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0 pointspault7y ago0 comments

Even in this thread I see a lot of people conflating consulting with working as a highly paid contractor. I accidentally fell into contracting two years ago when the company I was working for closed unexpectedly. I doubled my yearly income, but I'm still an employee in practice. I will say though, if you can make the leap to contracting with large companies, the pay is insane. I'm currently making about $60k/year over the highest paid salary jobs I could get anywhere else here in Austin, TX. I have to buy my own insurance, but I'm single and childless so it's not a huge deal for me.

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tptacek7y ago· 2 in thread

The distinction between "consulting" and "freelancing" and "contracting" is pretty much fictitious; it's like the consulting version of the "is it really a startup?" game.

kasey_junk7y ago

Clearly staff augmentation has different tasks than expert consulting. How do you signal which you want/do?

tptacek7y ago

Consultancies take staff-aug projects (and also sometimes turn them down). It's part of the dealflow.

The easiest way to signal that you don't want a staff-aug gig is to say "no" when you're offered a staff-aug gig. Advanced: counterpropose with a project proposal.

People overthink this stuff, I think.

The one important thing to know is that it's important to be "available"; even if you're not going to pick up the staff-aug gigs, it's probably best to entertain them (and, even more advanced: refer them out to other people), because you can only say "no" 1-2 times before people will stop asking you for anything.

I don't believe "expert consulting", as apart from "freelancing" or "contracting", is a real thing in our industry.

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hardwaresofton7y ago· 1 in thread

I'm really curious about this -- I actually left Austin to move abroad a while ago, and do contracting (which I erroneously call consulting, though I do also consult). While I plan to return to the US I never considered returning and continuing contracting.

Based on what you're saying I'd expect that yearly base salary to be over 200k (based on what it was like in Austin years ago), would you mind sharing how you've found good and/or consistent clients which pay you at that rate? Is it mostly bigger companies? Smaller startups? Multiple contracts at a time?

paultOP7y ago

Yes, around $220k this year. I got lucky through a personal referral to a staffing agency, found out how much another team member was making, and asked for that amount. I'm working with a local recruiter who sources talent for some of the bigger companies operating here. My email address is in my profile if you want to connect.

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