[HN Gopher] So you want to be a consultant? ___________________________________________________________________ So you want to be a consultant? Author : lobo_tuerto Score : 75 points Date : 2022-08-20 15:00 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (unixwiz.net) (TXT) w3m dump (unixwiz.net) | scarface74 wrote: | My one rule is that I don't do "staff augmentation" under any | circumstances. I only "consult" when I am actually bringing in my | subject matter expertise or projects where there is a "definition | of done" and I can put myself out of job. | squirrel wrote: | From 2005 (see bottom of http://unixwiz.net/techtips/ ) | | Also, Alan Weiss and Jonathan Stark cover similar material in | more depth, for those interested. | LAC-Tech wrote: | Read this one before, I think before I came self-employed. Made a | few of the mistakes he's talked about. I'll share them in the | hope it might help someone else. | | _Your customer certainly has to believe you can do the job, but | they cannot wonder if you 're going to get back to them, or if | you're going to do something stupid (again?), or offend one of | their customers._ | | I've definitely offended a customer of a customer before. It was | a customer who was well known for being rude - a running joke | through the whole company. But I definitely ruffled some feathers | when I got sick of their shit and left the call. | | Part of me thinks I should have been more zen and let the insults | wash over me. But another part of me thinks that prevention is | better than the cure and a frank conversation with my client | about what I was willing to tolerate would have been the way to | go. I mean, do you have to be a smiling doormat to excel in | business? | | _You have no job security, even if you think you do_ | | Yeap. Twice at the end of a full time contract, I found another | one extremely easily. The one I left at the beginning of this | year I still haven't really covered from, and I've essentially | had to change niches and start from scratch. | | Very keen to optimise for multiple part time roles from now on. | | _You are primarily in the customer service business, not the | technical business_ | | I have made this mistake before to an extent. Zero in on what | your customer actually wants not your technical wizardry. | | _This is the easiest to manage: you work an hour, you invoice | the customer for a hour. For occasional or ill-defined work, it | 's hard to use anything but hourly billing. The customer bears | the brunt of projects that get out of hand, and the customer is | really at the mercy of the consultant for being fair._ | | I disagree with this one though. An hour is way too fine grained | - there's much less paperwork and micro accounting with daily. | Strongly considered charging weekly next year. | social_quotient wrote: | Great points! | | "You have no job security, even if you think you do" | | This is a 100% true for consultants as well as agencies. Now | matter how "partnery" things feel you are always as good as | your last billable hour. | | When COVID started we got an email at 6am march 1st. Effective | immediately no consultants or agencies. Boom revenue gone that | we have depended on for maybe 5-6 years. Another client we had | been doing Wi-Fi analytics for their 1200 retail locations in | North America, 12 years. March 15th they said they cannot | budget services any longer. For all the years we had been | partners, you really are in a "nothing personal business | engagement". | | I've been doing this 22 years so I've seen it all. The key is | to not let these things drive the day to day interaction with | the customer but you need not forget what's possible so you can | plan accordingly. | jaqalopes wrote: | This is the consultant training course I never received but wish | I had. Even now, 8 years into my consulting career (not tech but | many of these ideas still apply), I found a lot here that either | confirms what I've learned the hard way or spells out something | I've encountered but never thought about. This is exactly the | kind of stuff I come to HN for, great share. | iancmceachern wrote: | This is good stuff | tailspin2019 wrote: | Wow, that was one of the best articles that I've ever read on | this topic. | | Well worth reading, for anyone self employed. | | Some of this advice could be applied to normal employment too, eg | owning your mistakes and generally working in an authentic | trustworthy way. | em-bee wrote: | _When your customer pages you, his timer starts: return his call | immediately_ | | this really depends on the customer. if the customer is of the | kind that won't let me off the hook once i respond, then i won't | respond immideately. (unless i actually have time to focus for at | least an hour). on the other hand my best/favorite customer is | wonderful at this front. while i don't always reply immediately, | there is never a problem to listen to his message and tell him | i'll get to that in a few hours or whenever my schedule allows. | | _Admit your mistakes_ | | while i wouldn't have returned both the original and the | accidentally duplicated fee since the error and the reason for | the error was an obvious slipup, returning money for shoddy work | or for any work that causes the customer to loose money is | definitely something i like to do. | | a customer being always late with payments is the least of my | reasons to fire someone. i may do that when i have more work than | i need. but i rather have a customer that's pleasant to work with | and pays late than an uncomfortable one that pays on time. | | _Generally, you cannot reuse a whole project because it | represents customer-specific functionality_ | | hardly. at least in web development the only thing customer | specific is the graphic design. most everything else is reusable. | i am not even writing custom backends anymore, but i reuse the | same backend for all projects. it's mostly just CRUD. and maybe | one or two custom functions added to an object in the backend | somewhere. to that end, the backend i use is GPL, and together | with the frontend framework makes up the bulk of the code. but | that's all done. what little code i end up writing is custom for | the project, and that is what the customer pays for. | whiddershins wrote: | > It's tempting to just get a good tax guy, but the taxes are not | the hard part: it's the recordkeeping that categorizes which of | your expenses are properly business expenses. It's not fair -- or | at least a bad idea -- to drop off a box of receipts to your tax | guy and have him try to read your mind. Good tax guys are not | cheap, and you want to pay him to prepare your taxes, not do your | bookkeeping. | | This insight is gold. Seriously. Everyone thinks they want a | rockstar accountant when what they really need is a bookkeeper | (or to just organize their books in a systematic, consistent | way). | iancmceachern wrote: | 100% | mackatsol wrote: | Excellent article! Thank you. I've been consulting for a long | time.. and this piece covered all the things that matter. | extragood wrote: | I found this really insightful as someone who runs a small | consultancy/professional services department within a larger | company. I agree with a lot of what he's written (some | terminology aside), but we have different perspectives on | billing. | | My department's engagements are exclusively 'fixed-bid projects'. | Truth be told, I'd prefer hourly billing as it reduces _our_ | risk. There is an omnipresent danger that we 've horribly under- | estimated the effort required to deliver a project, but the | customer isn't concerned about that. They are interested in | minimizing _their_ own risk. And the fixed bid is a guarantee of | X results for $Y, which has more safeties in place. I suppose | that 's why the author has to explicitly spell out how to fire | him. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-20 23:00 UTC)