Avonelle points out Joel Spolsky’s comment in a discussion about being a one-man shop and Christopher Hawkin’s response.

Although Joel’s backup logic is bull, I do agree with his main “thesis” – that a consultant is not an entrepreneur. In 16 or so years I have been a consultant, I have never considered myself an entrepreneur or a start-up business, so I don’t even care about qualifying that one.

However, he uses some dead-wrong points to back up that statement. Pure bull.

I am hardly the low man on the totem pole with my clients. I am a business partner – a trusted business partner. The owner of my largest client absolutely sees me that way. I have acquired such a good understanding of his business over the years that it is not uncommon for him to discuss other areas of his business (other than technology) with me and seek my opinion.

Perpetual Job hunting. My very first client came to me as a referral. I had a full time job then and was not even looking for contract work. Since then, almost all of my work has been word of mouth for all of these years. That does not mean that I “put the word out” that I was looking either. I’m talking about totally unsolicited. The only real caveat to this is that when I moved to Vermont, I needed a full time job in order to get a mortgage. At that time, I did have to actively look for a W-2 position.)

Back to work…

Posted from BLInk!

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