[zissou]

Talk economics to me, baby.

As an economics PhD drop-out who left [after year #2] to start my own consulting company based on my PhD research, I can relate with so much of what I've heard so far (I'm only at 22mins at this point).

Also, as a person who went from the economics/business (albeit, academic) life -> developer life, I agree with your observations about how programmers suck at economics (err... business). It is a much easier transition (relatively speaking) to go from an econ/business person --> compsci/developer than it is compsci/developer --> econ/business person. You can't learn economics overnight, but I can certainly figure out how to create a tool that solves a specific problem overnight, because some guy wrote a tutorial about how to use <some technology> to solve <a congruent problem>.

I'll try and update my post later after I've finished the podcast.

[ErrantX]

I think you're simplifying. It's easy to follow an online tutorial; but if that is what a consultant is doing then he is a very low quality consultant.

Conversely; I have an engineering background but found it very easy to pick up the basics of good business, at least how it applies to consultancy. Of course, I'm not trained in economics, but I figured out enough to get by (you could make an argument business sense isn't really related to economics - some wildly successful businessmen have never been educated in even the basics, they just saw and opening and sold).

What you seem to be suggesting is that an econ/business person could buy a programming 101 book and start making big bucks as a consultant software engineer. In theory I'd like to say that's rubbish, in practice I know of several people who do this.

Can't condone it though: the underlying drive for a consultant should always be - "I have a valuable skill, here is what it is worth"

[manmal]

If you find a tutorial which solves this very problem you are facing, then you are surely good to go. I doubt however that you will find a tutorial on "how to increase traffic to a specific website by 10%". But that's what people actually pay for. They don't pay big bucks for you to implement that simple app or to fix that NullPointerException in their Java web app. I've been there. Yes, they might pay you $100/h for that, but not $10000 for the whole task.

You do need sharp wits and problem solving ability to deliver this kind of value, you need your methods in place (e.g. testing and validating everything) and you need to know where to look for unknowns. A good pitch is not the whole story as much as problem solving abilities are not the whole story.

[dm3]

The thing is, at least in my experience, there is absolutely no need to have _any_ academic background in order to be a good businessman. What you do need to have is smarts (see the possibility), tenacity (grab the possibilty) and relentlessness (convert the possibilty to value). The actual background that you have will only affect the range of possibilities available to you.