In theory, there exist people who are exceptional at solving unique problems/challenges or managing things related to such endeavors. Some might specialize in certain classes of problems and gain experience solving variations for many companies. They might be both underutilized and underpaid in traditional companies for various reasons.
What if you built a company by recruiting such people and sold their expertise at a premium?
I also think assuming there's no real skill at any consulting company is probably a mistake. Or if anything, they're not just all "management consultants" and many of these places have tech consultancies as well. There are also tech companies that are basically specialized consultancies---compsec is probably a very visible area where it's a more common model and at least some firms get some respect for competence.
There's plenty of criticism for consulting firms and it can be very valid. You can probably even dig up stories of bad consulting experiences in the comments on HN.
But I've known people who worked at places where they didn't really have the talent to solve some unique problem, or their own people had caused the problems.
Good consultants will try to pick the brains of employees for insight that's been missed, ignored, or simply wasn't communicated well. They have have problem solving skills that overlap with a good software engineer, such as requirements gathering, communicating with managers, etc.
Is that really true? I did keep reading the entire piece. I think they're often interesting and can contain nuggets of wisdom or insight. Or sometimes they're just funny. When I meet someone who worked on something interesting, I often start trying to pry stories like this post out of them.
Half the time I read the stories they're just a thinly disguised ad for some flavor the day SaaS, so at least in this instance the hook was somewhat useful. Now if everyone uses this to shill their SaaS, then maybe not.
Right, we're now in reality where the Senate is passing rescissions with a simple majority in addition to the President now doing "pocket rescissions". How do you negotiate in good faith about budget details if anything negotiated can be undone on a whim?
Why isn't simply getting another Claude account an option that you've tried before damaging your brain with low quality sleep?
Or writing prompts that get fired off by a script once the usage resets when sleeping so that you at least get some free tokies?
I'm sympathetic to wanting to squeeze out what you can to control costs, but this is something that might only seem sustainable because you're too exhausted to fully appreciate the potential deleterious long-term health effects.
I believe both behaviors violate the Terms of Service - it's generally frowned on to create multiple accounts to work around usage limits, and I know the TOS prohibited scripted interactions designed to maximize 24/7 usage (the subscriptions are very much based on the assumption that you will "be normal" about them)
And yet businesses seem to have no trouble paying for multiple accounts. I’m sure OP could register as a business or even recruit a friend to pay for an account on his behalf. I don’t think Anthropic cares as long as you’re paying them for the two accounts…
Business plans usually require a 5 seat minimum, charge per seat, and have different pricing levels - but yeah, nothing stops you from registering an LLC. Namecheap is even running a special: Buy a domain name and get an LLC for free: https://www.namecheap.com/apps/business-starter-kit/
(not affiliated, I was just very surprised when they tried to upsell me last time I renewed my domain :))
One problem with this is crypto AMM (automated market making) works best with stability and low volatility. For example, it's terrible in the context of prediction markets. Market makers get hosed due to real life, and traders (me) can profit at their expense. It's a big part of why prediction market traders encouraged Polymarket to develop orderbooks. And if crypto is viewed as disruptive, then it's likely inducing greater volatility.
A lot of these things are lucrative until they're not. If they are inherently lucrative then that profit will diminish as people catch on.
Every market has a use case, and AMMs are not solving event markets, event markets tried to use AMMs and successfully pivoted to order books. I think Polymarket's implementation still has liquidity challenges, as they still have to centrally bribe people to participate. Honestly I don't like Polymarket's contract at all, but it is fast and low cost. Bribes in the solidly AMM model I think were more efficient at attracting liquidity. Slight tangent, the oracle in Polymarket is a bigger issue, people need to convince them to lower the weight of UMA.
back to what I'm a fan of: CLMMs (Concentrated Liquidity Market Maker) is a very competitive field. The level of profits depends solely on volume and amount of capital participating. You are counting on other capital getting bored and moving away, as well as volume rising. Thats the game, it will always be the game. Its already "lucrative until its not" so its not really a gotcha or that insightful for those passing by. I'm glad you have some experience with it.
I don't think it necessarily leads to a of mastery of data structures and algorithms in the context of leetcode/modern coding interviews. One can do a lot of coding, and even be paid for it, for years and just not even encounter a lot of this material. Though one will have developed much of the same intuition that you typically acquire in a data structures class, it doesn't necessarily mean you're prepared to code mergesort on a whiteboard.
Not primarily the fault of the IRS, as they were just following the law passed in 2017 that didn't go into effect until years later. But there's a chance it gets changed back to the previous way by the same people who passed it.
This wasn't really on anyone's radar until more recently. I don't think even a simple majority of tech workers even realized this had happened until after the job market had tightened up.
It's at least useful for seeing how other people are being productive with these tools. I also sometimes find a clever idea that improves that I'm already doing.
And documenting the current state of this space as well. It's easy to have tried doing something a year ago and think they're still bad.
I also usually prefer researching some area before reinventing the wheel by trial/failure myself. I appreciate when people share what they've discovered with their own their time, as I don't always have all the time in the world to explore it as I would if I were still a teen.
What if you built a company by recruiting such people and sold their expertise at a premium?
I also think assuming there's no real skill at any consulting company is probably a mistake. Or if anything, they're not just all "management consultants" and many of these places have tech consultancies as well. There are also tech companies that are basically specialized consultancies---compsec is probably a very visible area where it's a more common model and at least some firms get some respect for competence.
There's plenty of criticism for consulting firms and it can be very valid. You can probably even dig up stories of bad consulting experiences in the comments on HN.
But I've known people who worked at places where they didn't really have the talent to solve some unique problem, or their own people had caused the problems.
Good consultants will try to pick the brains of employees for insight that's been missed, ignored, or simply wasn't communicated well. They have have problem solving skills that overlap with a good software engineer, such as requirements gathering, communicating with managers, etc.