Ask HN: What if I suck at consulting? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What if I suck at consulting?

20 pointsphamilton23 comments

I'm a undergrad always looking to earn some extra money on the side. I often come across potential consulting jobs, but they usually are outside the scope of things I've done before. My question (and fear) is this:

What happens if I deliver a crappy product?

I understand I miss out on future work with said client. Beyond that, what are the consequences?

There may not be very big consequences. New clients = new start. Over time I figure it out. Yet I still feel like it's a risk to take on a project that I might not be able to handle. I like to take pride in my work. What are some experiences you've had with delivering a half-baked product?

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The main consequences are if that most of your new work will probably come from references through past clients, so if you regularly screw up, you probably won't be able to generate as much work.

However, I think you're asking the wrong question. Don't ask "What happens if I deliver a crappy product?"

Instead, ask "How can I make absolutely certain that I will deliver a product that the client is pleased about?"

You won't get it right all the time, especially not at the beginning, but you'll find that in general that's most to do with your ability to manage client expectations than with your coding skills, so don't worry about delivering a crappy product - instead worry about managing client expectations so they're never negatively surprised by what you deliver.

> worry about managing client expectations so they're never negatively surprised by what you deliver.

In short (to be blunt): Don't promise what you can't deliver.

Well, it's more subtle than that. Even if you never over-promise, your client could still get the wrong idea. The hard work in consulting often not in actually doing the work, but in finding the leads, turning them into clients, and then managing the process so that the client ends up happy at the end of it.

Normally I'd agree with this, but in the context of the OP's worries, I'd say this is the exact sentiment (perhaps taken too literally) that is paralyzing them with fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

perhaps a better takeaway is to learn to deliver what you promise (and learn to promise what you know you can learn to deliver).

Either way, you can often land the project (at a slightly lower rate) by being upfront with the client about the fact that it will be a learning process for you. Which comes full circle to properly managing client expectations.

Absolutely.

I love to tell people that the hardest parts about writing software have nothing to do with code. It all has to do with communication.

You have to find the middle ground between only doing stuff you are absolutely sure you can deliver excellently because you've already done that kind of work before (which for all of us is always going to be small) vs taking stupid wild risks with technologies and areas you are not familiar with.

Also, there will always be risk that you will deliver a crappy product because your client did something that made it that way (eg "but we MUST have .Net ASP on the front end talking to a PHP back-end and ONLY using flatfiles") - that's a constant regardless of your degree of familiarity with a given technology or problem space (you can mitigate that in other ways but that's beyond scope here I think).

Take stock of what it is that you are comfortable working on:

* Technologies you have clearly demonstrable capabilities

* Problem spaces you have worked in before

* Areas you have researched

Now extrapolate by one degree - eg so if you are familiar working with Hadoop you probably could set up and use Cassandra if you needed to. But to say you have experience setting up a massively scaled and redundant data warehousing operation would be too far.

If you have built mainly consumer focused apps you might feel comfortable trying a social network app, but jumping into financial software might be too far.

etc.

Now with the above market clearly the technologies and spaces you have experience in and don't be afraid to take on jobs that exist in the "1 degree apart" space - but be cautious of anything that falls outside of that.

Sorry if this is a long windy reply - I've spent the last 5 years consulting and the above is my basic methodology for this.

I also forgot to mention, another great way to gain confidence in new areas is to experiment and R&D in your own time.

Pick projects that will leave you with a clearly demonstrable experience of a marketable technology (eg Node.JS is cool but difficult to find wide market interest at this time).

But only do this if you have time between gigs - always take a gig over a project because you will always gain some kind of experience from any gig, in addition to getting paid.

You could start with some 'safe' low-bar jobs to get a feel for it, like eLance or similar (back in the day I did some eye-opening work for clients through rentacoder and a British freelancing site). The experience may be worth more to you than the abysmal pay.

You could also try structuring your work and charging methods so you have a week or two of lower-paid 'research' at the start of the job to really figure out if you can execute or if it's something you should leave well alone. Once you have a client waiting and are in the swing of things, though, the ability to execute is somehow higher :)

Then you will be like 80% of the people delivering products out there, that doesn't make it good or acceptable, but knowing this should help take some of the pressure off of you.

The key with consulting is to always communicate with your client, let them know where you are and how much more work you think you have. Be honest about how you feel about the quality of it as well, a good client with work with you and help you deliver a great product.

If you never attempt things outside the scope of things you've done before, you will never do anything - its the definition of a self fulfilling prophecy.

Do research, learn, talk to people who have done it before, manage client expectations. Best of luck -

Never ever deliver a crappy product. If you're in the weeds you're going to know it. Raise the issue early and ask for help. If you can't complete the project that sucks for your client, but its recoverable. If you continue to flail for weeks and finally deliver half ass crap without a warning then you have failed miserably.

So what's the route to take when I realize i'm in over my head? Apologize, refund the money and move on? Hire someone to help me finish it?

Apologize, refund the money and move on? Hire someone to help me finish it?

A third alternative is to reduce the scope to something you can finish. 37signals advocates compromising on scope but never on deadline, and I agree.

Any of those options would be fine. What's important is that you keep the client in the loop so that they can find another developer if they need to, before the project is 2 months late with no end in sight.

As a corollary, be upfront about your skillset, and don't take jobs you know you can't finish. As with anything, lying will bite you in the ass.

One thing I've done is to deliver a scaled back prototype to let the client play with. It lets me explore the technically difficult areas, show the customer something interesting and get a feel for what I can do (and at what speed).

This lets me give a more realistic estimate for completion and cost. If the customer wants too much more or doesn't like my cost estimate, we're both better off knowing earlier than later.

So here's the deal - you're not likely getting contracts to do banking systems. I'm guessing things like websites and maybe mobile apps etc.

The thing is if you're a bit smart and know how to code, there's very little you probably can't do. The question is how long will it take you to figure out how to do it. You will much more likely be wondering whether you are doing it right.

So now its a question usually of scheduling. When you start getting in doubt about your ability to deliver on time, thats the time to raise your concerns. Tell them you might need to bring someone else on, maybe you can do this on budget or maybe you might have to eat some hours for free. Again its not perfect but if I hired someone like you and they went that route - I'm pretty okay with that, and I'm going to respect your honesty. Also if you're setting schedule make sure you build some buffer time in, and try to avoid projects with super hard and fast delivery dates.

Some people may flip out, but if you manage to keep them as close to on time and on budget as possible thats okay.

Treat it like dating. (From a guy's POV:) Some girls you know you don't want to deal with, so you don't date them. Some girls are interesting, but you've never dated them before, so if you're feeling risky or ambitious, you try and see what happens. Some you know are your type, so you actively pursue them, but even then, they might not work out until you really get to know them.

Bad Consequences? You can get a reputation of being promiscuous (or worse) if you handle things poorly. People can find out you're not a good kisser, you're not good in bed, you're unreliable, you're cheap, etc. Or they can find out that you're responsible, you try hard, you're willing to give it all you got, you're romantic, etc.

The only risk I see is "is this girl worth my time to pursue?" There are 6 billion people in the world and only one you. Your time is limited, potential clients are not.

I recommend shying away from things that are not in your comfort zone - or somehow progressing you.

For example, I was requested to quote for a project that had to use Joomla for a certain type of website (well, it was Facebook and a document management system). That was enough to ring alarm bells and steer away from it.

Pretty much the worst that can happen is you won't get paid, and those clients will tell all their friends not to hire you. Which is.. not that awful.

But if you try at all, you might find that in the real world the bar is actually pretty low. Just being able to deliver anything at all is the first step!

Saying "Yes" is easy. Saying "No" is hard.

You won't be able to say "No" until you've said "Yes" and failed.

If you are able to complete the project and there are problems with it in the future, you may just be giving yourself future work when the client needs those bugs fixed.

“You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." -Wayne Gretzky

Just try it, if you suck, move on, or try to improve, but you'll never know otherwise.

The word you're looking for is "contracting".

I think most consulting openings are political in nature.

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