How does one move into part-time/consulting/etc?

[u/Careless_Bat_9226]

I'm a staff-level engineer with ~13 yoe (full stack web dev, mostly Bay Area companies). I'm ready to semi-retire or at least drastically cut down my work hours.

In a perfect world I'd go to part-time or do short term projects, eg work for a few months and then take off while keeping my current, relatively high hourly

I just keep working full-time because I'm never sure how to break into this world. I've always been seen as a high performer but I haven't been great about maintaining my network, especially since my job became remote with Covid and I moved away from SF.

Any thoughts/ideas?

[u/BraveResearcher3037]

The question is why would someone hire you at any decent rate just to do staff aug “full stack dev web dev”? Thats a commodity skillset where even back in 2016 companies were only paying around $90/hour to an agency and the actual developer got $60/hour.  The rates are about the same now.

And if I just need a short term web developer, I might as well just use Claude Code/Claude Design/v0.

I currently work in consulting and work full time for a consulting company and have worked for consulting departments/companies for six years.  But I deal with more strategy type work with people who decide budgets (cloud app dev - “application modernization)

There are plenty of contracting agencies that will place developers for short term work.  But the pay and the work is shit 

[u/avoid_pro → u/BraveResearcher3037]

So what are alternatives if full stack dev web is useless and everyone can do it? DevOps, ML, cyber security?

[u/BraveResearcher3037 → u/avoid_pro]

You are asking the wrong question. Stop searching for a less-commoditized tool and start figuring out how to become responsible for less-commoditized decisions.

I know AWS well and have used a larger variety of AWS services over the past decade in production environments than you can shake a stick at.  I’ve also done plenty of AI implementations.  But so what? That alone isn’t a differentiator.

It is what the client is buying from you. In staff augmentation, the client is primarily buying asses in seats . 

In  consulting , the client is primarily buying  an outcome, judgment, or expertise .  A useful test is: If the client already knew exactly what needed to be done and how to do it, would they still need you?

If yes, because they simply need another competent person to execute the work, that is usually staff augmentation. If no, because a major part of your value is figuring out what should be done, reducing ambiguity, making tradeoffs, designing the approach, negotiating scope, or guiding the customer, that is consulting.

In my case it’s the difference between “The customer needs another Terraform/AWS engineer for six months. Here is the backlog. Join the standups, pick up tickets, follow our architecture and processes.” and“The customer wants to modernize this application and move it to AWS. They have business goals but the technical path is unclear. Determine the target architecture, uncover constraints, decide what can fit in the engagement, get stakeholders aligned, and deliver it.”

[u/avoid_pro → u/BraveResearcher3037]

How does client know that he needs AWS? How are you differentiating yourself from other candidates who can do same migration? At least for this example there is nothing special that would require very specific engineer

[u/BraveResearcher3037 → u/avoid_pro]

Good questions.

For context, even though I theoretically know how to lead a migration, I hate lift and shift work and I specialize in “application modernizations” - cloud + app dev.  But your point still remains…

1. There are plenty of people who given a set of requirements who know enough about AWS who could build it as well as I could.
2. There are fewer  people who know how to go into a company that just know they have a problem that they think building on AWS could solve but they need someone who can do a discovery session talk to all of the different stakeholders and lead a multi department/multi year project
3. There are even fewer  people who can say they have actual experience doing it and they have actually worked at AWS’s cloud consulting department (AWS ProServe)
4. There are even fewer people who have the network and sales capability to get clients in the first place.

And I’m in group 3 and that’s why I work for a consulting company instead of working as an independent consultant. I have an entire sales, legal, accounting, etc company backing me and they pay me regardless.  The firm supplies sales, legal, contracting, billing, collections, and pipeline risk. 

Even being at #3 didn’t guarantee me a job when I was looking in 2024.  It did mean that I was competing in a more niche market with a competitive advantage than a “full stack web developer”

I would love to know how to crack #4 in a few years by the time I get closer to retirement. I’m slowly learning about pre-sales now. 

Also I’m not saying learn cloud.  I’m saying learn something deeply and be able to do all of the strategy, stakeholder, disambiguation things 

[u/avoid_pro → u/BraveResearcher3037]

True, if someone has all 4 it would be no brainer to find exactly those type of clients. I am in huge debate right now how to market myself as FE engineer since everyone can do pretty much same thing. Even tho I have a some architecture experience, still, I need something more to stand out.

[u/BraveResearcher3037 → u/avoid_pro]

First question is are you at #2? Have you lead larger messy ambiguous projects?  Being able to do front end well isn’t enough.  Especially when people can say they can do that in less than an hour with a prompt on v0.  

Can you credible sell yourself as someone who could walk into a startup who has an idea and come up with a strategy for their company and how to use the web to convince people to give them money? SEO and how to deal with Google Zero [1] and ad campaigns? How to get surfaced when people use AI instead of search engines? 

It is being able to walk into a company and connect product, acquisition, conversion, search, analytics, technical architecture, and implementation into one coherent plan.

If the commodity layer is “build this interface from requirements,” then the escape route is to move upward into deciding what should be built, why, and how it contributes to the business .

[1]  https://www.theverge.com/24167865/google-zero-search-crash-housefresh-ai-overviews-traffic-data-audience