I strongly agree with the title sentimment. Strongly!
But, I'll add this - work at a company first, full time, for as long as you find it rewarding. Maybe several years at least? ... the longer the better. Bonus for each promotion you receive, primarily b/c of different levels of responsibility and leadership that places you in.
I think that's key to getting the most out of independent consulting, for 2 reasons:
First, b/c fresh out of college or early in your career, you still don't know what you don't know. That makes learning w/out benefit of teammates, mentors, interactions with other teams (Customer Success, Sales, Marketing, etc.), quite dangerous. Without that wide array of awareness and guidance on a regular basis, it's easy to form bad habits. And bad habits attained during one's formative years can be long-term or hard to break.
And second, b/c every engineer needs to experience what it's like to maintain and improve a product for years on end. E.g. while I didn't recognize it at the time, I believe time I spent with a product for 3 of its generations proved to be one of the best learning environments I've had as a software engineer. That kind of timeline provides first-hand experience to the long-tail of product decision making. It provides long experiential lessons in best practices like automated testing, a structured dev process, engaging in customer feedback, team culture & cohesiveness, etc. And b/c I was with the same cohort of employees for so long, and saw how leadership could fluctuate, I also found it helped develop my intuition for effective leaders.
All said, I wouldn't have gotten as much out of consulting if I wasn't backed w/prior experience. From an engineering standpoint, I was able to hit the ground running since I already had years of experience developing software. Soft-skills gained during that same time translated directly and immediately to client relationships. I also felt fortunate and well prepared to handle longer-term needs and concerns from bigger clients (Fortune 100/500), some of which I still maintain relationships with.
I was always under the impression that consultants were some of the best in their field (that can be hired, at least), and therefore going into it fresh out of college just isn't feasible, let alone a bad idea. Though it sounds like I might be wrong.
Edit: It's pretty funny how me and the article takes this differently
"I always found this to be a stressful and not particularly honest arrangement. I’m not an expert, I’m just a guy who reads the docs. I didn’t like having to project an air of competence that I didn’t always feel."
I've always taken a situation feeling stressful and dishonest as I sign I shouldn't be there, but if this is just how it is, maybe its not as bad as I thought
I’ve been a consultant for about 15 years of my career. I like to make the distinction between “product developers” and “project developers”. It’s just a different mindset. For product developers, there is a benefit in spending more time to make sure your code is correct and optimized — mistakes cost more when you have a large user base (or are trying to attract one).
By contrast, project developers have no such incentives. Their goal is to finish development within a time box and meeting certain acceptance criteria. Often they’re building tools that are high value but low user counts, so mistakes / bugs are more tolerable and users can be trained on workarounds.
In my opinion, it’s largely a personality difference. I personally get bored working on the same thing for too long, so consulting works great for me. Some people hate the context switching of moving to a new project every few months or are just meticulous and slow developers, and they make great product developers. That’s not to say you shouldn’t try both sides of the fence, but you’ll usually land on the side that best fits your personality and working style.
Im pretty far up the food chain at a large consulting firm and i too get bored easily. Consulting fits my personality type because each project has a deadline ( rarely exceeding a year ) and then you either sell an extension or go look for something else to do.
There's also a lot of adrenaline involved in consulting too, some of my coworkers have left to go run a program somewhere in industry only to come back in a year or two because they were bored out of their minds and wanted back in the game.
Same; I’m at the point in my career where I’m not really involved in project delivery anymore so it’s more about sales and coaching new leaders. Your technical skills do eventually atrophy (at least mine have) but that just means you lean on your experts for that knowledge. But it’s probably a more natural growth path than most technical roles in industry — promotions at consulting companies are far easier to achieve if you put in the work.
This is probably also down to your character. When I was working as a consultant for a big SaaS company I felt like the occupation really attracts a certain type of overly confident people who also like the attention. I'm 100% sure that everybody there had these blank spots in their knowledge which would potentially result in feeling stressed or dishonest when talking to the customer. Some people are just better selling their blank spots.
Yeh, could well be it. I'd like the be a consultant of course but I don't think Im the kind of person to be able to sell other people on my abilities before I sell myself on them. Credit where credits due to those who can though
I don't know about needing to be the "best", or an "expert", but I do believe a consultant should have a certain skill level, or set of skills, that provides some value to a team.
That's to say some consultants are very strong engineers, in the general sense; very capable in various roles. While others might possess a sufficient narrow skill set. E.g. maybe a front-end React dev, or data engineer assisting with integrating parts of a data pipeline, or a SQL consultant helping trouble shoot database performance issues. Other times, a team covers both bases (high degree of skill breadth, and depth), but lacks time to devote to all pressing issues.
So consultant relationships are formed for any number of reasons; they need not be an expert, necessarily.
Typically you'd have a team of actual hotshots who start the project, sell the consulting company as competent, they draw up initial plans for whatever they are consulting on, and then you replace them with your usual kind of developers/BAs/whatever.
For example if your initial team had an architect with 15 years of experience, including 10 years in your specific domain, they get replaced someone with 5 years of experience, with 2 years in the domain.
It's a bit too broad of a concept to be general about it. If you go into consulting straight out of uni then imho either:
a) Use a consulting company that heavily invests in it's people through internal learning and mentoring and support. I don't know any us companies like this but there has to be some I guess? In Europe Swedish Netlight operates like this, I had experience when I joined them a few years back but they employ people straight out of uni too.
b) Do it yourself if you for some reason have a real niche super strength
Local tax structure matters too. Here in Sweden it's very beneficial to start your own consulting firm instead of being tax'ed to death, to the tune of earning twice what you would in a similar role if you're employed so it's a road many including myself take for that reason alone.
Different people mean different things by it, but often/increasingly/safest assumption is that someone just means 'temporary contract work'. Which you can absolutely do as a new graduate, since 'need some fixed term/scope work' doesn't necessarily mean 'need some senior expertise' - it just means cash-strapped, or sudden need to scale out that isn't expected (or known) to last.
I knew a few friends at college whose first jobs were at consulting firms. It seemed a bit of a misnomer since they had no practical experience.
I think sometimes people don't want to hire pragmatist consultants who will rock the boat too much and challenge sacred cows - even if they get things done, instead, they might prefer someone who organises meetings, Gantt charts and committees in order to make their hirers look good.
i've work for Avanade, many moons ago. i have couple years of coding experiences when i join. they put me into a project that basically doing phone support for one of Fortune 500.
they just hire as many people with CS degree or working background in tech then send them out to do "tech stuff" regardless if it fit their employee's background.
This is very important. Experts in the field I look up to only became experts because they learned from the consequences of their choices. Sometimes these consequences don't materialise until 5, 10, 20 years later.
But, I'll add this - work at a company first, full time, for as long as you find it rewarding. Maybe several years at least? ... the longer the better. Bonus for each promotion you receive, primarily b/c of different levels of responsibility and leadership that places you in.
I think that's key to getting the most out of independent consulting, for 2 reasons:
First, b/c fresh out of college or early in your career, you still don't know what you don't know. That makes learning w/out benefit of teammates, mentors, interactions with other teams (Customer Success, Sales, Marketing, etc.), quite dangerous. Without that wide array of awareness and guidance on a regular basis, it's easy to form bad habits. And bad habits attained during one's formative years can be long-term or hard to break.
And second, b/c every engineer needs to experience what it's like to maintain and improve a product for years on end. E.g. while I didn't recognize it at the time, I believe time I spent with a product for 3 of its generations proved to be one of the best learning environments I've had as a software engineer. That kind of timeline provides first-hand experience to the long-tail of product decision making. It provides long experiential lessons in best practices like automated testing, a structured dev process, engaging in customer feedback, team culture & cohesiveness, etc. And b/c I was with the same cohort of employees for so long, and saw how leadership could fluctuate, I also found it helped develop my intuition for effective leaders.
All said, I wouldn't have gotten as much out of consulting if I wasn't backed w/prior experience. From an engineering standpoint, I was able to hit the ground running since I already had years of experience developing software. Soft-skills gained during that same time translated directly and immediately to client relationships. I also felt fortunate and well prepared to handle longer-term needs and concerns from bigger clients (Fortune 100/500), some of which I still maintain relationships with.