The Joys of Consulting

I could not bring myself to post a picture of "consulting," and the images associated with the word consulting on the Internet are a pretty boring bunch anyway, so here's a nice picture of the harvest moon instead.  Ooh, pretty.

A couple of downsides to consulting first.  One, it's probably going to be hard to make as much money as I used to.  Maybe if I can get a high-paying, longer project with some overtime, but that's a best-case scenario.  Included in this downside item are the benefits offered to contractors by Robert Half -- there are some, but they are nothing like what most large companies offer, and that will translate into less money in my pocket.  It's the nature of contracting.  Also included is the inevitable time between projects, which is why a longer project could be better.

Second downside is the uncertainty between projects that there will be another project.  Hopefully that will dissipate in time.  In truth, the end of the first project and the time until the next one will be a big test of whether this can work, but the end of every project may end up being a test.

So enough of that, how about the advantages?  Here's a big one:  Monday I did not go to work because it is a Day of Prayer for World Vision employees.  They meet offsite, in a church, and pray and talk about the previous year and future plans (October 1 is the first day of their fiscal year.)  They also have something called "devotionals," which are mandatory weekly meetings of some sort for employees, and they have a separate time for chapel.  I don't have any idea what the difference is between devotionals and chapel, and I don't want to know.  But in case you are missing what is good about these activities, it's this:  I am not expected to participate.  This is excellent.

Now you may think that World Vision is unique, and that I would not have this non-participation benefit anywhere else, but I do not think so.  Farmers also had a Day of Prayer, or something similar, but they called it Profit Sharing Day, or STIP (short-term incentive plan) Day.  Their devotionals had various names, like "Let's talk about the employee survey" meeting, or Manager's Strategic Planning meeting, or "We're going to implement some great new idea" meeting, but the prospect of being able to avoid them is just as appealing.

Another fine thing about contracting is that the client actually seems to appreciate what I do, at least this one does.  My manager seems impressed by the work I am providing to her, which doesn't exactly surprise me, but she thinks that I am extraordinarily thorough and organized, and that I think of everything, none of which would be things that people would have said about me during my last few years at Farmers.  There is one big, huge, REALLY OBVIOUS factor that makes the difference between being thorough and organized and not being thorough or organized at all:  well it's really obvious, so I don't have to tell the intelligent people who read my blog, do I?  Whatever, the difference is time.  Instead of trying to ride herd on 25 different priorities at the same time, I am working on one project, with the time to do really good work.  To a large degree, this was the difference between me as a Senior Accountant and me as a manager, but no matter how patiently or mostly very impatiently I explained this to certain fine people at Farmers, my words were not heard.

As always, there is no prize for being right.  Too bad; I am right so often...  (I may have mentioned, Jackie tells me I'm arrogant.  Not sure why.)

Perhaps another day I will talk about some of the lesser benefits and non-benefits of contracting.  For now I will say that, if I can make it pay, I will keep doing it.