Ask HN: How is software consulting different than working on an internal team?

Posted by y1y1 on Friday June 24, 2016 @02:35PM
from the ask-hn dept.

I have been a web engineer for a while. In my early days I did some work at agencies, mostly on ad work. I didn't care for the fact that everything was rushed out, tracking billable hours and not being able to iterate and grow software over time.

I've spent the better part of the last decade working on-staff building internal projects, and have been frustrated by the bureaucratic slowness and how behind on technologies we are due to brownfield projects. Those seem to be mostly the exact opposite problems I had early on, although I absolutely do not miss tracking billable hours.

I am considering switching employers and wanted to know how life at a developers-for-hire company is. I would especially like to hear it contrasted with being on a software team at a medium-large corporation.

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Re:Ask HN: How is software consulting different than working... by kohanz on Friday June 24, 2016 @07:51PM (#11974406)

I've worked in both of those situations, but to be completely honest, I believe the variance in experiences introduced by different company cultures, leadership, team members, etc. is so much greater than any systemic effects from the nature of the company's business (e.g. product company vs. consultancy) that it would be pointless and misleading to generalize about one over the other. You can have both product companies and consultancies that will be enjoyable places to work at and it depends much more in the culture and leadership put in place by the decision-makers than whatever is driving the bottom line.

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Re:Ask HN: How is software consulting different than working... by rajanchandi on Saturday June 25, 2016 @01:53PM (#11977219)

It entirely depends on yourself and the type of work you can get. If you're an extroverted type, working in consulting may be a good experience. If you're highly creative but introverted type, you may not enjoy dealing with your client as much. If you're service oriented, you'd enjoy working with a client. If you're product oriented, you may prefer working on purely software/tech side of things!

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