[gilfoyle]

Product companies ideally optimise for outcome (growth/delight/adoption metrics).

Consulting companies tend to optimise for output (delivering on time, code quality, reported bug counts, number of stories, sprint velocity etc.)

A full time product engineer has more skin in the game and freedom to work across the stack while consultants might be restricted to non-prod environments and therefore limited access to infra/devops work and prod support/troubleshooting. YMMV.

There is a huge learning in supporting what you build and not getting that experience can be a limitation in consulting.

However consulting offers you the opportunity to work across domains, tech stacks, work with new people, travel etc every 1-2 years whereas in product companies a commitment of 2-3+ years is desirable.

Finally, it boils down to quality of the group of people you are going to work with. A consulting firm with higher density of talent would be more interesting than a mediocre product team.