Lessons Learned – 10 years of running a software consultancy

dockyard.com

25 pointsilikepi3 comments

$200k revenue per employee are dismal numbers for a high-end US based consulting company of any sort. Is it just the problem with competing with India and Uzbekistan (where my developer is from)? My own consultancy of one does $500K/per employee and I have available time to get to $1 million. The Chasm Group told me a decade ago that it was easy for one of their consultants to bill $2 million.

I just can't imagine employing 100 developers who must get at least $150k in salary + $30k in benefits and charging so little for their time. Remind me not to get into softwre development.

It's not easy, margins are thin but it's the nature of the beast. We were able to maintain a 20% - 25% margin over the past few years.

Software consulting is a tough business.

Customers often want to pay some equivalent of per hour/week/sprint/month, with hard estimates where the work is very often difficult to estimate.

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