If you are “consulting” on an hourly rate, you’re doing it wrong. The company and I get paid for delivering projects not the number of hours we work. A smaller project may just say they have me for 6 weeks with known deliverable. I’m rarely working 40 hours a week.

When I did do one short term project independently, I gave them the amount I was going to charge for the project based on the requirements.

All consulting companies - including the division at AWS - always eventually expand to the staff augmentation model where you assign warm bodies and the client assigns the work. I have always refused to touch that kind of work with a ten foot pole.

All of my consulting work has been working full time and salaries for either the consulting division of AWS where I got the same structured 4 year base + RSUs as every other employee or now making the same amount (with a lot less stress and better benefits) in cash.

I’m working much less now than I ever have in my life partially because I’m getting paid for my expertise and not for how much code I can pump out.