Is this remote? I've considered consulting in the past, but most positions require considerable amounts of travel.

> It can be PAINFUL

Can you provide some examples?

I've had 100% on-site. I've had one where they let me do remote 2 days a week. My current company (I went FTE) allows full time remote for Consultants. You just have to look harder to find these.

As a consultant, you aren't a stakeholder technically. You are a coder-for-hire. You aren't typically going to maintain the application so you're more of an advisor. This is awesome because as an advisor, you can make some great suggestions, but in the end you do it how they tell you to or you find another gig. What I've found is, if they don't listen to me or accept input for change I'm not interested. Those are typically painful but short consultancies. If they do take advice, then I frequently convert to see the project all the way through.

I've had situations where I can't wait for the contract to be over, and as you've guessed ones that are awesome and I convert over, or extend to stay on longer.

You can also get into consulting to the point that you're part of a team which is hired to build something for the company. These can be awesome because then you're a stakeholder and yet free of some of the internal politics of a company.

Anyway, I love consulting, but I also love the stability of FTE. I've found that consulting has been a great way for me to find FTE opportunities that I prefer over just interviewing.

EDIT: The most pain happens when the consultancy you're working with doesn't communicate well with the client, so you get put in the middle and have to server two bosses who are in opposition. The best cases you have one clear boss, but another clear tasking manager at the client. In these cases positive feedback flows to your manager and negative feedback should be minimal but direct.

Thanks for taking the time to answer. Sounds like it's been mostly a medium for finding desirable FTE positions for you. I think I just have the wrong idea of consulting. I've thought of it as guiding clients towards a specific tech stack and not so much writing code, but doesn't seem like that's a realistic view of it judging by what you've told me.

I mean that can totally be what consulting is. The nice thing about consulting is when you're doing your own business with it, it is what you want it to be. If listened to people who do this kind of consulting but you've got to be pretty setup to get to this point.