Consulting vs. Regular Employment

Hello Everyone,

I am in late talks with two organizations that could potentially turn into offers. Both are great organization. The regular on-site position is with a Fortune 200 company based in Nashville (I'll let you google that one). The consulting gig is with a company I will not name but is expanding into Nashville and is looking for System Center consultants.
I don't know anything about the lifestyle of an IT consultant, just that I'm intrigued. The idea of escaping the monotony of showing up to the same office every day is very appealing to me.

I've made this pro/con list to help me decide. I understand that some of these are contradicting statements, but it is what it is...

Consulting:

Pro
Con

Travel: See cities and experience new things
Travel: lots of time spent in planes, trains, and rental cars.

More money
Time away from family and friends.

Make potentially beneficial professional connections
Lack of structure, hard to eat healthy and workout.

Regular Employment:

Pro
Con

Better work/life balance
Monotony. Same office, same people.

Possibly better benefits
Less money

Structure

Get to join a hockey league.

It's hard to say which would be more challenging and allow the most growth as a professional.

My question, have any of you done consulting and how does it compare to regular office work? Which one is preferable to you? What am I not taking into consideration?

If it helps, I am 25 years old, have been working in IT for 5 years and it is my goal to maximize my income potential without neglecting my wife and daughter.
It's also worth noting that I currently live outside the country away from my family so even if I was only home on the weekends, it would still be much more preferable to the current arrangements.

Apologies for the length and thanks in advance for your advice and replies.0

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Comments

MSP-IT

As a single guy, I'd totally shoot for the consulting gig. Though seeing as your have a wife and daughter, it would definitely make the decision process harder. I'd hold out and wait to see what the final offers entail and decide then.

Do you know how much you'd be traveling with the consulting gig? How does your wife feel about it?

5ekurity

Consulting can definitely be a lot of fun, and will expose you to things you might not normally get to work with and experience in a regular work setting / environment. I've made a lot of great connections, gained a lot of knowledge, and pretty good money doing consulting.

That being said, the traveling, late/obscure hours, sometimes having to drop everything and leave town put a lot of stress on me and my family. There's a fine line between making decent money and being happy / enjoying yourself and family, and having a lot of money but not being able to enjoy your life and being more stressed.

Having done both, while I miss some of the challenge / fun in consulting, the regular employment has made me much happier overall. If I was single and not tied down to anything, probably a different story.

dave330i

I had to travel every week for about 2 month recently. I didn't mind the travel itself, but did miss the wife and kids.

[Deleted User]

I've been in a role that involved a good amount of travel before. I've found that about one week per month would be my max. Unfortunately, in the position I was in, it entailed a lot more travel than that. It just didn't work for my situation. I get paid more now to not travel so even better. You have to be sure that the situation is going to work for both you and the wife.

Claymoore

I have been consulting for years and cannot see myself going back to an internal IT position anytime soon.

The biggest negative is the travel. This year was quiet as I have only been on the road 3 weeks this year, and one of those weeks was in the Bahamas. More of my remote engagements are done through Lync or other software, which means I am working from home and that's a plus. Prior to that, I have been up to 80% travel and that is too much. My max is 50%. 50% keeps you in the top tier of all the rewards programs and that helps make travel tolerable. My wife likes having me home, but she also liked the free vacations on travel points and miles.

When you travel, you don't get to see new cities. You see the inside of an office, a hotel room, and a bar/restaurant. You work all day so there are no tourist things to do. It's dark when you get off work, so no sightseeing, and you can't enjoy the nightlife too much because you do have to work the next day. I try to catch a sporting event, preferably baseball, in every city I visit and I seek out local restaurants and craft beers. We have a beer tourism group in our company where we discuss what we're drinking. One consultant even travels with a customized Pelican case that will hold 24 bottles of beer. TSA isn't always happy with him.

You have to find some fun in travel, because most of the time it is not fun. You are a slave to flight schedules. Spend all day making connecting flights or just fly out the night before? Easier, but that's one less day with the family. Get up at 0 dark thirty to catch that first flight to make the client site in the morning, or maintain a normal schedule and lose a big chunk of billable hours? Sunday night sleep deprivation made for Monday afternoon migraines for me until I adjusted my schedule. 30 minute sprint between terminals in Atlanta, or waste 3 hours with a layover? Then there are the delays, cancellations, unexplainably slow or long security lines, and the inevitable client schedule change.

When you are with a client you are 'On' all the time. My wife had to adjust to my not responding to a text/email/call right away. I may spend the day in a conference room connected to a monitor, showing a group of admins how Exchange should be designed in their company. It's tough to sneak a quick peek at email or the web when everyone is watching you.

But I still wouldn't trade it right now. As a single income with a wife and 2 kids, the pay difference is nice - bonuses help too. Working with the latest technology, never stagnating or getting bogged down in budgets and office politics is great. The best part is that one way or another, the project you are on will end and you get to leave.

jibbajabba

Thankfully, on my current project, I just have to travel every no and then and work mostly from home.

For me, the big difference between my past regular jobs and consulting, are politics.

As a consultant you technically don't have to deal with internal company politics, similar to a contractor. You just move on after the project.

As a regular employed guy you need to make it work somehow so you may have the odd politics here and there.

tprice5

MSP-IT wrote: »

I'd hold out and wait to see what the final offers entail and decide then.

Of course. I was just trying to get a better idea of what consulting is all about. There are plenty of writeups on FlyerTalk and other forums about the consulting lifestyle but it is generally about management consulting, and, while still relevant, I was hoping to get a feel for what it means to be a consult and the implications that has for my social life.

MSP-IT wrote: »

Do you know how much you'd be traveling with the consulting gig?

About 75%. Generally Monday-Thursday, sometimes more, sometimes less.

MSP-IT wrote: »

How does your wife feel about it?

Wife supports me in whatever I want to do. Being the breadwinner has its perks.

5ekurity wrote: »

There's a fine line between making decent money and being happy / enjoying yourself and family, and having a lot of money but not being able to enjoy your life and being more stressed.

Yeah, I'm currently on the wrong side of that line and trying to get back over. I told my wife that if the offer comes through we could try it. If it doesn't work for us, then it doesn't work.

Claymoore wrote: »

50% keeps you in the top tier of all the rewards programs and that helps make travel tolerable. My wife likes having me home, but she also liked the free vacations on travel points and miles.

As someone who has over 200,000 Chase ultimate rewards points and is about to get 2 Southwest credit cards to get the companion pass, this speaks to me. I'm subbed to reddit.com/r/churning for this hobby.

Claymoore wrote: »

I try to catch a sporting event, preferably baseball, in every city I visit and I seek out local restaurants and craft beers. We have a beer tourism group in our company where we discuss what we're drinking.

These seem like pretty sweet fringe benefits.

Claymoore wrote: »

But I still wouldn't trade it right now. As a single income with a wife and 2 kids, the pay difference is nice - bonuses help too. Working with the latest technology, never stagnating or getting bogged down in budgets and office politics is great. The best part is that one way or another, the project you are on will end and you get to leave.

Single income as well with a second kid on the way so the extra bucks would help.

Do you all consider consulting to be more prestigious? Would you say it is the top-tier of IT?

jibbajabba

I am reading here about long hours. I think this really depends on your contact. For example, my company I am employed with as a consultant, agrees a rate and hours per day. That means overtime isn't paid for so the customer can't force me. For example they wanted us to work between Christmas and New Year, but everyone declined. Apart from one contractor. A consultant who is self-employed and charges hourly. And that can be difference too. It all depends on the SOW, which is important to read and understand (SOW= Statement of Work).

Also something I have learned as a consultant: make it clear what you are there for. And even if you realise some skills you got could be useful, make sure you understand the implications.

Example. In one project a contractor was hired as a puppet razor and Linux resource. He then mentioned that he wouldn't mind dealing with Windows images for deployment.

As a result he became the go-to guy, had to create 32 different images, was fighting with problems and is now stuck in a situation where he has to do a lot of overtime due to the documentation demands.

My point:Only agree to do stuff you are comfortable to do until the end. Projects rarely end on time and budget so you don't want to get killed my friendly fire

Oh and also important when working in third party companies. Keep your mails .. Especially sent items

If you are self-employed make sure you got a liability insurance.

And for the love of God - grow a thick skin and learn to stay out of politics for your own sanity.

I hard initially a hard time to take off my engineers hat and being mainly responsible for an infrastructure I am responsible for 24/7 to then not having to worry about and get caught up in said politics.

Love consulting. Sometimes more stressful but in some ways, easier to deal with. No late night calls because a SAN breaks, no 3am calls because some server throws a fit or the DC is on fire.

jmritenour

I'm also a consultant, and I love it, though my consulting position isn't typical. I work the public sector branch of my org chart, so most of the customers I work with are government clients, and are all in the DC metro area. So I'm not traveling much. By contrast, the guys in the commercial side of the org chart are traveling week in and week out, and living out of a hotel. I'd probably have loved that when I was younger, single and had no family obligations, but now I'd hate being away from my family that much, and am perfectly content with my current amount of travel, with is a week or two every quarter.

It's a great feeling when you reach the status that a client considers you a trusted advisor, and truly values you. It's different than working working for a company, and being recognized as a good employee, much more rewarding.

Like jibbajabba said, it's nice not having to deal with internal politics as much, though it can affect you. Every now and then, you'll find that some people in an IT department resent having to deal with consultants because they feel that their organization doesn't value their skills/opinions as much as they should, and will argue with you at every turn, or outright try to sabotage you in a passive aggressive way. So, again, get every thing in writing, and always make sure you have a paper trail.

kohr-ah

Evening all,

Yay my 2¢! I am much like you with a wife and 1.5 daughters (the other is still cooking)

So I have done both sides of the the job. Consulting was fun. I wont lie. I got to touch all kinds of technology and a lot of it I learned as what we used to call as a "technical marine". We used to call technical marines those who got tossed into an absolute cluster-mess (subtitute swear here) and had to learn and fight their way out to make it work as it should again with 99% of the time no experience.

My personality, I love math, and I love puzzles. IT work are puzzles to me so I loved consulting. It was fun job. What was the downside? The hours. I made okay money. I wont lie I made killer OT but meh regular pay because I started in IT doing it. (I worked some weeks 60 - 70 hour weeks and that makes bank fast in OT) Here is what the downsides were. I worked insane hours to the point where it stressed my marriage. Your concerns of eating healthy and working out isn't an issue. Every place has something healthy to eat in some fashion and I used to make my cublicle a gym late nights by doing pushups, dips, and pulls up to the desk. (Use what you have). I didn't see my daughter however grow up for the first 2 years. [What does this mean? My dad did sales for 25 years. I saw him one day every 2 weeks.. It didn't leave a positive impression on me. I love my father to death and understand why he did it but he missed out on a lot in my life to give me a better life where many days I wish he had been there rather than have more objects]

Things I loved about it as a whole was I learned more than I could ever imagine and learned what my passion was in IT in the 4 years I did it. The downsides were I sacrificed my family and life to do it. Would I do it again? Yes, I would go back as long as my family had a straight understanding of what our lives would be.

Now, I currently work at a Fortune 1000 company (corporate life). Yes I see the same people every day but that isn't so bad. You learn to grow a bond and learn from one another and form a trust. Most the places I been in corporate life people quit every 2 - 3 years if not less. You wont be with the same people that long. Even VPs, Directors, and such leave every 2 - 5 years to progress their career if they dont move up. I dont make the OT that I did in consulting but I make higher base pay and I get a bonus which is awesome. The other thing is yes, I dont get to touch all kinds of new equipment but instead I get to tune the equipment i have to perfection.

In other words you get called at 2 am because Router A goes down for no reason, this doesnt work, and that causes errors every night randomly. You perfect your environment and that is something I never got in consulting. Which made me learn to love architecture and also how to fine tune the skills I learned in CCNP. The calls become less and less.

Politics suck (Latin - Poli (Many) Tics (Blood sucking creatures)) . They exist in consulting and corporate. The thing is that it is just another form of a game. You learn how to play politics and it isn't that hard to do depending on your personality. Just another game but uses personality rather than technological intelligence.

Long story short is what will make you the happiest and get the most out of it. Are you looking for along career at xyz or you shooting to learn and move and most importantly is what does you family think? A job is a job. Your family is there to love and support you and everything you do affects them as well. Do what you heart feels is best.