Life as a consultant - what's it like?

So I am about a month into my job hunt (trying to relocate from Arizona to Denver, Co) and today I had an interesting call with a recruiter that is making me think I might want to look into a consulting gig.

I have had a few people contact me so far, but most of the positions either pay too little or after a couple of questions it becomes clear I am lacking some essential skill (most notably BGP and WAN related experience). I think the fact that I am out of state makes getting my foot in the door even harder than it might be otherwise.

I am currently a jack-of-all-trades, but I really enjoy the networking and firewall portions of my job and would like to focus on those areas and do less with Windows.

Anyway, from today's brief call it sounds like this position would be for a well established consulting company that fills in the gaps at small to medium sized companies that need more skilled people on occasion (upgrades, special projects, etc.), but typically have their own IT people for the more basic tasks. Windows would be part of the picture, but based on the job description I don't think that is a big part of it.

I like the idea of building/creating/upgrading, but the day-to-day maintaining is wearing a little thin, although that could be because I have been in the same job for 11 years and in need of a change. I could never be one of those guys who flies out Monday morning and gets back home late in the week and lives in hotels, but this position is all in the same metro area, so while I might end up putting a lot of windshield time in, I would be sleeping in my own bed at night.

The plus side of this is that I would be able to touch a lot of new tech and would get to learn new areas (most notably voice and wireless which I am interested in anyway); if the job itself isn't so hot I would be much better positioned a year from now to move on as I would be local and have new skills.

Has anyone here had a similar job? How was the experience? Given the little bit I have shared about myself, does it sound like something that would help me progress?

The last item is salary - it is a little low, but there is program in place that can bump up the pay significantly based upon billable hours (it sounds like up to 30-40% above the base). They made it clear this is not a bonus. Anyone familiar with this type of pay? Any thoughts/concerns?

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Comments

sieff

sounds interesting. i've been in consulting for about 9 years now. there's ups and downs like anything else, but for the most part i prefer it.

pros:
flexible hours - working from home is a huge plus, overall i let clients know what time i'm available to be onsite to start my day, etc.
training - depending on your office, you'll likely do brown bag training sessions by your colleagues - as well as formal vendor training classes.
employees - i can almost guarantee you'll be working with top notch ppl, good brainstorming and mentors.
tech - latest technologies, design work, install, pre-sales, post-sales support, etc.

cons:
demanding hours and deadlines. you are expected to work through problems.

travel - it can be unpredictable, you said this employer was strictly local, so maybe no worries there. in my case, there were times i was on the road for 6 months straight. it was so tiring that i stopped coming home on the weekends and lived in a hotel for a few months straight.

the business - with good mngt this can be shielded from you, but ultimately your bill rate and utilization will have to cover your overhead (salary, benefits, etc). so they'll likely want you to bill 75% or 32/40 hours a week. now this is sort of a pro... in order to be billable you have to be well trained. also there's normally an incentive for keeping up with utilization hours, i.e. bonuses, raises, promotions, free training, paid education, etc.

anyways, i'd do it. i will never work a 9-5 job again. unless they paid me serious, serious cash - $200K+.

Mrock4

I think sieff hit all of the pro's/cons I can think of. I would add a con- consulting work can come and go, depending on current economic conditions and buyer habits. If it's a full-time consulting gig with a company you should be OK, so this is more relevant to independent consultants.

Overall I love consulting. The travel can be a bit much (I'm on the road a LOT) on the family life..but you just have to work harder and prioritize things.

N2IT

Utilization and billable hours sums it up. Well done Sieff. FYI I don't miss it one bit!

sieff

another thing is the type of clients you work with.

small clients i've learned can be the biggest pain. say they'll pay for 80 hours at $150/hr. they will want every bit of work out of you for those 80 hours. we made the mistake of doing a fixed price engagement, where we defined the scope and delivered. client wanted small things done like putting their logo on efax server, troubleshooting echo on IP phones - only to find out they were answering calls in the same proximity on speaker phones. it took forever to close and ended up being more of a hassle than it was worth.

larger clients that spend say $300K - $1M on professional services oftentimes are pretty laid back, they understand your value.

on a positive note, difficult clients make you a better engineer.

N2IT

Sieff great insight. Fixed price engagement are junk, way to much risk. The buyer holds all the cards and then some, no thanks. Billable or some fee based contract are the way to go. I have seen some fixed rate with a fee attached which turned out ok, but overall I agree.

paul78

I contracted for a short-time (about 3 years) about 15 years ago. I do honestly say that I liked it for the reasons that Sieff pointed out.

But I didn't work for a contracting company.

One of the pros is that I set my own bill rates and there was no middle man.

The biggest con is that I was constantly in sales mode and needed to always have a new contract lined up. So juggling that was a bit too hectic.

BTW - I was never opposed to fixed-priced engagements - if the statement of work was rock-solid, it can be very lucrative. I actually preferred fixed-priced engagements in a lot of cases if the work was cookie-cutter.

Bill3rdshift

sieff wrote: »

another thing is the type of clients you work with.

larger clients that spend say $300K - $1M on professional services oftentimes are pretty laid back, they understand your value.

So much meaning in that summation... Target large clients that [really] value IT and what information technology does for their organization, and your days will be happy.

Mrock4

Just to add, I highly recommend any of Alan Weiss' consulting books off Amazon. I have read a couple and they are very helpful.

MiikeB

Just to add, make sure it is everything you expect and research the company. It seems every week some recruiter is calling trying to play off a temp or temp to hire job as a "consultant" position.

PurpleIT

Really good info here - thanks everyone.

A few points that were touched on that are concerns of mine:

Flexible hours: I know each company is different, but the idea of being able to do this while working for another company intrigues me. It also worries me a little - I am an extreme night owl. If I had it my way I would be up from noon until 3am daily; adjusting to "normal" hours has been a long and at time painful process for me.

Demanding hours and deadlines aren't as much of a worry; especially since as was pointed out, I should be working with some pretty knowledgeable people (and theoretically am fairly knowledgeable myself).

Always selling. Because I would be working for a company I wouldn't have to always be selling myself and my services, but that was one thing I will keep in mind - will I have to be selling my company's services? "Oh, it looks like your AV is a version behind - for only a few dollars more I can upgrade that." Ugh.

"Small" customer demands would be more of a worry if I were trying to strike out on my own instead of working for a company. While I try to please people it is much easier to say no if there is a boss I have to explain myself to if I start to give things away.

All of the replies have really helped remind me of some old dreams I had about starting my own company; I don't think I am ready to jump into that just yet, but I am pretty sure I want to pursue this opportunity.

FloOz

So what exactly is the difference between consulting and contracting? They both seem similar to me.

paul78

@PurpleIT - I forgot to mention one other item. When I was consulting, it often meant a lot of travel. For several months out of the year, I was pretty much living out of a suitcase.

FloOz wrote: »

So what exactly is the difference between consulting and contracting?

Good question.. The answer will depend on who you ask

Taking the US-centric viewpoint, I would characterize it as follows:

Contractor - generally works through an agency, usually a task oriented temporary employee - i.e. told what tondo and how to do it. Usually, short term but full-time. Bills hourly.

Consulting - generally does not work through agency. Expected to reach a goal but may have significant lattitude on approach. Often not task driven. Usually not full-time and may work multiple engagements simultaneously. Bills a combo of fixed price and hourly.

FloOz

Thanks!

NetworkVeteran

Will I have to be selling my company's services? "Oh, it looks like your AV is a version behind - for only a few dollars more I can upgrade that." Ugh.

When I understand and believe in my company's products/services, I find selling them very easy. "Hey.. did you hear about that worm that took down Google last week? Yeah.. painful.. I noticed you're a few revisions behind.. I can sneak you a temporary license. Well, you're very important to us and I don't want that to happen here. You're welcome! I can do this once, but what you really need is a site renewal. I'd recommend yearly for the discount. Let me send you a quote as soon as I get back to the office."

sieff

I've worked as a contractor before but only for 90-120 days. It was basically like working for the client. As a consultant, you're seen as the "expert" and your scope is defined. Each IT professional services org is a bit different. Some offer different perks, I've seen some firms over a percentage on margin if you find a lead and pass it on to sales. Some just give you a pat on the back and a "dat-a-boy"... It really depends, one way to look at is that even though you're a technical consultant really your job is supporting the sales team. Sales generates the leads for the most part, which in turn makes you billable. Some orgs define the presales role strictly to presales engineers and others the engineers are a mix of presales, design, install, support all-in-one. The larger IT Consulting companies have more defined processes and likely better success rates. The smaller firms have some benefits as well, I worked for a very small firm before and the knowledge I gained about the business of IT was invaluable. Learning how to write SOWs, RFPs, negotiate an office space lease, being privy in conversations about sales margin and accounting... and then there's doing all the hand holding for clients...cheap clients that wanted to use Dell PoE switches for a Cisco phone deployment, etc...just tons of frustrating and challenging environments and high-stress, but looking back it was the best situation to be in for my first consulting gig. Now at my shiny ship, suit & tie consulting firm I'm rarely taken off guard by stupidity. I've seen the worse situations (at least I hope so).

N2IT

@ Paul most of the time (from my view point) if the work is cookie cutter you want to bill on activity. That way the buyer can scale to work load. If the month doesn't require as much effort then the cost reflects that. The seller (vendor contractor) will have to manage a little tighter in those months sending home unutilized employees. However if the month is huge and the activity are set up you can technically bill above 100% utilization which in turn can sky rocket your margins. I know you already know this (just saying

)

PurpleIT

paul78 wrote: »

@PurpleIT - I forgot to mention one other item. When I was consulting, it often meant a lot of travel. For several months out of the year, I was pretty much living out of a suitcase.

That would be the deal-breaker, but supposedly this is local only so I THINK I can avoid that for the most part. Of course, I am quickly learning that when dealing with recruiters things are not always as they appear.