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by notaslave 1886 days ago
My advice: stay away from consulting.

My user name itself is a result of my experience working in one of those body shops. Client doesn't care, my employer doesn't care. I see people here talking about 1-1s and promotions and so on. I never had a single one in 5+ years. Clients treat us as outsiders. I am not sure if they even see us as humans. Just keep on dumping work, and then suddenly you are kicked out one fine day. Makes you wonder why did you spent 10-15 hours a lot of days for free. No team activities, no trainings, nothing.

My employer has absolutely no interest in my well being either. No promotions, no salary increments most years. Only time my 'manager' talks to me is when they want me to relocate to some other state or client. If I say no, they will threaten me - 'I will snip you' is what my manager told me once. Now I categorize these so called 'managers' as 'slave traders, parasites or demons'.

Wider variety of technologies and languages may sound good initially, but at least from my experience, the work you do for these clients are basically things you can learn on your own. So if that's your only goal, I would say do some personal projects instead.

Every single one of my colleagues have jumped ship within 2 years working in our company. Only idiots like me stayed. My itinerary for today is this: work from 6am-4pm. Then log out. Prepare for interviews. Get a work in good product company.

2 comments

Sorry but your issue is not "consulting" vs "product". You work for a shitty company/team/boss and you need to get out. Don't blame consulting in general.
Man I’m so sorry you’ve had such a bad experience. I don’t think this has to be the case in consulting, a supportive team and a policy to only work with clients that treat you respectfully could go a long way in situations like this.