I was at a client recently who’s business is providing electricity to a local city. We were trying to figure out what caused a piece of hardware to fail and as I was going over options in my head I asked him, “Hmm…perhaps a power surge?”

He looked at me like I asked if his mother might have a penis. After an uncomfortable pause he responded very deliberately, “Yeah…we don’t have those here…”

Important Safety Tip: Never imply that your clients who work in the power business might have been the victim of an electricity surge.

They don’t take kindly to it.

I have noticed on more than many occasions that consultants I meet are out of the loop in terms of current technical trends, current products, etc.

I find this distressing. I consider myself behind them as far as experience goes, and I can’t help but worry that the price of being great at this field is losing the love for it. It’s like these consultants don’t even care about the stuff anymore — like it’s literally “just a job”. Many of them don’t even maintain home networks anymore. The term “burnt out” is thrown around loosely.

I don’t ever want to become that. I won’t. I reserve the right to take more time doing my tasks — time to enjoy technology and maintain my edge. I think one good indicator is not having time to read my feeds. If I can’t read digg, reddit, and all my security feeds every day (with exceptions) I think I’ve gone astray.

So, to my leet-geek friends, I ask you to help keep me on track. Don’t let me stray from the path of geekdom.

I’ve consistently heard one thing about IT consultants — most of them suck horribly.

I have to say that I’ve also found this to be true, but not for the reasons I thought. I thought it was an issue with technical ability, but it’s not. It’s not that the consultants I’ve seen are weak technically; their problem is that they seem to have very little regard for what clients want and need, which, if I were to nitpick, is of at least moderate interest.

I’ve seen on a number of occasions where the consultant comes in and essentially starts preaching to his flock. This is how it’s going to be, we know what’s best for you, etc. They simply fail to listen, and what makes it worse is that they seem to favor pre-packaged solutions over those that are customized. Of course, in order to customize a solution they’d have to listen to the client, which could be part of the problem.

At any rate, while it’s bad for most clients (since they’re dealing, by definition, with most consultants), it’s actually quite positive for me. I’m coming to realize that I can be at a major disadvantage technically, i.e. not even in my area, and still offer far more to the client than a so-called expert. The reason for this is simply the willingness to truly listen to the problems that a client is facing, and then follow-up with efficient, customized solutions.

Perhaps it’s bad business to do this; perhaps I’m being naiive about how consulting works. I’m willing to accept that as a possibility. I do know, however, that it’s not possible to make money doing using my approach then I will simply move on to something else. I refuse to become what I see in these others. For the time being, though, I’m going to continue with my theory that you can make money consulting in this ideal, enjoyable way.

We shall see.