[thelist] client works sheets - good or bad or just homogeneity?

Martin Burns martin at easyweb.co.uk
Mon Aug 6 09:13:04 CDT 2007


On Mon, 6 Aug 2007 14:24:25 +0100, "Alex Beston"  wrote:

> ok. on the right foot now - a-ha ... the real world, not the WWW.
> suits n stuff, closed doors, cars, insurance, indemnities, lawyers,
> the white collar world, the list is endless. I really ought to join in
> one day. where should I start?
> 
> /rhetorical

Well in my case, I got into it by moving out of freelancing, into
contracting. *Much* more lucrative, as you tend to be there for
3 - 6 months solid, even if you take a hit on your rate. And
you get introduced to lots of good (and sometimes bad!) practises.

And if you're good, you get kept on, and/or recommended within
the customer organisation.

The project I'm working on just now has actually taken on an
evolter as a contractor; because she's:

a) Really good at what she does
b) very professional and presentable within the customer's 
   environment (not as straight laced as you'd think, but still
   not dressing as if we're all in Junior High </Studio 60> )

she's been extended at a pretty decent rate. Mind you, it'll be
one hell of a thing to have on the CV...

> ok. *****, thats alot of work for £500.

It is, and of course the amount of time you spend thinking about
each element will be much less at that kind of priceband. But
this level of professionalism is how you break out of it, by
being credible with clients who can drop $50k on a project and
more. You start learning to be able to adapt your language to
the clients' and getting higher up the food-chain:
http://www.itmatters.com.ph/openhouse.php?id=071207
(SOA specific, but a lot of it could equally apply to any
technology sales environment)

And once you're breaking into that level of work, you're looking
at working on sites that *do* stuff, rather than just sit there.
And that's where it starts getting fun - each project is
necessarily bespoke. Someone did a study of the mindset of
people in the Consulting profession - low boredom threshold
was pretty common.

Cheers
Martin

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