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Comment by mgkimsal | Hacker News Reader

For those saying this doesn't happen any more... it still can, and does. However, the bigger issue most people face is finding those people who can actually get that sort of value from our knowledge/skills/etc.

I can give the same info to 2 companies, and one can make several hundred thousand dollars (in savings, new sales, etc). The other may not even be operating at a scale where they'll see $10k in increased value, even doing the 'same' thing the other company did.

Determining who those companies are, then connecting with the appropriate people, that is still the hard part. Meeting someone for coffee, giving them $15k in 'value' from a conversation... probably does happen now and then. I don't think many 'consulting engagements' actually happen at a coffee shop for an hour or two ending with a $15k check being handed over, however. (but maybe I'm too cynical and it does happen a lot)

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The weird thing with consulting (in my experience) is that a customer almost never knows how capable they are of effectively using a consultant's time and output.

"Okay, we signed a one month consulting engagement, starting Tuesday." Consultant(s) show up on Tuesday, no db's or credentials have been set up, everyone seems surprised they're there.

It consistently amazed me how much consultant time companies waste. When if all of this had been ready, I could have delivered much more value by the end date.

And then same problem with actually using any work produced.

I'd estimate the effective-ineffective customer split is somewhere around 30-70.

Why do you think this happens?

This has happened to me as well. It's because whoever hired the consultant hadn't forced anyone to do those tasks. It's their own fault really. I recently did some consulting for a Veeam configuration and it took a good 12 hours to get them to set me up a VPN and get access to all the servers I needed to review their setup. Should have been ready from the get-go.

Do you think they cared that you spent 12 hours on setup?

Of course not!

If they cared, it would be handled or they wouldn't use consultants.

I'd put a caveat on that where they care if it makes them look bad. If it's readily apparent that your patron dropped the ball in prep (either through incompetence or simply ignorance), then that can be a very bad round of the blame game.

This is where providing transparency and insight (in a "how can we fix this?" way) up to management can help engagements go more smoothly. If everyone was aware from the first that "that QWSV system access issue" has been impacting the projects for weeks, that's much better than "the project is weeks behind" being communicated up at a random status meeting.

As a consultant, point out to your sponsor that access is not ready and it will take a few days (of the one week contract). That's all you are required to do.

I wouldn't advise to participate in the blame game or to point fingers. You are not here to cause troubles and trouble is bad for repeat business.

P.S. Organizations are dysfunctional and the majority of consulting time is wasted. Lesson one of being a consultant is to live with it. :D

Agreed. If avoidable, never point fingers.

But if shit really hits the fan, at some point management will be asking "Who was supposed to do this?" And between that and the finger possibily being pointed at you... soft skills in handling politically tense situations well are useful.

My gut is it's a combination of things.

1) The decision to hire a consultant is (in most orgs) made at a level abstracted from day to day operations. So the person hiring you may simply not know what needs to be done.

2) The consultant's patron didn't take the time to get buy-in from all necessary stakeholders. This happens a lot at the VP level. You may have absolute commitment from your project's VP, but when you need resources from another part of the organization this turns into "what's that person's VP's relationship with my VP." Which may be great, or may be terrible. Navigating office politics to aid a project's success is 10-25% of being a successful consultant (result wise).

3) Inconvenience to ongoing work. I know if someone failed to loop me in and introduced a stranger to me on Tuesday, then asked me to do something that impacted my ability to do the work I already had scheduled, I wouldn't be overly happy.

4) Poor IAM (identity and access management) discipline and IT organizational structure. Consultant access and timelines are normally very different than new hires / "business as usual". The client may not be able (technically, process wise) to successfully complete an ad hoc request on an accelerated timescale.

People, and particularly people in large organizations, are often highly inefficient and disorganized, even when being that way costs their employer $$

Spot on. I've been in some situations where I've been 'hired', but the people I have to work with didn't know, or didn't want me there, or were generally antagonistic (usually they weren't consulted at all). Client may end up paying the bill, but they're getting so little value out of what I've done it's... painful. But it's often painful just to be working at some of those companies too (whether as insider or outsider).

How does it usually work out in the end? Does that hurt you in the sense that they'll blame you anyway, or help because you got more hours in.

Not a consultant but would list or report what time was spent on and they'd see line items like "waited on having accounts set up by IT for 2 days"

I don't always keep detailed time logs, but would take notes on situations like that, where there were significant delays caused by something outside my control. Not showing up on an invoice, but using those notes, I'd have a meeting with someone higher up (if there was no traction from trying to work with the people on the ground).

In most cases, those situations haven't worked out well, but it seems nothing does. There's sometimes some cult of personality - "do it Dave's way", etc. To which the logical question "if Dave's way is so good, why are things broken and people are bringing in outside help to fix things?" If you can't ask that sort of question and get a good feel up front, it may be worth skipping the project (unless they pay is really good - I've usually put up with more crap than I suggest other people do because I wanted/needed the money)

I've learned to always keep such logs, in some gigs even down to minutes.

They can come really handy if the fire brigade comes in when invoices start getting discussed.

Some projects I do want some product I don't. If I think at the very beginning that I have to do that, I'm already thinking I'm in a potentially bad/adversarial project.

Always good to keep notes on things like this (noted at the time each issue appears).

Always better that they never have to be formally given to the customer.

In the end you get paid as usual.

The company didn't get much value but they probably don't get much value out of their employees or anything they do. Doesn't matter, you are not here to change the world, they don't want you to change their world.

this is another reason weekly billing works in everyone’s favor. in the former ex, the customer would not lose with hourly billing. with weekly billing they become very motivated to resolve hurdles to your success

Depends. I’ve been in situations where we billed time that was essentially just waiting on the client to do something because our business is selling time and if we weren’t committed to that client’s project we would have started on a different client’s project. In these situations I would however look for _something_ useful to that client to have our team work on in the meantime, since billing for playing ping pong seems unethical.

100%. I work in consulting, and we spend a lot of time trying to find ways to do this better. But no amount of clearly documented prerequisites, checkpoint meetings to try to make sure they'll be ready before kickoff, or anything else consistently works. In my experience, we often lose 1+ week due to the customer not being ready even though they have acknowledged the prerequisites.

I think it comes down to priorities, and the fire in front of you always has higher priority. That means that onboarding and prereqs are not the priority until the consultants show up on-site and you are paying for them to find other things to do while waiting for the real project to start. Then it is a fire, and everyone starts moving with purpose.

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