August 8, 2012 at 11:08 am
Since graduating from University 22 years ago, I have always been a self employed computer consultant. I have often found myself being asked to work in areas that I felt unprepared for. If I only took the jobs I felt I was a total expert in, I would be broke. Your editorial spoke of consultants traditionally spending considerable time in their field, mastering many aspects of it all, then moving on to become expert consultants. I do not think that path to consultancy may be practical or even possible any more. Given the huge scope of the IT world (software, programming, servers, hardware, etc...) no one can be an expert on most/all of it. And given the rate of change of technology, what a computer person learnt over 10 years ago, while good training and useful experience to bring to bear on today's challenges, may not even be directly applicable any more. Especially if that technology is no longer in use. I grew up on DOS. I have many well crafted, debugged, tried and tested DOS BAT utils. But when I offer one of these utils to help someone out, I sometimes get looks of disgust. VB Script is the in-thing now (and yes it is better).
I have generally found that clients and customers don't expect me to know everything. They want someone that they can trust. Most of the time the job does not even need an uber-expert on everything, just competency. When asked to do a job in an area that I am a bit uncertain about, I am honest and say to the client that it is not an area that I am very familiar with, but I am more than happy to have a go at it, and I say that if I find out that it is beyond my skill set, then I will let them know that and gracefully bow out of the job. It is very rare that someone has turned me down. Honesty, and willingness are appreciated.
I cant afford the time or the loss of income to pre-emptively learn all the new stuff as soon as it is invented, just in case a client may end up using that particular technology/equipment. If I am asked to deal with something rare, that I wont often encounter again, I charge the full price.
For me it is a balancing act - I invest some of my personal time in my learning, and I learn on the job. Sometimes I charge for some/all of my "on the job" less productive learning time, sometimes I don't. If I end up learning something useful, that I know I will be able to re-use, I charge less.
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