So you want to be a consultant? (2005)

I wish I could upvote this a hundred times. It's been a couple of years since I've consulted, but almost every piece of advice in this article is good. I take some issue with his finance section, but it looks like he's a set up as a Sole Proprietorship (it's a bad idea if you're consulting by the way; set up an LLC or a Corporation, and spend a few bucks on a CPA). It's risky to run all your…

The author, Steve Friedl (brother of Jeffrey Friedl, of regex fame[0]), is not only a wizard but also an inspiration; this article had a huge positive impact on me early in my career. Here are two other times it generated a number of comments on HN: 2008: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=411994 2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1430968 [0] http://regex.info

Consulting maxim: You must give the customer The Warm Fuzzy Feeling (tm). Consulting maxim: You are primarily in the customer service business, not the technical business. Here's the most counter-intuitive part of it -- or at least it took me the longest to figure out. The "aha" moment came after two or three years of full time consulting. So, you're missing the final deadline on the project. You're missing it bad, your customer needs it done like a week ago…

Crops up from time to time but quite dated. A consultant with an IP position of "by default the client owns everything"? Might work for a bill hourly "consultant" (freelancer or even casual employee) who never plans to niche or develop anything repeatable, but you'll never see any actual consultancies, Bain and ilk, using terms like that. This article's take is so far from best practice it kind of reveals how much easier previous generations had it - could do…