Tbh this was kind of my conclusion as someone new to the field (23). In technical consulting, I feel like this phenomenon is even more pronounced since A. most technical consultants don’t get the time to become domain experts in their client’s business, B. most technical consultants aren’t entirely technical experts (consultants first, developers second), and C. consulting management has a vested interested in keeping things this way because they don’t have the tools to make things different. Maybe this doesn’t happen as much in boutique consulting firms but I wouldn’t know (hire me if that’s the case).

It’s given me an idea for a two-way portal where on one side, technical developers join the platform, self-organize into independent, transparent teams (not just developers but any role in development e.g. UX designer, project manager, etc) and on the other, companies join, post their potentially cross-functional work requests which are then distributed to the relevant teams. Another important concept is that these instances can be federated(?) so existing consulting firms can integrate this new kind of work allocation into their pipelines (only their consultants/their invited companies). There are a bunch other concepts I’ve thought through but that’s where I’m at now.

I feel that a system like this provides better value to a company vs. traditional consulting. First, the responsibility of team formation, networking, and allocation is moved to the service. These three things are hard for humans to do themselves and are responsible for so much consulting admin bloat/inefficiency and companies have no choice but to play. Second, it in theory improves the quality of work teams. With this focus on smaller, self-organized teams and a UX that allows for transparency I.e. companies can view teams, their members, and track record, companies know what they’ll get and not need to roll the dice to see what available resource gets assigned to them. Moreover, I’ve read that consultancies have a tendency to throw certain resources on a large work item where they exist to just to cash in budget and write bad code. This problem is completely mitigated with this approach. Finally, it’s a decentralized work environment (I think). Besides OSS, I don’t know what other platform allows for developers to have so much autonomy and self-determination. You could argue sites like Upwork or Freelancer but these platforms seem more focused on small, individual jobs rather than larger work items which justify having larger, more competent teams.