Ask HN: how do you start high-tech consulting?
Let's say you have half a decade in the industry, you have done startups, and you want to keep fueling that addiction (and putting food on the table) by doing consulting on the side. Just enough to pay the bills, get good ideas from customers, refine one's chops and learn new tricks.
Where do you start? Are there perhaps good guides / resources /books for this?
How do you scope the technologies you'll be working with? Let's say you're familiar with Ruby and its ecosystem and you get a .NET potential contract, do you take it and very quickly learn on someone else's dime, even though you could have done the same 10x faster in your main stack/ecosystem?
2 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 17.2 ms ] thread- Be honest, listen and be dependable.
- Recommendations should be supportable and well-researched, otherwise they lose credibility.
- Don't just make changes for the sake of churn because it costs the client. Every suggestion that doesn't resonate well costs relationship currency.
Finally, don't learn on someone else's dime without making it clear what you can and can't do right now. It is clearly dishonest to say you're an expert of something if you are not.
I'd take that back a step further though, who are you expecting to consult with? Small companies? Ruby isn't very common in the world of enterprises.