I’ve been a consultant for about 15 years of my career. I like to make the distinction between “product developers” and “project developers”. It’s just a different mindset. For product developers, there is a benefit in spending more time to make sure your code is correct and optimized — mistakes cost more when you have a large user base (or are trying to attract one).
By contrast, project developers have no such incentives. Their goal is to finish development within a time box and meeting certain acceptance criteria. Often they’re building tools that are high value but low user counts, so mistakes / bugs are more tolerable and users can be trained on workarounds.
In my opinion, it’s largely a personality difference. I personally get bored working on the same thing for too long, so consulting works great for me. Some people hate the context switching of moving to a new project every few months or are just meticulous and slow developers, and they make great product developers. That’s not to say you shouldn’t try both sides of the fence, but you’ll usually land on the side that best fits your personality and working style.
Im pretty far up the food chain at a large consulting firm and i too get bored easily. Consulting fits my personality type because each project has a deadline ( rarely exceeding a year ) and then you either sell an extension or go look for something else to do.
There's also a lot of adrenaline involved in consulting too, some of my coworkers have left to go run a program somewhere in industry only to come back in a year or two because they were bored out of their minds and wanted back in the game.
Same; I’m at the point in my career where I’m not really involved in project delivery anymore so it’s more about sales and coaching new leaders. Your technical skills do eventually atrophy (at least mine have) but that just means you lean on your experts for that knowledge. But it’s probably a more natural growth path than most technical roles in industry — promotions at consulting companies are far easier to achieve if you put in the work.
By contrast, project developers have no such incentives. Their goal is to finish development within a time box and meeting certain acceptance criteria. Often they’re building tools that are high value but low user counts, so mistakes / bugs are more tolerable and users can be trained on workarounds.
In my opinion, it’s largely a personality difference. I personally get bored working on the same thing for too long, so consulting works great for me. Some people hate the context switching of moving to a new project every few months or are just meticulous and slow developers, and they make great product developers. That’s not to say you shouldn’t try both sides of the fence, but you’ll usually land on the side that best fits your personality and working style.