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Comment by jtbigwoo | Hacker News Reader

I really wish everybody who was a freelancer had a chance to work for six months in a big-time consulting firm (e.g. Computer Science Corp, Accenture, Sapient, or IBM Global Services). Get an up-close look at how much companies will pay for developers, project managers, and designers. Medium-sized or larger companies have no problem paying $175+ per hour for average developers who have the right experience. If you're any good, you'll soon see that a big company will pay $200+/hour for you.

Sure, there's extra overhead involved in those big firms, but there's no way you'll come out of that experience thinking you're only worth $50/hour.

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Small companies will, too. Just not the sort of small companies who look for talent on Freelancer boards. They're looking for bargains or non-critical work, in my experience, and the majority of them - if they get past the sticker shock - are not pleasant to work with.

How else do you find the right sort of companies? (genuinely curious)

In short, you painstakingly build a network over time. Eventually you get to the point where good companies find you. There's no definitive way to do this and that's what makes running a successful consulting company difficult. In my experiences, all of the consultants that I know (including myself) who are going strong, sort of fell into consulting after working a long time in their industries. If you are young, I would suggest working for a company in your industry first and gain experience/contacts before setting out to be an independent consultant.

Networking.

Marketing (ebooks, blogging, tweeting, open source).

Connecting people who can do nothing for you because you want to do a good thing (aka karma). (I wrote a post about 'being an informal recruiter': http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/1728 )

I've considered, but when Accenture call a Front-End Developer role "Modern Web Developer", I am wondering how far behind are they.

Here's a quick overview of my experience in a big consulting company:

-Don't expect to work on cutting-edge stuff. They're the conservative choice for conservative clients.

-Most consulting companies are "up or out". If you're not on the partner track you're an interchangeable cog.

-Most of the folks who make partner are project managers, business analysts, and rainmakers. Coding skills can get you on good projects, but advancement is about how many other people you can leverage. The techies that make partner are generally "architects" and "practice leads" who can lead a bunch of junior people.

-Work/life balance isn't a thing that exists at a lot of big consulting firms.

-You will often be forced to become an instant expert next project. Most big consultancies are not afraid to invest in training, but it's also up to you to fake it for a while until you know it.

-You can learn a ton of non-technical skills from the partners. These people are often at handling people, delivering bad news, making presentations, gathering input from others, etc. There's a reason they make tons of money and it's not because they're 10x programmers.

I can't say I enjoyed my time there, but it was an educational experience really helped my career.

right, but remember what the companies are mostly paying for is the all the resources and reassurances of an IBM, not for the particular developer they are using to get the work done.

No, they're really not. Small companies also charge this rate.

This.

I own a small consulting and training shop focusing on a particular "enterprise" product that's used by more companies than I can count, big or little. We charge a premium rate per hour for consulting, and a premium per-day rate for training. Been doing it for over a decade now. Companies that would hire out to Accenture or Avenade or name-your-consulting-firm-here would, in our experience, much prefer to pay someone they can speak to about their skills and work without a technical sales rep getting in the way. It's not even that tough to get into a client's "preferred vendor" list, if they have one.

The combination of humble confidence and actually knowing your shit is a potent one.

Edit: typo

Not disagreeing with you, but I would add, "Small established companies" can charge these rates. No one is going to pay some unknown person/company $200/hr without an established track record.

Yes they will, because that is the rate they're expecting. If you charge a lot less, they'll grin all the way to the bank.

Every other industry, new haulage firm? They charge slightly less than other ones maybe.

Programmers? Charge 20%. I've done it! We're idiots.

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