Web Developement Staffing?

[FFactory0x]

How well can one do in a Web Developement Consulting/Staffing position? The small company I am going to work for staffs projects on a grander scale which are extremely complex and expensive. Because of this, the developers we use or contract are usually in the top of thier field with years upon years of experience and specialized expertise. Some bill like 50-75 hour.

 

[Drakkon]

It can be a fairly lucrative venture (company i was at did 5 mil in 2 years with a staff of 5) but sooner or later the projects run out and you will find anyone will jump ship when they see it sinking.

 

[yllus]

Consulting is usually done in the $60 - $100/hour range, but your ability to get income in that role is dependent on your ability to consistently land new clients (or get regular work from existing ones).

As a regular salary job you'd probably drop to half of that pay. A salaried position would likely give you a much better opportunity to move up in the world, which should always be a goal. It's hard to get experience as a project manager in a consulting role.

 

[thirtythree]

Originally posted by: yllus
Consulting is usually done in the $60 - $100/hour range, but your ability to get income in that role is dependent on your ability to consistently land new clients (or get regular work from existing ones).

As a regular salary job you'd probably drop to half of that pay. A salaried position would likely give you a much better opportunity to move up in the world, which should always be a goal. It's hard to get experience as a project manager in a consulting role.

Says who?

 

[nakedfrog]

My old company billed between $85-150 per hour. I dunno how much this new one bills yet.

 

[mugs]

Highly paid consultants often suck at what they do.

I'm a full-time employee who replaced a highly paid consultant with years of experience. His code sucks. He has years of experience, but he used techniques that are way outdated. Cleaning up his code is a full time job.

Check out http://www.thedailywtf.com. They often have code snippets from highly paid consultants, and it blows my mind.

This is one of my favorites:
http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/The_Brillant_Paula_Bean.aspx

Edit: As you can see the domain name is actually worsethanfailure.com, but I think that's a terrible name and I refuse to use it until thedailywtf.com expires and I am forced to use it.

 

[Descartes]

I own a consulting firm with now about 15 active (>= 100% billable) consultants. I have been a consultant for about 7 years now, and it's been extremely kind to me. The sky is the limit, but there are a lot of additional demands that many people seem to be unable to meet, or at least unable to meet for an extended period of time:

1) Hours. Consultants are almost always the ones putting in the most hours. I've had entire years where I average 65+ hours a week. Sometimes I've worked 100 hour weeks. You'll work the hours of a doctor without the prestige to go along with it.

2) Complexity. Consultants are most often called to work on the more complex aspects of a project; if they had in-house talent, they'd use them. This often means working in areas where you're pioneering new ideas, and this can mean a lot of very extreme stress. I've worked on software to do everything from getting a Pocket PC to sync with SCO Unix to robotics, and all along the way the efforts were punctuated with moments of extreme stress. It happens.

3) Change. Consultants have to be flexible. You can't expect to have your 8-5 stability with an office that looks the same everyday. You might very well have that, but what will make you successful is a great ability to adapt; you have to anticipate change and embrace it.

That's it for now. Yes, it can be very lucrative. As someone else said, $50-75/hr is on the low end, but it depends on the type of work. Simple web work doesn't command a great rate, but top software architects/leads can easily command ~$100/hr or more. I can tell you that there's not a person on my staff that makes less than 6 figures.

Once you've been in consulting for a while, you'll find that it's not difficult to find new opportunities.

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: mugs
Highly paid consultants often suck at what they do.

I'm a full-time employee who replaced a highly paid consultant with years of experience. His code sucks. He has years of experience, but he used techniques that are way outdated. Cleaning up his code is a full time job.

Check out http://www.thedailywtf.com. They often have code snippets from highly paid consultants, and it blows my mind.

This is one of my favorites:
http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/The_Brillant_Paula_Bean.aspx

Edit: As you can see the domain name is actually worsethanfailure.com, but I think that's a terrible name and I refuse to use it until thedailywtf.com expires and I am forced to use it.

IMO, that's the fault of your management. Anyone can assume the role of consultant, but sometimes it just means someone that's unemployed and doesn't want to commit to a full-time job again. It's very easy to spot such people, and it's very easy to identify their strength in an interview as well. Your management/HR/whomever needs to learn how to evaluate people properly.

On the same note, I've had clients that bring on new people for completely unrelated reasons. At one large client, they brought on someone because he had a degree in physics. So? He cost them many hundreds of thousands of dollars in labor for all the problems he created. IT, in every capacity, is ultimately about being able to perform, and no amount of paper or experience can certify that.

We always make people solve problems during an interview. We have quite a number of simple but very telling questions that we ask. It helps determine how they organize thoughts (if at all), if they're timid, if they have any actual knowledge (sometimes you find someone incredibly efficient in thought but may be junior in ability; these are still good people, imo), etc.