How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

Re:How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-wee... by johngalt on Monday November 19, 2012 @04:14PM (#4806392)

In sysadmin work it's easier to make large consulting fees. The problem you have is that no one spends the money for good sysadmin architecture/infrastructure. So you can't sell "good practices". Instead just focus your work in loss aversion, not value creation. People will spend more for a emergency room doctor/hospital than a gym membership.

The keys are two simple things:

1. Be able to quickly fix expensive problems.

2. Make sure people with expensive problems know about you.

I've routinely seen multi-million dollar projects held up for months over things a skilled sysadmin can solve in a day. You just have to be at the receiving end of that 911 call, and not afraid to quote a big flat fee for problem resolution.

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Re:How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-wee... by samstave on Monday November 19, 2012 @05:14PM (#4806592)

>The problem you have is that no one spends the money for good sysadmin architecture/infrastructure.

I disagree with your statement. I am currently in Chicago just completing the infrastructure implementation for a large enterprise client where I specifically was brought on to do their tech infrastructure.

They pay a lot for this service.

Here is my scope of work:

Physical cable plant design

Physical network design (based on their corporate logical architecture)

Physical/Logical implementation (Procure, track, receive, rack, patch, power, config, test, coordinate, hand-off)

Turn up and test

Day-one operational support and hand-off.

Doing this for all their global offices.

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Re:How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-wee... by zenocon on Monday November 19, 2012 @06:10PM (#4806812)

I bet Team Romney / Orca would have paid handsomely for this at zero-hour, despite all the cost-cutting they did up front.

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Re:How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-wee... by ams6110 on Monday November 19, 2012 @11:33PM (#4807747)

Yeah but some things aren't possible. A poorly architected system can't be fixed in an hour, or a day, in most cases.

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