £500 daily as consultants (contractors), which is twice as much after taxes. It seems in the United States salaries for permanent employees are higher, but that contractors don't get paid double.
- therealwill 12y ago
  Contractors are usually double what you would pay a salary person in the US too. It is because contractors have less reliable work and pay more taxes than salaried employees.
  - charlesdm 12y ago
    In the UK, taxes are generally better for self employed people when trading through a personal service company, because you can control the flow of dividend payouts. Contractors (on a 6-12 month contract) actually do get paid better significantly than permanent employee counterparts.
    - leereeves 12y ago
      I find that it's similar in the US. Contractors do pay a tax that's paid by an employer (half of the Social Security and Medicare Tax, about 7.5%), but they can also claim more deductions. With long term contracts that provide reliable work, contracting pays well. But without benefits.
      - charlesdm 12y ago
        Right. But who cares about the benefits when the difference is $4-6k per month? Most of those benefits (tech books and conferences, laptop, smartphones, software, etc) are valid tax deductions for software developers. I'll happily pay for those. The UK, and many other EU countries, also have excellent ‘free’ healthcare.
        matthewmacleod 12y ago
        The benefits often include things like stock schemes, pension payments, life insurance policies and so on. It does add up. I won't argue that contractors will probably take home more even taking benefits into account, and the tradeoff is then between more stable employment and a bigger paycheque.
        _delirium 12y ago
        In the U.S. it's a bit different because the category "benefits" often includes things that in other countries are part of the social system, such as health insurance, childcare, maternity/paternity leave, continuing education, etc. That can all admittedly be solved with money, given enough of a pay difference, though in some cases it would have to be a quite large pay difference. The stickiest part used to be the health-insurance part, which was hard to buy outside an employee risk pool if you had preexisting medical issues, but that's mostly been fixed (or at least papered over for now).
  - lsc 12y ago
    >Contractors are usually double what you would pay a salary person in the US too. It is because contractors have less reliable work and pay more taxes than salaried employees. an employer might pay double for a contractor, but the vast majority of contractors go through middlemen who take a big cut. In my experience, this means that I (the contractor) end up getting about 30% more than I would have gotten as an employee (after equalizing for taxes and benefits.) I have been able to get independent jobs as a "contractor" where a middleman wasn't involved, but in my experience? those jobs almost always require more work/responsibility for less pay. Yes, I know, this means I haven't found the right kind of client. I'm just relaying my own experiences. In my own experience, high-paying contract jobs through an agency are really easy to get, but only undesirable clients are willing to go direct with me. I've spent some time on it... and, for example, have (or have had, at various times) all the required insurance; but there's something else I'm missing.
  - mafuyu 12y ago
    The benefits that companies provide to salaried employees (healthcare, etc.) end up being more than 40% of the pay they actually see anyways. So in the end, the pay is comparable.
- gk1 12y ago
  > It seems in the United States salaries for permanent employees are higher, but that contractors don't get paid double. My experience hasn't been the same (I'm a consultant), but I can only speak for myself.
- tome 12y ago
  That sounds like a lot! What sort of firms are offering these positions?
  - flarg 12y ago
    You get what people think you will take; agents don't bother offering me low-paid jobs because they know I won't take them and they save the big rates for me.
lisa_henderson 12y ago
For years I worked as a concierge programmer, and it was the most fun that I ever had, mostly because of the one-to-one relationship I had with my clients. All of them were in the same circumstance, which is that they had inherited a large amount of money, and they had an idea for a website. I was able to offer 2 different skills: my skill as a programmer, and my experience in the world of startups. In all such cases my clients were non-technical and inexperienced in the world of startups. They had no interest in being angel investors, instead they wanted to dive in and use their own creativity to find out how hard it was to build a business around software. They tended to be reasonably interesting people, and I enjoyed working with them, and I enjoyed shaping their vision into something that could exist in the real world. All of the projects eventually grew (for a time) into something larger, at which point I would help put together a team of what was needed (typically some mix of backenders, frontenders, QA, writers, and customer service support). I did make good money during those years (2002 to 2009) but what I recall most fondly is how much fun all of it was. I think that world has now largely died out, as even the earliest stage startups now belong to a scene that is somewhat professionalizing. But the earlier web was unprofessional, and that was the best thing about it. Still I find, even now, even in New York City, there is some of the same energy among those dreaming about doing very early stage startups. Certainly the creativity and excitement is still there. The problem I've run into lately is the large number of people who are so sure that their idea will someday be worth billions that they do not want to pay cash right now, they only want to pay in equity. And that kills all of the fun for me.
- grey-area 12y ago
  For years I worked as a concierge programmer, and it was the most fun that I ever had, mostly because of the one-to-one relationship I had with my clients. I still do this sort of work, and still love it (London though, not NYC). As you say it can be a lot of fun if your clients have interesting problems and rely on you to clarify and reify their ideas. I can confirm that world has not died out, and I suspect it won't, because there will always be a stage where people have some money to spend but not enough to take a risky bet on an untested idea and start hiring employees, which is a huge fixed cost - consultants will always be better for that sort of work. When they're spending other people's money, of course companies are more willing to take on employees and fixed costs even at the start, so in some ways VC funding does distort this market. The problem I've run into lately is the large number of people who are so sure that their idea will someday be worth billions that they do not want to pay cash right now, they only want to pay in equity. And that kills all of the fun for me. If they were sure their idea would someday be worth billions, they wouldn't want to give any percentage of that away... IMO the reason they want to pay in equity is to spread some of the risk that this idea won't work - it's all upside for them if you are not paid in money now but in hypothetical money which they only have to pay if things go incredibly well.
Aqwis 12y ago
>I get asked a lot about what software consulting (aka freelancing) is like. Are consulting and freelancing synonyms now? In my world, most "consultants" work for small or big (Accenture, one of the French corps, Deloitte...) consulting companies and don't have many of the problems mentioned in this blog post (but also likely have lower earning potential).
- mholt 12y ago
  I've always considered consultants to be more on-site, but maybe that's because I didn't hear of freelancing much before the Internet and remote working.
  - vram22 12y ago
    There were plenty of freelancers before remote working and the Internet - in many fields other than software. They were probably just not that visible to the average person - precisely due to lack of Internet and later social media.
- ghaff 12y ago
  In my book, different but overlapping terms. A consultant can be a freelancer or can work for either a consulting firm or a product company that has a consulting arm. In IT, "consultant" tends to suggest on-site work though that certainly doesn't have to be the case. And a freelancer can include consultants and programmers but also includes, for example, many writers.
- colinbartlett 12y ago
  Similar and overlapping as others have said. But I often liken "consulting" to mean the product you are selling is yourself. Where as "freelance" means the product you are selling is some output (app, website, code, etc.). It's a lot harder to grow a consulting business beyond 30 to 40 hours a week because a human can only sell so much of his time. But if the value you are providing is an output, you can scale by hiring others to help offload your work. Much more difficult when you have sold yourself as a consultant and the client is expecting YOU.
ChainsawSurgery 12y ago
> I've made life long friends with some of my clients. That, more than anything else on this list, has made consulting special to me. Hah, I had the exact opposite experience freelancing straight out of college, and this was why I stopped and sought full-time employment. Most of the people I was interacting with (clients, etc) were significantly older than me, and it was brutally isolating after awhile. Even barring the age barrier, there was always a definitive client/vendor line that seemed to prevent any meaningful relationship from developing. I even tried a coworking space, but it was never quite the same for me since people were there to work mostly, and it's not like you were ever going to work together aside from some rare cases. I did it for about a year and then resolved never to do it as a full-time thing ever again. The freedom attracted me, but (for me at least) the isolation was overwhelming. Disclaimer: blah blah blah, my own experience and not yours necessarily, etc.
- ohashi 12y ago
  It always saddens me to read about coworking spaces like that. I think it's probably rare and takes a lot of effort, but coworking that builds real and lasting relationships does exist. It's not common and I think your experience is the norm, which is what disappoints me about this 'coworking revolution.'
shubhamjain 12y ago
Although, "being your own boss" seems a very pleasing thing but quite possibly, you could have a steady line of work after investing some time in building relationships, one of the aspect which seems a little daunting is - boredom due to grunt work. Most of the non-technical people would want to build a simple site with simple functionality and after sometime it is bound to get repetitive. Pay could be one of the motivating factor but would it be motivating enough to continue it for many years? Certainly, such complains can also be made about startup jobs but there are certain problems related to scaling and optimization that always give excitement and satisfaction. There are a few very successful consultants whose skill-sets are just too awesome for a full time job and they have a steady line exciting work but probably, that would require knowledge of the deepest sort in certain fields like scaling, or statistics.
- chrismarlow9 12y ago
  having to do grunt work is an effect of a lack of automation in most cases. one of the things he mentions is getting very tight and efficient with his tool chain, to eliminate wasted time. also, you outsource the things you're bad at yourself, or you create a relationship with another contractor to trade work. typically this split is "designer & coder".
snambi 12y ago
Awesome post. Couldn't agree more that the satisfaction is much higher than the working for a big company.
wooyi 12y ago
I was part of a mobile dev boutique "shop" for a few years. We had maybe 10 projects a year, and the majority of the projects were your run of the mill projects (ie, me-too projects, simple apps,..etc) . It became just like any other job except that you had 10 bosses instead of 1. Everyone's experience is different. But my takeaway was that it's better to define your own passion projects and make it work than to be someone else's mercenary.
- jakejake 12y ago
  I agree with you which is why I stopped consulting after five years. I started to feel like I couldn't focus on anything because I always had 5-6 projects going on at once. Another thing is that you really begin to feel the pressure of having all time on the computer being billable time - in order to pay your bills (or in my case meet payroll for employees). So that leads to not being able to do much exploration of new technologies. For example I would stress out if spending a week learning something new because that would be a week that I would have no revenue.
- gurkendoktor 12y ago
  > But my takeaway was that it's better to define your own passion projects and make it work than to be someone else's mercenary. That's the beauty of being able to set your own price! You can increase your hourly rate/project estimates until some clients will decline, and then spend the free time to work on your own project. It took me some getting used to it, though, because losing out on a project feels like a defeat, even when it isn't.
- semi-extrinsic 12y ago
  I like how you say "boutique shop", that has to be one of the most american redundantisms I've seen in a while.
jakejake 12y ago
A friend of mine said that working at a corporation gives you the illusion of stability, and working as a freelancer gives you the illusion of freedom. I found that to be very true. Working freelance basically means that each client is a new boss. Each boss will want things from you and they don't know or care about the other bosses! So you have to be really good at juggling projects.
- funkyy 12y ago
  I cannot agree. Not every freelancer work with one boss at the time. I am a freelancer, but I sell my services to multiple buyers (few dozens) each month. I then outsource some of it to my team. I am able to keep prices low, but not low enough to start getting cheap demanding customers (you need to really work on your pricing to snatch mostly wealthy customers, that see your price like a discount, not cheap and that if anything goes wrong wont give you hard time about it). I don't mind if I lose 1 or even 10 customers and I tend to "fire customers" every month or two. That's freedom. And just to clarify - I am no a company - I still work a lot and I do the most important jobs myself. I also never blame my employees for delays etc - as employer expects me to deliver, not my employees. imo freedom is achievable as a freelancer only if you can fire your customers without going bankrupt and affecting your future finances to much.
  - Frondo 12y ago
    If you have a team, you're no longer a freelancer, you're a business owner running an agency.
- iolothebard 12y ago
  The difference is you can fire clients. It's hard to fire bosses. Plus you should be seeking multiple revenue streams. The stability of a "job" comes from a regular paycheck and not having to do the work in addition to sales. Roughly 50% of the time working as a independent developer should be spent (IMO) working to add new clients and/or expand your revenue stream. If it gets to be too much work, you've now got a consulting company with people working under you (and the nightmare expands).
meapix 12y ago
one main thing about consulting is you will be doing work nobody wants to do.
k__ 12y ago
For me, consulting was mostly fire fighter work. "A dev got sick, but we got to ship on monday! We gonna pay you mad monies to come over the weekend and safe our ass" Paid good money, but was boring work. But I would recommend it anyone before starting to work for an "agency". Product development > Freelancing > Unemployment > Working for an agency
- sycren 12y ago
  Why the stigma against agencies? I'm actually finding agency work more rewarding however I am a strategist working directly with multiple clients on how they can grow their business. Is it the pay/workload/clientel?
  - ryanSrich 12y ago
    Agency work is just soul sucking from a clientele stand point. Most of the companies you work for are massive consumer facing businesses and all you're doing is helping them feed their shit to the public. This type of work isn't necessarily confined to agencies. The same could be said for several tech companies building products (social networks come to mind). If you're a technical person there are just far better things you could be working on than agency projects.
    - Supraperplex 12y ago
      You are talking about (philosophical) values. This is a value judgement: > them feed their shit to the public A solution to this would be to work for an agency whose leadership and positioning is compatible with your values. For instance an agency that focuses on clients who sell outdoor equipment for hikers, bikers, gliders and so on would be compatible with the values of someone who thinks it is a good thing when someone goes on a hike.
- stevebot 12y ago
  I disagree. Apparently, you have had one set of bad experiences with an Agency. I have had a rather good experience. At an Agency, I am usually brought in for green field projects that larger companies don't feel their team either has the time of expertise for. This is awesome. Also, at an Agency, I get paid for every hour I work. This is not usually the case in Product Development, where salaries are more common. The caveat, would be if you have equity. Equity can beat being paid for every hour you work, but obviously this is not always the case. Freelancing also means you usually get paid for every hour you work. However, you also have to spend mad time marketing and looking for clients, as well as managing taxes, heath care and other housekeeping items. I dislike this, and would rather have someone else do it for me.
DonHopkins 12y ago
Q: What's the difference between a consultant and a contractor? A: A contractor knows the difference.
- mlvljr 12y ago
  Why is not this comment next to first (instead of first as it is now)? ;)
- j45 12y ago
  YMMV, but in my time consulting has tended to be when customers ask for strategic, architectural and design input more than Contractors, who often are more focussed on implementing a plan that is a bit more formed.
curiously 12y ago
so the question everyone here wants to know is. How do you get a coffee with a real estate realtor or someone like that? Craigslist? PPC? what keywords do you target? Landing page? How does it differ from a freelancer's portfolio? How did you find out what he quotes he was getting? Did you match it or underprice it somewhat?
- ohashi 12y ago
  In the article didn't he clearly state he was working in the same space? To put it in a more generalized context, he was meeting people in real life (and he also mentioned how real life connections were important).
curiously 12y ago
Here's an actionable question. Take a look at my "freelance" website http://appsonify.com http://appsonify.com Tell me how I can turn it into a "consultant". I don't want to be a freelancer getting paid low canadian dollars per hour. I want to be a consultant getting paid lots of money. Based on what everyone described and this article says, the differences are subtle. So what can I do to change how I present myself as a consultant rather than a freelancer? What changes can I make on my freelancer website? Where can I find my first consultant client? Why would a client use an expensive consultant vs odesk (based on some customer's words not mine)? How can you avoid running into these type of cost reducing customers? These are the tough questions I think anyone curious about becoming a consultant would care about.
- grey-area 12y ago
  Your website doesn't really matter. If you want to improve the quality of clients, try: Give them quotes per project or part of project, not per day, or heaven forfend by the hour. Don't find clients on odesk, find them anywhere else (referrals and contacts is the best way, you've already done some work, so work those contacts). Don't do work and then walk away - build meaningful relationships and trust with clients over years, and keep delivering for them (and being paid). Trust is key. So don't drop clients unless they are toxic - aim to build up a stable of good clients with repeat work and income. You've probably already met your first consulting client. Do drop clients who don't trust you or insist on lower prices. If they don't trust you, you can't work for them. Don't talk technology to them unless necessary or requested. Your client doesn't care if you use odoo with git or poo with tigger, they care about what you can deliver. They won't even know what OpenERP is (I didn't either). You can do a lot of work for clients without them knowing or caring what tech is used as long as what you build is solid and solves the problem. Discuss requirements with them first in an in-depth way, don't wait for them to give you a list of things that need done, have a discussion, and come back with a quote which details ways to improve their business (efficiencies, new features, new markets etc). Think of yourself and present yourself as a partner, not someone contracted to do some odd jobs. PS Since you asked about your site, it is a little topsy turvy, it starts from top to bottom with stuff you care about, and only reaches stuff clients will care about at the bottom - consider instead having a set of case studies at the top with projects you have been paid for (just 3 is fine), and quotes from happy customers. Your clients are usually focussed on their business and making money for that business more efficiently. Your personal views, your favourite technologies, and even the types of work you do, come secondary to that.
mikerichards 12y ago
I'm doing consulting on the side and loving it. Besides the money, I'm able to really hone some front-end skills that went a little stale because of the project I'm on at my full-time job. My experience is different than the OPs though. Although we live in the same town, almost all of our interaction is by phone. And I've been fortunate that my contacts are typically technical. Of course the only downside is time. When you've got a full-time job and then doing it on the side, every minute is precious, but I'd probably be goofing off anyway.
shiftb 12y ago
One of the best things I learned during my time consulting was an acute sense for the value of my time. Spending a half hour goofing off or taking a longer lunch translated directly into a lower paycheck. Realizing that altered the way I work and how I focus on what needs to get done. It made me more productive.
hoboon 12y ago
I'm curious to know something: how do you meet these non-technical people?
ExpiredLink 12y ago
> Being a consultant means I am my own boss. ... or so are your delusive dreams. In reality you trade one kind of dependency for another.
psp 12y ago
Consulting would be perfect except when the lights go out you don't own anything.
cafard 12y ago
A bit breezy, but well worth reading: http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/soc.html http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/soc.html

328 points by dopeboy 12y ago

zerr 12y ago

Finding gigs gets tough when you want to break out of web dev, to e.g. C++/systems/desktop stuff.. And also add REMOTE constraint to that. Network[ing] gets mentioned quite a lot, but, from my experience, if you truly want to work on really different project/domain, you have to search elsewhere.

shubb 12y ago
I'd be interested to hear where. I'd like to try freelancing, but my skills are in embedded, so I figured I'd need to get good at web? Where are you finding your customers?
- zerr 12y ago
  You mean in web dev? It's been many years since I left this domain, but you can find a lot of remote/freelance postings in HN hiring threads, and other similar sources.

ujjain 12y ago

In London us DevOps consultants make only £60k yearly, but £500 daily as consultants (contractors), which is twice as much after taxes. It seems in the United States salaries for permanent employees are higher, but that contractors don't get paid double.

therealwill 12y ago
Contractors are usually double what you would pay a salary person in the US too. It is because contractors have less reliable work and pay more taxes than salaried employees.
- charlesdm 12y ago
  In the UK, taxes are generally better for self employed people when trading through a personal service company, because you can control the flow of dividend payouts. Contractors (on a 6-12 month contract) actually do get paid better significantly than permanent employee counterparts.
  - leereeves 12y ago
    I find that it's similar in the US. Contractors do pay a tax that's paid by an employer (half of the Social Security and Medicare Tax, about 7.5%), but they can also claim more deductions. With long term contracts that provide reliable work, contracting pays well. But without benefits.
    - charlesdm 12y ago
      Right. But who cares about the benefits when the difference is $4-6k per month? Most of those benefits (tech books and conferences, laptop, smartphones, software, etc) are valid tax deductions for software developers. I'll happily pay for those. The UK, and many other EU countries, also have excellent ‘free’ healthcare.
      - matthewmacleod 12y ago
        The benefits often include things like stock schemes, pension payments, life insurance policies and so on. It does add up. I won't argue that contractors will probably take home more even taking benefits into account, and the tradeoff is then between more stable employment and a bigger paycheque.
      - _delirium 12y ago
        In the U.S. it's a bit different because the category "benefits" often includes things that in other countries are part of the social system, such as health insurance, childcare, maternity/paternity leave, continuing education, etc. That can all admittedly be solved with money, given enough of a pay difference, though in some cases it would have to be a quite large pay difference. The stickiest part used to be the health-insurance part, which was hard to buy outside an employee risk pool if you had preexisting medical issues, but that's mostly been fixed (or at least papered over for now).
- lsc 12y ago
  >Contractors are usually double what you would pay a salary person in the US too. It is because contractors have less reliable work and pay more taxes than salaried employees. an employer might pay double for a contractor, but the vast majority of contractors go through middlemen who take a big cut. In my experience, this means that I (the contractor) end up getting about 30% more than I would have gotten as an employee (after equalizing for taxes and benefits.) I have been able to get independent jobs as a "contractor" where a middleman wasn't involved, but in my experience? those jobs almost always require more work/responsibility for less pay. Yes, I know, this means I haven't found the right kind of client. I'm just relaying my own experiences. In my own experience, high-paying contract jobs through an agency are really easy to get, but only undesirable clients are willing to go direct with me. I've spent some time on it... and, for example, have (or have had, at various times) all the required insurance; but there's something else I'm missing.
- mafuyu 12y ago
  The benefits that companies provide to salaried employees (healthcare, etc.) end up being more than 40% of the pay they actually see anyways. So in the end, the pay is comparable.
gk1 12y ago
> It seems in the United States salaries for permanent employees are higher, but that contractors don't get paid double. My experience hasn't been the same (I'm a consultant), but I can only speak for myself.
tome 12y ago
That sounds like a lot! What sort of firms are offering these positions?
- flarg 12y ago
  You get what people think you will take; agents don't bother offering me low-paid jobs because they know I won't take them and they save the big rates for me.

lisa_henderson 12y ago

For years I worked as a concierge programmer, and it was the most fun that I ever had, mostly because of the one-to-one relationship I had with my clients. All of them were in the same circumstance, which is that they had inherited a large amount of money, and they had an idea for a website. I was able to offer 2 different skills: my skill as a programmer, and my experience in the world of startups. In all such cases my clients were non-technical and inexperienced in the world of startups. They had no interest in being angel investors, instead they wanted to dive in and use their own creativity to find out how hard it was to build a business around software. They tended to be reasonably interesting people, and I enjoyed working with them, and I enjoyed shaping their vision into something that could exist in the real world. All of the projects eventually grew (for a time) into something larger, at which point I would help put together a team of what was needed (typically some mix of backenders, frontenders, QA, writers, and customer service support). I did make good money during those years (2002 to 2009) but what I recall most fondly is how much fun all of it was. I think that world has now largely died out, as even the earliest stage startups now belong to a scene that is somewhat professionalizing. But the earlier web was unprofessional, and that was the best thing about it. Still I find, even now, even in New York City, there is some of the same energy among those dreaming about doing very early stage startups. Certainly the creativity and excitement is still there. The problem I've run into lately is the large number of people who are so sure that their idea will someday be worth billions that they do not want to pay cash right now, they only want to pay in equity. And that kills all of the fun for me.

grey-area 12y ago
For years I worked as a concierge programmer, and it was the most fun that I ever had, mostly because of the one-to-one relationship I had with my clients. I still do this sort of work, and still love it (London though, not NYC). As you say it can be a lot of fun if your clients have interesting problems and rely on you to clarify and reify their ideas. I can confirm that world has not died out, and I suspect it won't, because there will always be a stage where people have some money to spend but not enough to take a risky bet on an untested idea and start hiring employees, which is a huge fixed cost - consultants will always be better for that sort of work. When they're spending other people's money, of course companies are more willing to take on employees and fixed costs even at the start, so in some ways VC funding does distort this market. The problem I've run into lately is the large number of people who are so sure that their idea will someday be worth billions that they do not want to pay cash right now, they only want to pay in equity. And that kills all of the fun for me. If they were sure their idea would someday be worth billions, they wouldn't want to give any percentage of that away... IMO the reason they want to pay in equity is to spread some of the risk that this idea won't work - it's all upside for them if you are not paid in money now but in hypothetical money which they only have to pay if things go incredibly well.

Aqwis 12y ago

>I get asked a lot about what software consulting (aka freelancing) is like. Are consulting and freelancing synonyms now? In my world, most "consultants" work for small or big (Accenture, one of the French corps, Deloitte...) consulting companies and don't have many of the problems mentioned in this blog post (but also likely have lower earning potential).

mholt 12y ago
I've always considered consultants to be more on-site, but maybe that's because I didn't hear of freelancing much before the Internet and remote working.
- vram22 12y ago
  There were plenty of freelancers before remote working and the Internet - in many fields other than software. They were probably just not that visible to the average person - precisely due to lack of Internet and later social media.
ghaff 12y ago
In my book, different but overlapping terms. A consultant can be a freelancer or can work for either a consulting firm or a product company that has a consulting arm. In IT, "consultant" tends to suggest on-site work though that certainly doesn't have to be the case. And a freelancer can include consultants and programmers but also includes, for example, many writers.
colinbartlett 12y ago
Similar and overlapping as others have said. But I often liken "consulting" to mean the product you are selling is yourself. Where as "freelance" means the product you are selling is some output (app, website, code, etc.). It's a lot harder to grow a consulting business beyond 30 to 40 hours a week because a human can only sell so much of his time. But if the value you are providing is an output, you can scale by hiring others to help offload your work. Much more difficult when you have sold yourself as a consultant and the client is expecting YOU.

ChainsawSurgery 12y ago

> I've made life long friends with some of my clients. That, more than anything else on this list, has made consulting special to me. Hah, I had the exact opposite experience freelancing straight out of college, and this was why I stopped and sought full-time employment. Most of the people I was interacting with (clients, etc) were significantly older than me, and it was brutally isolating after awhile. Even barring the age barrier, there was always a definitive client/vendor line that seemed to prevent any meaningful relationship from developing. I even tried a coworking space, but it was never quite the same for me since people were there to work mostly, and it's not like you were ever going to work together aside from some rare cases. I did it for about a year and then resolved never to do it as a full-time thing ever again. The freedom attracted me, but (for me at least) the isolation was overwhelming. Disclaimer: blah blah blah, my own experience and not yours necessarily, etc.

ohashi 12y ago
It always saddens me to read about coworking spaces like that. I think it's probably rare and takes a lot of effort, but coworking that builds real and lasting relationships does exist. It's not common and I think your experience is the norm, which is what disappoints me about this 'coworking revolution.'

shubhamjain 12y ago

Although, "being your own boss" seems a very pleasing thing but quite possibly, you could have a steady line of work after investing some time in building relationships, one of the aspect which seems a little daunting is - boredom due to grunt work. Most of the non-technical people would want to build a simple site with simple functionality and after sometime it is bound to get repetitive. Pay could be one of the motivating factor but would it be motivating enough to continue it for many years? Certainly, such complains can also be made about startup jobs but there are certain problems related to scaling and optimization that always give excitement and satisfaction. There are a few very successful consultants whose skill-sets are just too awesome for a full time job and they have a steady line exciting work but probably, that would require knowledge of the deepest sort in certain fields like scaling, or statistics.

chrismarlow9 12y ago
having to do grunt work is an effect of a lack of automation in most cases. one of the things he mentions is getting very tight and efficient with his tool chain, to eliminate wasted time. also, you outsource the things you're bad at yourself, or you create a relationship with another contractor to trade work. typically this split is "designer & coder".

snambi 12y ago

Awesome post. Couldn't agree more that the satisfaction is much higher than the working for a big company.

wooyi 12y ago

I was part of a mobile dev boutique "shop" for a few years. We had maybe 10 projects a year, and the majority of the projects were your run of the mill projects (ie, me-too projects, simple apps,..etc) . It became just like any other job except that you had 10 bosses instead of 1. Everyone's experience is different. But my takeaway was that it's better to define your own passion projects and make it work than to be someone else's mercenary.

jakejake 12y ago
I agree with you which is why I stopped consulting after five years. I started to feel like I couldn't focus on anything because I always had 5-6 projects going on at once. Another thing is that you really begin to feel the pressure of having all time on the computer being billable time - in order to pay your bills (or in my case meet payroll for employees). So that leads to not being able to do much exploration of new technologies. For example I would stress out if spending a week learning something new because that would be a week that I would have no revenue.
gurkendoktor 12y ago
> But my takeaway was that it's better to define your own passion projects and make it work than to be someone else's mercenary. That's the beauty of being able to set your own price! You can increase your hourly rate/project estimates until some clients will decline, and then spend the free time to work on your own project. It took me some getting used to it, though, because losing out on a project feels like a defeat, even when it isn't.
semi-extrinsic 12y ago
I like how you say "boutique shop", that has to be one of the most american redundantisms I've seen in a while.

jakejake 12y ago

A friend of mine said that working at a corporation gives you the illusion of stability, and working as a freelancer gives you the illusion of freedom. I found that to be very true. Working freelance basically means that each client is a new boss. Each boss will want things from you and they don't know or care about the other bosses! So you have to be really good at juggling projects.

funkyy 12y ago
I cannot agree. Not every freelancer work with one boss at the time. I am a freelancer, but I sell my services to multiple buyers (few dozens) each month. I then outsource some of it to my team. I am able to keep prices low, but not low enough to start getting cheap demanding customers (you need to really work on your pricing to snatch mostly wealthy customers, that see your price like a discount, not cheap and that if anything goes wrong wont give you hard time about it). I don't mind if I lose 1 or even 10 customers and I tend to "fire customers" every month or two. That's freedom. And just to clarify - I am no a company - I still work a lot and I do the most important jobs myself. I also never blame my employees for delays etc - as employer expects me to deliver, not my employees. imo freedom is achievable as a freelancer only if you can fire your customers without going bankrupt and affecting your future finances to much.
- Frondo 12y ago
  If you have a team, you're no longer a freelancer, you're a business owner running an agency.
iolothebard 12y ago
The difference is you can fire clients. It's hard to fire bosses. Plus you should be seeking multiple revenue streams. The stability of a "job" comes from a regular paycheck and not having to do the work in addition to sales. Roughly 50% of the time working as a independent developer should be spent (IMO) working to add new clients and/or expand your revenue stream. If it gets to be too much work, you've now got a consulting company with people working under you (and the nightmare expands).

meapix 12y ago

one main thing about consulting is you will be doing work nobody wants to do.

k__ 12y ago

For me, consulting was mostly fire fighter work. "A dev got sick, but we got to ship on monday! We gonna pay you mad monies to come over the weekend and safe our ass" Paid good money, but was boring work. But I would recommend it anyone before starting to work for an "agency". Product development > Freelancing > Unemployment > Working for an agency

sycren 12y ago
Why the stigma against agencies? I'm actually finding agency work more rewarding however I am a strategist working directly with multiple clients on how they can grow their business. Is it the pay/workload/clientel?
- ryanSrich 12y ago
  Agency work is just soul sucking from a clientele stand point. Most of the companies you work for are massive consumer facing businesses and all you're doing is helping them feed their shit to the public. This type of work isn't necessarily confined to agencies. The same could be said for several tech companies building products (social networks come to mind). If you're a technical person there are just far better things you could be working on than agency projects.
  - Supraperplex 12y ago
    You are talking about (philosophical) values. This is a value judgement: > them feed their shit to the public A solution to this would be to work for an agency whose leadership and positioning is compatible with your values. For instance an agency that focuses on clients who sell outdoor equipment for hikers, bikers, gliders and so on would be compatible with the values of someone who thinks it is a good thing when someone goes on a hike.
stevebot 12y ago
I disagree. Apparently, you have had one set of bad experiences with an Agency. I have had a rather good experience. At an Agency, I am usually brought in for green field projects that larger companies don't feel their team either has the time of expertise for. This is awesome. Also, at an Agency, I get paid for every hour I work. This is not usually the case in Product Development, where salaries are more common. The caveat, would be if you have equity. Equity can beat being paid for every hour you work, but obviously this is not always the case. Freelancing also means you usually get paid for every hour you work. However, you also have to spend mad time marketing and looking for clients, as well as managing taxes, heath care and other housekeeping items. I dislike this, and would rather have someone else do it for me.

DonHopkins 12y ago

Q: What's the difference between a consultant and a contractor? A: A contractor knows the difference.

mlvljr 12y ago
Why is not this comment next to first (instead of first as it is now)? ;)
j45 12y ago
YMMV, but in my time consulting has tended to be when customers ask for strategic, architectural and design input more than Contractors, who often are more focussed on implementing a plan that is a bit more formed.

curiously 12y ago

so the question everyone here wants to know is. How do you get a coffee with a real estate realtor or someone like that? Craigslist? PPC? what keywords do you target? Landing page? How does it differ from a freelancer's portfolio? How did you find out what he quotes he was getting? Did you match it or underprice it somewhat?

ohashi 12y ago
In the article didn't he clearly state he was working in the same space? To put it in a more generalized context, he was meeting people in real life (and he also mentioned how real life connections were important).

curiously 12y ago

Here's an actionable question. Take a look at my "freelance" website http://appsonify.com http://appsonify.com Tell me how I can turn it into a "consultant". I don't want to be a freelancer getting paid low canadian dollars per hour. I want to be a consultant getting paid lots of money. Based on what everyone described and this article says, the differences are subtle. So what can I do to change how I present myself as a consultant rather than a freelancer? What changes can I make on my freelancer website? Where can I find my first consultant client? Why would a client use an expensive consultant vs odesk (based on some customer's words not mine)? How can you avoid running into these type of cost reducing customers? These are the tough questions I think anyone curious about becoming a consultant would care about.

grey-area 12y ago
Your website doesn't really matter. If you want to improve the quality of clients, try: Give them quotes per project or part of project, not per day, or heaven forfend by the hour. Don't find clients on odesk, find them anywhere else (referrals and contacts is the best way, you've already done some work, so work those contacts). Don't do work and then walk away - build meaningful relationships and trust with clients over years, and keep delivering for them (and being paid). Trust is key. So don't drop clients unless they are toxic - aim to build up a stable of good clients with repeat work and income. You've probably already met your first consulting client. Do drop clients who don't trust you or insist on lower prices. If they don't trust you, you can't work for them. Don't talk technology to them unless necessary or requested. Your client doesn't care if you use odoo with git or poo with tigger, they care about what you can deliver. They won't even know what OpenERP is (I didn't either). You can do a lot of work for clients without them knowing or caring what tech is used as long as what you build is solid and solves the problem. Discuss requirements with them first in an in-depth way, don't wait for them to give you a list of things that need done, have a discussion, and come back with a quote which details ways to improve their business (efficiencies, new features, new markets etc). Think of yourself and present yourself as a partner, not someone contracted to do some odd jobs. PS Since you asked about your site, it is a little topsy turvy, it starts from top to bottom with stuff you care about, and only reaches stuff clients will care about at the bottom - consider instead having a set of case studies at the top with projects you have been paid for (just 3 is fine), and quotes from happy customers. Your clients are usually focussed on their business and making money for that business more efficiently. Your personal views, your favourite technologies, and even the types of work you do, come secondary to that.

mikerichards 12y ago

I'm doing consulting on the side and loving it. Besides the money, I'm able to really hone some front-end skills that went a little stale because of the project I'm on at my full-time job. My experience is different than the OPs though. Although we live in the same town, almost all of our interaction is by phone. And I've been fortunate that my contacts are typically technical. Of course the only downside is time. When you've got a full-time job and then doing it on the side, every minute is precious, but I'd probably be goofing off anyway.

shiftb 12y ago

One of the best things I learned during my time consulting was an acute sense for the value of my time. Spending a half hour goofing off or taking a longer lunch translated directly into a lower paycheck. Realizing that altered the way I work and how I focus on what needs to get done. It made me more productive.

hoboon 12y ago

I'm curious to know something: how do you meet these non-technical people?

ExpiredLink 12y ago

> Being a consultant means I am my own boss. ... or so are your delusive dreams. In reality you trade one kind of dependency for another.

psp 12y ago

Consulting would be perfect except when the lights go out you don't own anything.

cafard 12y ago

A bit breezy, but well worth reading: http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/soc.html http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/soc.html