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I've been on both sides of the table for both full-time and consultants. The first rule of humans is that they vary widely within categories (even if there are statistically significant differences in population average), so I urge people to take all of the anecdotes on this page with many grains of salt.

That said, here are some of my own, condensed across experiences:

- An executive wanted to use ML, couldn't get enough political capital to build a full-time team (and didn't have the knowledge to interview candidates anyway). A very small consulting firm, sourced from high personal trust networks, got an MVP going. That led to a FT team getting built. Code was a mess but started the flywheel and after several years everyone agrees it was a great ROI

- A large company had a tiny team using a technology that would be standard for FAANG but they had no support or training. Zero progress for about a year. Not important enough to throw huge money at but that link in the chain was becoming a bottleneck for the core product. A consultant came in explicitly as a multi-week trainer, and but the team just never got up to speed. Consultant's code examples grew until they were just direct bugfixes, and though nobody was happy, at least the crisis was resolved.

- A product finally reaches product market fit. Executives decide to hire only after the team is drowning in tech debt. But it has to be full time, and it has to be junior. It takes months, then requires training. Tech debt is twice as bad as the original crisis level when the new hire becomes value positive. For some bizarre reason he leaves after exactly 2 years.

Many consultants have a branding problem: Their biggest victories are fixing a disaster that their clients would rather not talk about publicly. Hard to put on a billboard, if you ever want work from that client again!

I nearly always got a job offer at the end of my contracts. I never accepted them because the terms were always poor, they couldn't match my rates. Not only that but being a contractor offers some distance from the internal politics.

Usually the internal staff knew the business well but were weak on the technology they were using. No amount of training seemed to fix that.

The only downside for me was the travel which was why I used the downtime between jobs to pivot to developing my own product.

> being a contractor offers some distance from the internal politics.

This is the best advantage. Being an "outsider" in the sense of having a special role (age, status, etc) can be a huge aid in avoiding bullshit.

ah man, this so much. I've had the honor to work with very good freelancers and couldn't imagine they would've stayed as long as they did if I wouldn't have firewalled them off. I hope someone will do the same to me when I venture into the freelance world.

B/c internal politics is where it constantly breaks for me. I can only play along for so long.

Regarding the last point: maybe you're based in the US and you know some rich employees there, but I don't know a single one where I live. Consulting is very hard - for the reasons you mention, and others - but in some places it has a much higher ceiling than being an employee.

For those who don't know - aerhardt lives in Spain.

The US seems pretty distinct in that you can be a laborer and have quite high incomes. It's not unheard of to see people in major cities within the US having 7-figure incomes and still being an individual contributor in their field. Most of the "consultants" I've heard of outside of the US are only "rich" in that their incomes are high for their region (charging HCOL US rates while living in a place that is LCOL) or they're not doing labor anymore because they own a consultancy firm. In the US, I think consulting isn't worth it unless you are extremely lucky. You're more likely to see high income by trying to join FAANG.

I've been one of these people with the 7-fig incomes in the US. Unsurprisingly, you'll see a lot of data points like mine here because HN is primarily focused on the US audience since YC is a US (primarily silicon valley) company.

> Nobody can just jump in and add value immediately.

That depends on the project and how much domain knowledge the consultant/contractor has. I've certainly been able to contribute on day 1 on several of my gigs.

> I’ve met rich employees, founders, but not so much independent consultants.

May depend on the market, and what you mean by 'rich'. Consultants rarely get stock, but they often make out far better than employees. I've met very few employees that got anywhere near 'rich' but consultants in London (for example) can certainly become quite wealthy.

> As someone that has been on the hiring side, I always prefer to build a full time team, even if that means paying for someone in my team to learn something new.

> The part that consultants don’t talk about is that you have to pay them to learn your code / company too. Nobody can just jump in and add value immediately. So you’re paying for onboarding hours, you’re paying for other employees to educate the consultant, and so on.

as somebody who's been on the team, i agree on this. in my previous job my skip-level management insisted on handing off some crucial infrastructure work to external consultants.

results:

1. we on the (internal) devops/sre team did not know how parts of our infrastructure worked

2. when changes were needed, the first lenghty step was to figure out what was built by the consultant, and how (the manager did not like to pay the extra hours, of course)

3. when help was needed to troubleshoot something along with developers, we (devops/sre) ended up playing the role of messenger, and stuff that could have take anything from 2 hours to two days ended up taking up to two weeks

It was a frustrating job, so of course some people (me included) ended up leaving the company.

I still see the value of consultants as people that can bring the knowledge you need when you need it. However if they're going to work on something long lived, the manager must be enforcing some proper knowledge transfer during the consultant employment and at the end of it.

> The part that consultants don’t talk about is that you have to pay them to learn your code / company too.

Why should they? That's a given. Of course they don't know your code. But it's likely they've seen more code than a typical employee and therefore have more experience to contribute. A consultant is a serior employee sans the commitment.

To your point about time, consultants don't need 1 v 1s, quarterly / annual reviews, etc.

I understand why your cynical. I've seen some half-ass'ed consultants as well. But I've seen just as many stale, complacent, and complicit employees.

> So you’re paying for onboarding hours, you’re paying for other employees to educate the consultant, and so on.

You also pay for the psychological friction and pressure that the consultant has to suffer from the fact that customer expects them to be geniuses with magical powers and the project managers planning the time line according to that.

If you're lucky and the consultant is experienced and has narrow scope, they can provide a lot of structure. They will also push back where applicable. If they have a wide scope and/or they don't have much experience, you are 100% correct that they have to figure it out like anyone else.

Hard to fault the customers for expecting that when that's how most consultants sell themselves, especially the shit ones.

take it easy, pal. consultants at least those in corps don't sell themselves they are being sold.

Yeah, it's tough to know who can actually deliver.

I know one guy (a consultant now) who I would trust to Navy SEALs parachute into almost any technical problem and come up with a real solution. Any part of the stack, from building a physical hardware test bench, debugging firmware compiler bugs, desktop software development, to a scalable web stack. These people exist, and they're not cheap.

However, it's worth noting that no one with skills like that works at Deloitte.

so, where do they work?

Small consultancies, usually self funded. They tend to eschew flash for substance. They're usually experts in their niche and stick with it.

Exactly. The guy I'm thinking of has a small number of very happy clients and he can choose who he wants to work with. It's funny that at the high end, it seems like things get easier. You don't have to haggle over an hour or two. You name your price and deliver super high value to people who are happy to pay.

It makes me think of "The Wolf" from Pulp Fiction.

"It's about thirty minutes away. I'll be there in ten."

Deloitte does not hire great people. They would have to pay them great and corporate managers would rather cut themselves an arm than paying well a good employee, it is a matter of principles.

> Nobody can just jump in and add value immediately.

Hmmm, I do this all the time. I've taken a bunch of bad data analytics, ML code from my clients and quickly given them insights that more than paid for my work.

A true expert can often come in and "fix" things quickly.

The problem is that in today’s climate, FTE is not really what it means. A FTE can also vanish at anytime, except it actually will ask you to pay more. And when a core tech leader left, there are also very few people can actually do any nontrivial code change to the repo.

It depends on the country, even region. For the US west coast, FTE has been gone for a long time. More than a generation.

FTEs get stock packages, ESPPs, 401ks, employee healthcare plans, and bonuses.

Consultants/Contractors do not.

This is why consultants/contractors have to charge higher hourly rates.

Sure, sure. I think the comment was meant as FTE as strong evidence of continuity. As an employer, you shouldn't rely on any one FTE employee staying indefinitely or giving you very long notice before leaving. You need to think about which employees have key knowledge, experience or skills and what it would mean for your group if they were to leave. As an employee you can't rely on the group existing indefinitely or keeping you on indefinitely. Keep your network, skills and resume in shape accordingly.

Consultants can get that if they work for a firm. I get a 401k (+match), employee healthcare plan, and bonuses, for example. The firm doesn't have any stock for the other though.

Better benefits than my previous FTE job.

You know the truism about how the best leads are often reluctant ones?

Feels like there's a parallel in consulting. The best ones will coach you to replace them with full-time hires. That being said, there are a lot of occasions where reality means that contractor may be the better option and a win.

(I've been on all sides of this)