Analyzing the Web Consulting Game
July 25, 2009
Darned interesting article “Joel Spolsky: The Day My Industry Died” in Inc Magazine, a publication I have not looked at for years. I don’t read many magazines now so this is not a criticism of Inc. I am commenting on my changed information acquisition habits. I do not know Joel Spolsky. He mentions that he is a programmer. The write up explains that Web consulting is a tough way to earn a living. For me one of the most interesting comments was:
My theory was that if I could start a company and be only partially incompetent instead of entirely incompetent, I would be ahead of the game.
Yep, consulting looks easy. Just tell people you are an expert and wait for the phone to ring. Mr. Spolsky revealed:
We started late, and we hadn’t had a chance to hire very many people yet, so we didn’t burn through cash as quickly as others. And we were fortunate enough to have a software product under development, so that when the Web consulting industry disappeared, we still had money coming in. Because if you can survive the death of your industry, well, you can survive just about anything. In the next issue, I’ll tell you how Fog Creek pulled it off.
What we have is a case study recast as a 1950s’ movie cliff hanger. My hunch is that this is a good news set up. What’s this have to do with search? Ah, try and find case studies of successful Web consulting companies. Neither Bing.com nor Google.com shed much light on this topic. The reason? Lousy indexing and a dearth of information. One needs a consultant to assemble meaning case analyses in my view.
Stephen Arnold, July 25, 2009
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