Hacker News Reader

Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

>>Short version: Consultants tell the client what to do. Contractors are brought on to do what they're told.

My company does both of these (we're in tech), and I can authoritatively tell you that in the overwhelming majority of engagements this is a distinction without a difference. Over the past five years I haven't had a single client who just had me "tell them what to do". Typically, if we're being brought in, the expectation is that we will not only identify what needs to be done to solve the problem, but that we will also do it ourselves.

View on HN

> Over the past five years I haven't had a single client who just had me "tell them what to do"

Okay, great: that means you're a contractor. In the past five years, all of my clients have told me, "Tell me what to do." (I'm a consultant.)

I mean they don’t just have us tell them what to do, and then we go our separate ways after that.

Rather, after we tell them what they should do, 99% of the time they respond with “okay that makes sense, can you give us an estimate for how much it would cost to have you guys do that? Because we don’t have the inhouse expertise for it”

This is really going to depend on the area an engagement.

Sometimes the answer to that follow up question would/should be: we don't do that, but we can help you evaluate and choose a vendor that does.

In those situations, we hire the other vendor as a subcontractor, rather than expecting the client to evaluate and establish a relationship with a brand new vendor.

It's not always practical to do that. For example you can have situations where you are advising on vendors who are 10x - 100x the size of your company, and would not accept a subcontract arrangement. Clients like the fact that you can represent their interests purely.

I'm sure what you describe fits your firm's experience, but it isn't indicative of the range of consulting experience.

Just to clarify, do you tell them what needs to be done and do it, or only tell them what to do?

> Just to clarify, do you tell them what needs to be done and do it, or only tell them what to do?

I only tell them what to do. You can check out my site via my bio to learn more - I'm really explicit about that in my sample deliverables. My consulting engagements are purely read-only - I don't make any changes to their environments whatsoever.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com