A fully biased description of how to MakeMoneyFast:
Become a Consultant
And then act as follows:
- Quick in - quick out. Be far, far away when the sh*t you have stirred together hits the fan. Soar free. Be a SeagullConsultant.
- Bad-mouth the local employees.
- Socialize with higher-management.
- Have an opinion about everything. It doesn't have to be based on experience. It doesn't have to be right. It just has to be different from the opinion of the experienced employees.
- Write management reports.
- Write more management reports.
- Show actionism. Write even more management reports.
- Stay away from writing code. If you have to, copy from open sources.
- Always discuss real problems (if at all) on some meta-level. Always show a philosophical point of view.
- Always have a set of fancy, colourful, flashy, zero-information SlideWare (PowerPoint presentations) handy.
- Decide yourself which problems you intend to "solve". Consequently ignore all other problems (esp. the real ones).
- It is not necessary to have a clue about what you are talking about.
- Ensure that your buzzword-to-reality ratio is always high - extremely high.
- In your Resume, stretch the reality a little bit. E.g. say that you were a VP of a company. Don't say it was your father's TwoMenAndaDogCompany?.
- Tell everyone that you have X (X >= 10) years of experience in the subject which is currently discussed. Even if it wasn't invented until a few years ago (e.g. Java).
- Constantly tell people about your regular, in-depth discussion with leading authorities of the field (name dropping). Don't tell them that some of them call you "the idiot of the year".
- If it gets obvious that you are wrong, insist that you have never said it that way. If this doesn't help, insist that you didn't mean it that way. If this still doesn't help, insist that conditions have changed.
- Borrow a watch from the client and tell him/her/them the time (a classic).
This will make you at least enough money to finance your private pilot license and a small Cessna.
Note: This is based on experience with a few specific consultants during one previous employment and not a general description of consultancy. If it were, I'd happily go for the job :-)
Second to last point reminds me of the joke StudiedUnderTheGreatLiszt.
-- AlistairCockburn
Parallel: CapedConsultant, GuruDoesAll, CultOfPersonality
Contrast: ScapeGoat, PeaceMaker, DoorMat, LongPoleInTheTent, JustaProgrammer
See: SecretsOfConsulting, ConsultantWisdom, ConsultantsDontCode
CategoryRant, CategoryConsulting
Highly Paid Consultant