Software developer -> Consultant

Depends on your definition of consultant really. I did about five years as a contracter working through my own limited company, this was in the run up to and immediate aftermath of Y2K. Back then it was definitely easy - and back then I didn't even own a suit, I'd just turn up, do a bit of work for six months, and scarper before it all fell over.

Contracting/consulting, is definitely still very worthwhile but unless you have both very good industry contacts and someone else able to exploit those contacts nearly full time then you're still pretty much tied to agencies finding you work. Gift of the gab, knowing people on the inside and being able to hit the ground running are all essential skills. You do need to be good in your field, but you don't necessarily need to be a god in your field, just so long as you can impress the permies (sorry, permanent staff, underpaid and ever so slightly jealous of your day rate) then you're good.

The worse thing about contracting is that you never take holidays, you're never sure if the gap between contracts will be 24 hours or three months, so you always just keep taking work whenever you get it.

Get a good accountant who knows about IR35 and go for it.

Originally Posted by timwilky

probably a pretty boy who looks good in a suit.

Oracle trained a number of their consultants on one of my projects. I was not happy to learn from a junior programmer that 2 of the guys Oracle had delivered to us had attended the same forms training course as he had.

To be fair, Oracle always train their guys on their own courses with Joe public. Why not? They're the best oracle trainers in the country and run their courses regularly- makes sense to do it 'in house' rather than run private courses. I've had Oracle trainers with 10+ years experience sat as punters on the same training course as me to get them up to speed on new features.

Tim's right about the public schoolboy thing though...

[timwilky]

Originally Posted by Ceri JC

To be fair, Oracle always train their guys on their own courses with Joe public. Why not? They're the best oracle trainers in the country and run their courses regularly- makes sense to do it 'in house' rather than run private courses. I've had Oracle trainers with 10+ years experience sat as punters on the same training course as me to get them up to speed on new features.

Tim's right about the public schoolboy thing though...

Yeah, but is a bit annoying that you are paying consultant rates for guys with the same experience/knowledge as your £20,000/year junior. Embarrassing to listen to their project manager giving them a rollicking and telling them that they are making elementary mistakes. Even he had not realised that they were on their first assignment after completing the training courses

Originally Posted by timwilky

Yeah, but is a bit annoying that you are paying consultant rates for guys with the same experience/knowledge as your ?20,000/year junior. Embarrassing to listen to their project manager giving them a rollicking and telling them that they are making elementary mistakes. Even he had not realised that they were on their first assignment after completing the training courses

Ah, I foolishly assumed they were up to speed on other facets of Oracle and had just been on that one particular training course, not that they were fresh faced n00bs. I'd be well hacked off with the situation you describe. My lot always send n00bs along to "shadow" people who've done it before (and check with the customer it's okay that they go along) and never charge the customer for their presence. Next time they go along and do it with the experienced person as backup, the following time with the experienced person available to give support via phone. Gets round the chicken and the egg situation of no experience, so no one wants to give them work, etc.