[zxzax]

Writing lots of boilerplate is an opportunity to build new libraries, frameworks, code generators, and other tooling; use that as something extra you can share with your colleagues and sell to clients, or use it to build an open source portfolio. Some companies might let you do it under your own name, others will want you to use their Github org.

If you find a technology you really like that's popular with clients, it may be that you get to use that with every client and then you can gain deep expertise in that. Don't be too picky here, this is an opportunity to get access to a lot of customers to find out what technology is really in demand. Contract-to-hire is also a valid thing that happens if you find a client with full-time positions open that you really like working for; you may have to negotiate with the consulting org for a finders' fee. Some orgs are not okay with this though, so I would only suggest it if you know it will work, or if you have a backup plan for another job in case it fails.

Extra advice I can give is that the relationships involved when doing consulting is pretty different; in my experience, unless the clients are all big IT firms, you likely won't have strong engineering management guiding any projects, and the client may not even be able to help you out with technical issues at all. It's on your team as technical experts to get in, figure out what is going on, and then get out. There are a number of ways to deal with this but the number one rule is: cover your ass with clients! I've seen lots of projects go south because of bad communication and failure to manage customer expectations.

[pwnasaurus]

I hadn't thought about the opportunity to build libraries, frameworks, etc. Thanks!