I also tried the strategy where I prioritized hitting all the metrics (which usually takes very little work relative to your job) and then did my job.
The second strategy led to better reviews, faster promotions, being more well liked by my boss, and an overall more pleasant work experience. I recommend the second strategy.
Of course, if you're contracting for a company that thinks in terms of "resources" that will trickle down into contractors, too. Sometimes team perks like the quarterly see-a-random-movie are "members-only", which doesn't feel great. But then, nobody complains much if you take three weeks off to go hiking.
Unless you're working for a small company directly for the owner you will be dealing with someone who has to convince their boss the project was a success or you were responsible for the failure. And you need to care about a lot of metrics and outcomes to make that you are successful as measured by those metrics, or that it doesn't look like you are responsible for the failure.
Just doing a great job doesn't cut it. No client ever really wants on day 90 what they signed up for on day 1. For most clients the person who is signing your checks, the person you work with on a day to day basis, and the people who will be using your apps will be different people. They will all have different ideas of what success and failure are, and they all have other people they are responsible to. And all of these tensions need to be managed successfully, and this involves a ton of BS that is completely unrelated to what a naïve engineer would describe as "delivering value".
In a normal job your boss is usually your friend, and looks bad if he throws you under the bus. This is not the same for a lot of consulting engagements where people are highly motived to blame their failures on you.
These are the only clients I take as a consultant. As an individual, you aren't going to be able to have that many clients at once; there's no reason, then, not to target the ones that make the job more satisfying. You do often wind up working for small (<50 employees) businesses, but at the same time, this also means your work has a greater chance of having a bigger positive impact across the board.
Everyone has their different wants, of course, and there are plenty of headaches that come from being a 1099 worker. But there's no reason it has to be a slog, either.
I've had customers that want every minute accounted for. I've been pressed to cut my rate for time spent in meetings. I've also had years where the invoices were paid and no questions were asked. I often developed good, personal relationships with clients, even the ones asking me to cut my rate for meetings.
It depends what the company is looking for. It depends on if you oversold yourself, or failed to manage expectations. It's easy to promise too much to get the job. It helps to work with people who are current/former engineers because they understand realities better. That's not always the case, but generally.
This is my point. If you think hitting some metrics on a annual review is hard because it's BS, managing the expectations of 4 different stakeholders is a whole different league of dealing with "BS".
Or to put it a different way, if you're entering consulting to escape politics you are in for a world of hurt.
*this mostly apply to the finding your own clients and running whole project version of consulting. The just showing up as an embedded 1099 worker by applying to or getting recommended to a job does involve a lot less politics.
I agree that being a 1099 hired gun can spare you from a lot of politics. It's nice to have a list of tasks the customer wants, bang them out, and walk away with a satisfied customer and a pile of money.
That said, I spent over half my career at two companies which did everything from staff augmentation to full product development. In my experience I did not detect a level of politics comparable to that at a large valley company. Granted, those companies were outside the valley and owned/run by a very smart, personable, experienced leader/engineer/salesman. It helps to do the investigative work up front and define success criteria in the initial statement of work. A lot of customers balk at paying for the upfront work, but it was a pretty firm requirement when you wanted us to take on a project. I was lucky to get hired into a design services firm early on and benefitted from the wisdom of a building full of independent contractors working for an engineering for hire company.
But, like I was getting at originally, I think it varies. There are some types of work that are hard to scope initially or where the customer exhibits child-like behavior. If you can, you can learn to identify those situations and avoid them. It helps when employment is tight and you can turn down work.
I've worked for two other consulting firms besides mine, one 150 people, one 36,000 and everyone I've talked to who managed client accounts in both those companies has similar experiences.
Sorry just incredibly curious how a company got around having to deal with politics, while doing consulting. Would make a huge difference to my current company.
I wasn't aware of any significant politics between us(account management, which I would say are sales, PMs, and the owner of the company) and the customers. There were political struggles inside big customers(i.e. DirecTV) when a VP would have to justify paying us, but that's not really something we got involved in. There were arguments over billing rates and such, but I wouldn't call that 'politics' it's just doing business. I consider 'politics' to be things like dog and pony shows, massaging peoples egos, playing one faction against each other, etc. There wasn't any of that.
I feel like this suggestion is akin to remodeling your house simply because the walls are the wrong paint color.
Of course the pay bump helps :)
This was far less true at smaller companies where the owners/founders were directly involved.
Are there large companies where it doesn't work like that?