[SamuelAdams]

> Most people don't heed advice given for free, but if they pay dearly for it, they tend to pay attention.

100% this. I've seen consultants get paid $250 an hour to simply listen to what the team is saying and regurgitate that to management. But it's more trusted than their own employees because the consultant is "independent".

[Tabular-Iceberg]

I thought I could use this to my advantage and game the system. I convinced management we needed to hire a prestigious consultant to get us out of the tight spot we were in. They were absolutely ecstatic about this great visionary I had brought in and all the genius insights he had (which was predictably just what the team had been saying for moths).

But it still came back to bite me in the end. When the consultant was paid and gone, there was suddenly no time anymore to act on any of the advice. It was all back to to the perpetual "just make this one simple feature" cycle, but the most insulting thing was hearing a twisted version of the consultant's advice used as ammunition against the team, questioning its competence.

[Viliam1234]

> the most insulting thing was hearing a twisted version of the consultant's advice used as ammunition against the team, questioning its competence.

That's the advantage of having an expert that is no longer there. You can make him agree with whatever you want.

Once there was an expert invited to solve a problem at a company I worked for. Towards the end of his short visit, we met in a kitchen and talked for a while. I asked him what he thought about the problem we had, and he told me his opinion. After he left, there was a meeting where the managers told us what the expert thought. It was almost the opposite of what he told me. Was he telling different conclusions to different people? Or were the managers just lying? No way to find out, of course.