Author here. This is essentially the case for many clients, especially governemnt. But we're bootstrapped, so we can afford to consult and use what we've learned to build tooling that only targets a small handful of sane clients.
I've sought advice from various people on this, some who are famous-ish or quiet sales powerhouses in the US. My question was "What are executives buying when they hire consultants?", and the answer is consistently "Comfort". No one is actually comforted by Deloitte, KPMG, whoever.
The moment I had confidence in an ethical consulting practice is the moment someone said "I don't even know where I would hire good consultants". This was someone with 30 years or something absurd of industry experience, including mentoring people that went on to become staff engineers. After processing that, I realized I don't know where to hire a consultancy that isn't going to bait-and-switch me with mediocre talent. They obviously exist, but they probably can only support something like 1 to 10 clients each.
Even Thoughtworks, a place that I used to hear mentioned positively, was flagged by the CTO of a >$1B company over lunch last week as "shifting to bait-and-switch" tactics.
tl;dr Pretty sure you can absolutely do better and make a living off that, but you have to think very carefully, do research, read a bunch of sales/marketing books, have great communication skills and at least adequate engineering skills. I still don't know if I have some of those, but if I fail it'll be a skill issue, not because the problem is not tractable.
I've sought advice from various people on this, some who are famous-ish or quiet sales powerhouses in the US. My question was "What are executives buying when they hire consultants?", and the answer is consistently "Comfort". No one is actually comforted by Deloitte, KPMG, whoever.
The moment I had confidence in an ethical consulting practice is the moment someone said "I don't even know where I would hire good consultants". This was someone with 30 years or something absurd of industry experience, including mentoring people that went on to become staff engineers. After processing that, I realized I don't know where to hire a consultancy that isn't going to bait-and-switch me with mediocre talent. They obviously exist, but they probably can only support something like 1 to 10 clients each.
Even Thoughtworks, a place that I used to hear mentioned positively, was flagged by the CTO of a >$1B company over lunch last week as "shifting to bait-and-switch" tactics.
tl;dr Pretty sure you can absolutely do better and make a living off that, but you have to think very carefully, do research, read a bunch of sales/marketing books, have great communication skills and at least adequate engineering skills. I still don't know if I have some of those, but if I fail it'll be a skill issue, not because the problem is not tractable.