Being A Consultant – The Benefits & Challenges of Being a Consultant

Working as a consultant at Intertech is fundamentally different from most software development jobs. Generally, corporate software developers work on a single project or support a specific system at a company. They work in the same office every day and they often maintain the same code base over the course of years. In contrast, Intertech consultants get to work on many different projects in many different teams.

Being a consultant for Intertech comes with some great benefits in terms of variety and work-life balance. However, there are also unique challenges involved in consulting. In this post, we’ll take a look at the day-to-day life of our consultants to show what it’s like to work at Intertech.

Variety

Projects & Teams

Perhaps the biggest benefit of working as an Intertech consultant is the variety of projects, technologies, industries, and people you’ll get to work with. Indeed, taking a dip into consulting is a great way to quickly build your skills in many aspects of software development. Moreover, working on different projects keeps things exciting and engaging. Each day at work, you’ll be facing unique technical problems. Within a few months, you might be working on something completely different.

Overall, Intertech consultants usually work on new development. Our consultants don’t typically undertake maintenance or support roles. As a result, you’ll spend most of your time building new features, instead of supporting legacy code.

Of course, variety brings its own challenges. You’ll need to be highly flexible to meet new demands and learn new skills as projects require them. In addition, you’ll work with many different teams. Therefore, soft skills and communication are critical for our consultants to build trusting relationships with clients over a short period of time.

Mentorship

Experienced Senior Developers Are On Your Team
Just because you’re a consultant doesn’t mean you’re working alone. Intertech has a great team of consultants with deep experience in software development. When you work as a full-time consultant for Intertech, you’ll have the support of this team. As a result, you’ll have access to some of the best mentors in the Twin Cities area in terms of software development. Many of our consultants have been with us long term, working on dozens of client projects over that time. So, they have deep expertise and have seen a lot of potential scenarios in development. In addition, many of our consultants also teach classes, so they understand instruction and are great teachers if you need help.

Constant

Learning

Another major benefit of working for Intertech is constant learning and improvement. As consultants, we need to stay ahead of emerging trends in software development. In fact, our clients often ask for the most recent technology when they’re looking to deploy a new solution. Given that, you’ll constantly be at the cutting edge of software development as an Intertech consultant.

Of course, this presents a challenge in its own right. Constant learning isn’t easy, and keeping up with trends does require you invest time in trying and getting up to speed with new technologies. It’s much easier to work on a single project with a well-defined tech stack as an employee at another company.

However, our consultants often see huge benefits in terms of career growth from staying up to date with the latest tools.

Build a

Wide Network

Because our consultants often work alongside the client’s development team, you’ll meet a lot of developers working in the Twin Cities area.

Moreover, our consultants also often serve in an advisory role to CTOs or Directors of Software at major firms. These relationships are a key benefit of working as a consultant for Intertech. As long as you develop and maintain positive relationships, you’ll have a great network thanks to working as an Intertech consultant.

Work-Life

Balance & Travel
Our consultants rarely work on time-critical projects. As a result, they work a standard forty hour week and have predictable work schedules. Many of our consultants have families and other commitments outside work. We make work-life balance a priority for our employees. Over the past two decades, Intertech has won numerous “Best Place to Work” awards thanks to our policies of prioritizing people. Your life outside of work is important to us, and we believe happy employees are better engineers.

Often, our consultants do travel to the client’s office in order to work alongside the client’s teams. These offices range throughout the Twin Cities area. While most of our consultants experience a typical commute, it’s difficult to plan where you’ll be working or move to live close to work because your work site can vary. Changing offices presents a change of pace for our consultants, but for those who prefer a fixed work site, consulting can be a challenge in that regard.

Conclusion

Benefits of Being an Intertech Consultant

Altogether, working as a consultant provides unique benefits in the software development industry. You’ll see a variety of projects, work on cutting edge technologies, learn from experienced devs, and get a great work-life balance. Still, we hope we’ve given a fair insight into some of the challenges of working as a consultant as well.

If consulting sounds like something you’d be interested in, check out our jobs board and let us know. We would very much like to hear from you!

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