Introduction
Four years ago, I took a short-break from consulting job to do a nine-week coding bootcamp, it had been my first break from since graduating 6 years ago, and it was likely the single best decision I have made. Coming back from the break I got seconded into NHS England's COVID vaccination task force but my heart was set on writing code. I've since left behind my consulting career and have been an engineer for the past three at a health tech start-up.
Why give up a job I was good at, and go into something where I was completely green and a complete junior? Why take the sizeable pay cut when my colleagues in consulting were receiving record pay rises and bonuses?
In 2016, in the lead-up to the US election Obama in an interview said "When you've been president for six years, you've got some dings, I think the American people, you know, they're going to want that new car smell". Obama was more like my previous employer, few dings were like the few rough projects or assessments gone wrong and America, that was me. Fallen out of love with consulting, and major client fatigue and no longer had the motivation to do those gruelling hours to deliver documents that often would collect dust on a client's metaphorical shelf. All of those elements acutely felt as I sat day after day in my bedroom on a never-ending carousel of video calls. Find photo of first-year analyst vs. 5th year analyst
A case for consulting
Soft skills > Hard skills
There are few careers that give young graduates a broad education in tackling problems that face the modern corporations.
Even fewer employers, place a real focus on often overlooked "soft" skills. At PwC, the first four weeks of work were
sitting in a classroom learning how to run an effective meeting, plan and execute a workshop; and how to manage
conflict in the workplace. More technical skills like Index Match on Excel or writing effective presentations
could be learnt on the job. At that time, I thought this was odd however I now realise this importance of these
as I now work in a role where famously you seldom see folks with soft skills. And those who do, do really well.
Always thinking about your impact
While in most jobs doing your job to an acceptable standard would be a job well done. Not in consulting, from day one it was all about thinking through where there were opportunities to improve. A phrase used all too-often, "adding value" was the gauge of your worth to your colleagues, team and the firm. This mindset forced you to constantly think of leaving behind a set of achievements and outcomes that meant your time within the team was worthwhile, doing just what you are asked for never enough. This might have been a new framework, a tool, process improvement or stepping up when projects are going downhill. It's hard to shake off that way of thinking, and I am grateful for it.
If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together
To be deemed a successful consultant, or an effective employee, looks a lot like being a legislator. First, you sell the idea, you then go off and build a team that can quickly show results. Simultaneously, attract a group of influential supporters that seek counsel from and then construct an effective solution alongside a well thought through communication plan. This would be required if you wanted to push for improvements in performance review process, or trying to convince a board for a major investment. It taught you that the even the most brilliant piece of work, required a team of promoters who had been brought along the journey, their views heard and considered. Once constructed, carefully introduced to avoid dying as soon as its given birth to. Doing this day in day out meant you learnt to communicate effectively to stakeholders, learn to pick your battles, compromise where needed for the good of the project and stand your ground when required. It prepares you well on how many things in life get done, through making coalition of people working together and learning to let go little details and thinking about the bigger picture.
A case to exit consulting and into engineering
If only I had someone technical to build my idea
The first sentences of two stories that end badly: You've invented valuable technology, and you just need to find someone to "commercialize" it for you. You have a great idea for a startup, and you just need to find a technical co-founder to implement it for you. Paul Graham | September 2019
Middle of lockdown a friend and I were thinking, why does it take so long to sell a property in the UK? We had both work on deals where companies worth a lot more than the average house price in the UK were sold in a few weeks. Many of our friends had bought their first property and the horror stories of the sale process seemed unbelievable. Months of no contact, no clear dates, no transparency on who's accessed documents and having to send copies of your passport to multiple agents in the process. So we thought someone could do a better job, and we thought something similar to a data room for property sales would bring transparency and open communication to the whole process. However, when we got to conversations with investors it was obvious that technology wasn't our core competency and in my case neither was property. It got me thinking, if I really wanted to be a founder I either needed deep expertise in an industry or combine by commercial knowledge with some technical skills. Unfortunately, I didn't feel like I was going to get deep expertise in my team* in consulting.
The world revolves around technology so what's the harm in learning how it works
I always thought I understood well what happens on the glass but didn't quite grasp under the glass. It also dawned me that the demand to build and maintain software is only going to grow. It seems to me that any exec in the next 20 years that does not understand technology intimately stands to be at a disadvantage compared to execs who do.The recent gen AI boom with LLMs has brought this point home for me. As an engineer there are so many more ways to interact with and benefit from these technologies with even a small set of knowledge of engineering vs. someone with no knowledge. Build simple RAGs to support knowledge management, or using simple no code tools for automation. Some knowledge of data structure, network requests and API structures can be all you need.
We will work till 70 so why not take a risk now
Once I had come out of the bootcamp and went back to work, I mulled over what to do next. It was obvious that most start-ups did not have the luxury of strategy roles. Available roles were mainly operations related and with some of my old colleagues moving across to product. I did give product some serious consideration, but I felt that engineering was so empowering, that not pursuing it in the near-term would mean I would never have quite the depth to get the joy out of engineering in my free time. I felt this because a bootcamp only touches the surface in terms of what one needs to know and working professionally offered me both the upskilling but also a network of engineers if I ever wanted to consult on a new project. In the end, my decision was made on a walk with my parent's neighbour. He said to me, you will likely work till 70, big s**t if you did consulting for a few years. You can always go back to consulting if it you hate it, and you will always be better for having that experience than not.
What next
There are moments when I think what I would have been doing if I had stayed in consulting. But, I am convinced that the combination of my two careers will open doors than if I had stayed. For now, I'll focus on refining my skills, build and shipping software. Thus, I tread this path, where purpose and passion entwine, knowing that in this pursuit, I am both the dreamer and the dream-maker.
*I say specifically my team because there are areas in consulting where one can develop deep industry insight. My team's client could vary a lot and since a lot of the core clients were in telecommunications it was clear to me that there weren't as many opportunities to build enterprise SaaS in that space.