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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

Daedtech has an excellent article

https://daedtech.com/software-consulting/

If you live in a major metropolitan area almost anywhere in the US, and your skillset is in tune with the market, you should be able to find some W2 or 1099 contract quite easily through local recruiters. Yeah they will take their cut, but you still should be able to negotiate close to market value. You will definitely get paid more than using something like Upwork.

I’ve been building up a curated list of local third party recruiters for years. I always engage with them when they reach out to me.

Even though they call the above “consulting”, it’s actually closer to just freelancing.

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Read every single article on daedtech.com related to software consulting (and maybe some that aren't) -- the amount of insight contained inside those articles for free is insane.

99% of the people who think they are doing consulting (me included) are not doing consulting. If you're getting paid to write software, you're not a consultant, you're a freelancer/service provider. Let those words shake you then read all the writing on daedtech.com to learn why and see if you disagree (you won't).

Even in this thread I see a lot of people conflating consulting with working as a highly paid contractor. I accidentally fell into contracting two years ago when the company I was working for closed unexpectedly. I doubled my yearly income, but I'm still an employee in practice. I will say though, if you can make the leap to contracting with large companies, the pay is insane. I'm currently making about $60k/year over the highest paid salary jobs I could get anywhere else here in Austin, TX. I have to buy my own insurance, but I'm single and childless so it's not a huge deal for me.

The distinction between "consulting" and "freelancing" and "contracting" is pretty much fictitious; it's like the consulting version of the "is it really a startup?" game.

Clearly staff augmentation has different tasks than expert consulting. How do you signal which you want/do?

Consultancies take staff-aug projects (and also sometimes turn them down). It's part of the dealflow.

The easiest way to signal that you don't want a staff-aug gig is to say "no" when you're offered a staff-aug gig. Advanced: counterpropose with a project proposal.

People overthink this stuff, I think.

The one important thing to know is that it's important to be "available"; even if you're not going to pick up the staff-aug gigs, it's probably best to entertain them (and, even more advanced: refer them out to other people), because you can only say "no" 1-2 times before people will stop asking you for anything.

I don't believe "expert consulting", as apart from "freelancing" or "contracting", is a real thing in our industry.

Can you please elaborate on "I don't believe "expert consulting", as apart from "freelancing" or "contracting", is a real thing in our industry."?

Many in this topic wrote about being a real consultant rather then a contractor in software industry. By that they mean, as I see, providing advice, recommendation to clients.

I know you are very experienced in this area, so you mean one cannot be a pure consultant in software?

I'm really curious about this -- I actually left Austin to move abroad a while ago, and do contracting (which I erroneously call consulting, though I do also consult). While I plan to return to the US I never considered returning and continuing contracting.

Based on what you're saying I'd expect that yearly base salary to be over 200k (based on what it was like in Austin years ago), would you mind sharing how you've found good and/or consistent clients which pay you at that rate? Is it mostly bigger companies? Smaller startups? Multiple contracts at a time?

Yes, around $220k this year. I got lucky through a personal referral to a staffing agency, found out how much another team member was making, and asked for that amount. I'm working with a local recruiter who sources talent for some of the bigger companies operating here. My email address is in my profile if you want to connect.

> If you're getting paid to write software, you're not a consultant, you're a freelancer/service provider.

That's by definition:

consult verb (used with object): to get information or advice from a person, book, etc. with special knowledge on a particular subject

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/consult

Yeah but it gives people a warm and fuzzy. Just like companies hiring “senior software engineers with at least three years of experience”.

Writing software is an act of labor, not getting information or advice.

That definition just proves his point. Or am I missing something?

You're right that it's very obviously in the definition of the rowds and should be this simple to classify "software consultancy" by definition, but that's not what's out there in practice.

How people use (in this case misuse) the term leads to confusion and the linked article (and the other related ones) starts with this fact as the baseline (we're in agreement) and goes into how/why software shops are doing it wrong/mislabeling themselves, and how you can stop doing that. It seems to be exactly what OP is looking for.

I don't see anything in the OP asking for an extended semantic debate about the meaning of the word "consultant" or any problem any consultant has that could be solved by it.

Are you perhaps thinking about the distinction between project-based work and staff aug? Staff-aug consulting does essentially make you an effective "employee", just paid differently and with a different level of commitment.

His book is excellent as well.

The technical term for the arrangement you're talking about is subcontracting. Subcontracting is not much better than using contracting sites; you can make it work as backfill with partners you trust, but be careful not to fill your schedule with it.

That's a really cool article. Are there any lists of incubators that are open to the "rent-a-CTO" idea? It's really an interesting way to get your foot in the door.

Excellent tips. Bookmarking your blog for future reading.

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