Previous thread "I'm an engineer that needs to sell my services. Any good books on sales?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39316653

From that posting this comment seems useful:

The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully by Gerald Weinberg

https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting-Suc...

https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting-Suc...

The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully by Gerald Weinberg

Been a consultant, not a contractor, for many years. You cannot be a consultant without reading Weinberg:

"The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully"

https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting-Suc...

"More Secrets of Consulting: The Consultant's Tool Kit"

"https://www.amazon.com/More-Secrets-Consulting-Consultants-T..."

These books kept my sanity and showed me the Universe twisted sense, twisted...But nonetheless a sense.

The Secrets of Consulting[1][2] sounds like a book you might appreciate in your current situation.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting-Suc...

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/566213.The_Secrets_of_Co...

Here is a book that helped me a bit in my consulting career https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting-Suc...

if you ever only read 1 book about consulting, I warmly suggest Gerald M. Weinberg's "The Secrets of Consulting"

It's a bit like diplomacy for engineers.

for those not familiar with Weinberg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17716098

https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting-Suc...

The Secrets of Consulting by Gerald M. Weinberg. It showed me how to deal with, and get true value out of consultants. It also helped me become a better consultant myself and scale my service to bigger projects & customers. Also the book has great advise on how to sell your service. It's not only what you sell that sets the price but how you "package" your service. In a nutshell it's a book that can help leap from external contractor, who works only via agents to become a "true consultant" where you pick your own clients without a middle-man, create a pitch, draft the offer, and also carry the full commercial risk.

https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting-Suc...

There was another HN thread some years back linking to a fascinating blog post of somebody who pointed out not to charge hourly rates and invoice per week. It was giving really solid advise on pricing strategy for individual consultants to increase the rate from 100/hr to 6-8K/week. It argued to never compromise on the price but see what parts of the project could be left out, etc ... If somebody here remembers this site/article it would be fantastic (I can no longer remember where to find it unfortunately).

You guys are asking some interesting questions in particular about whether people feel they charge too much or not enough. The best expose on that I've seen is in Gerald Weinberg's "Secrets of Consulting" http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0932633013/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=...

It's a question that's both externally determined, e.g. "What does the market bear?" and also based on someone's own perception of their worth. It's hard to disentangle the two but very important in order to maximize revenue. What's more the objective question of what the market will bear is often colored by my own perception, which is a recipe to leaving money on the table.

Weinberg's advice is to set your rate such that you'd feel emotionally neutral whether or not you get the gig. If you over price (by your own feeling, not by what the market says) and you get the gig, you'll be stressed to deliver at what you think that price level should be worth in labor. If you under price (by your own standard, perhaps because you think the market will not accept more) then you'll be resentful for working below what you're worth. Having been a consultant myself, I can only advise everybody to challenge the own perception of what the market will bear.

I had this exact same pattern for a while!

It sounds to me like contracting is worth exploring. When I contracted (for about 7 years), I was exposed to new technologies and business domains every couple of months. I fondly remember about 2 weeks into every contract there was an 'oh sh*t' moment where I realized I was in over my head and running to keep ahead of what the client needed. Of course, that was nicely counterbalanced by the 'aaah' moment about 6 weeks in when things were finally jelling.

(I mostly worked on custom web applications and ecommerce and made a decent living working 30 hours a week.)

If you pursue this path, you might want to consider going out on your own as a single person consulting company, rather than going through a contracting company. You'll have more control, though less security, and will have a wider scope of project domains. That said, if you are interested in certain types of projects (J2EE, big data) you might find it hard to contract as a one person show.

Of course, I don't know what your financial situation is, but if you pursue this, I'd start going to meetups, have about a year of expenses saved in the bank, and read a couple of good books like this one: http://www.amazon.com/The-Secrets-Consulting-Getting-Success... and this one: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/027363707X/002...