Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional
John White | Nick Korte
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The Consulting Life: Managing Travel and Becoming a Better Communicator with David Klee (1/2)
What does it mean to be a consultant? We’ve explored the consultant role as part of the career path of previous guests, but this episode kicks off a focused two-part discussion on the nuances of consulting. In this first part of the discussion, episode 309, returning guest David Klee shares practical insights for managing business travel, enhancing communication skills, and excelling in the consulting profession. He explains how great consultants adjust the information they communicate (and the level of detail) to resonate with people in different roles within an organization. Whether you’re considering consulting, already in the field, or collaborating with consultants, this conversation has actionable advice that can help. Original Recording Date: 12-18-2024 Topics – David Klee Returns, Focusing on the Consultant Role, Consulting as a Career Path, Job Descriptions and Interview Advice, Travel Expectations and Being Productive, Working for a Company with a Consulting Arm, Presentations and Communication Skills 2:23 – David Klee Returns David Klee is the founder of a niche consulting company called Heraflux Technologies. They do performance tuning and availability architectures for SQL Server and everything underneath. This spans on-premises, in the cloud, virtual, and physical instances. David has worked on some of the biggest SQL Servers in the world. This discussion series is meant to be focused on the life of a consultant. If you missed the previous episodes, we recorded with David that include his origin story in technology, check out these discussions: Episode 119 – Tinkering into Specialty with David Klee (1/2) Episode 120 – A Time to Build with David Klee (2/2) 3:22 – Focusing on the Consultant Role We’ve heard the term consultant used in many different interviews and contexts. How would David define what a consultant is? “I have a whimsical definition of it. A contractor is somebody you tell what to do. A consultant is somebody that tells you what to do.” – David Klee, on the definition of a consultant Hire a consultant to solve a problem you do not know how to fix, engineer something you’re uncertain of, or to handle tasks you may not have the skills in-house to do. Some of these tasks might be routine health checks, platform assessments, etc. We may have worked in an environment daily for many years, but a consultant brings the unique background experience of working across many environments over time. With the right background knowledge and experience, why do consultants get a bad reputation? “There are a lot of really, really good consultants out there, and there’s a lot of really bad consultants out there. And there are a lot of really good consultants out there that charge a ridiculous amount of money for what they do, and there’s a lot of bad ones that do as well.” – David Klee People remember the bad consultants they have worked with more vividly than the good, and this shapes their perception of what a consultant is. People might develop their own persona of a consultant as someone who charges too much, doesn’t do a good job, and then leaves. David tells us this spans across industries and is not unique to technology consultants. When people seek to hire a consultant, they might not know what to ask to vet that consultant’s experience before hiring them. Are references a nice way to do this? David says he gets asked for references pretty often, but speaking to references can be a challenge as well. You might talk to a reference and find out they are related in some way to the consultant, for example. “You just have to be careful when you talk to these folks on the other side of the table…. It’s not that all consultants are bad. It’s just there’s a lot of average consultants. There’s a few bad ones. There’s a few really good ones…same thing with normal hires.” – David Klee A consultant could be brought in to help for a short time, for a medium term, or for a long-term project. David mentions a friend of his who has worked on a block of hours that has renewed for 12 years. In this specific case, the person is basically part of the company and treated like family. This long-term nature of the engagement makes it easy to take time off when needed. How can listeners work better with consultants during the hiring phase and in collaboration with them after hiring? David says it is important to understand and convey what you want a consultant to do or the direction you want them to steer you. We should convey what we want from a consultant in as much detail as possible. Suppose you told someone to build a car for you. The skillset to build a semi-truck is totally different from that needed to build a Formula One car. “If you tell somebody something and their background is building racecars and what you really need is somebody to tow a trailer…if you just say go build me a car, guess what? Out comes some really cool high performance sports car that’s not what you needed. And you’re disappointed. They’re unhappy. Nobody wins.” – David Klee David says plan to give the consultant as much of the detail up front as we have. If you don’t have all the detail, communicate there is some ambiguity, that you need help choosing a direction and filling in gaps. This helps a consultant scope the product and understand what you really want instead of what you say you need (which could be 2 different things). A scope of work defines what a consultant does and whether they perform hands on keyboard work or not. Can people just purchase a number of consulting hours without a clear deliverable? “There should always be some kind of deliverable…. If somebody walks in the door and you say do task X and then they go do task X and then they disappear…if you don’t have a record, do you know what they actually did? And if they get hit by the beer truck, can somebody repeat what they did tomorrow? …The scoping is one of the hardest pieces.” – David Klee Scoping can be challenging and varies by project. David gives an example of a SQL Server migration project. In this case he would provide reference material to help build a new machine. David could build the new machine and show someone how or let them build it while he walks them through it. There are a number of elements of scope in addition to performing the tasks. Scripts might need to be run or problems fixed before a migration can happen to continue the example above. Once the work is complete, David will provide a document describing the new machine, how it was set up, why it was set up that way, and any fine tuning needed to run a specific application. 9:55 – Consulting as a Career Path Why do people pursue a career as a consultant? What makes it attractive? For some people it is not the right choice, but for others it is the clear choice. Consulting might be a good choice for you if… You are bored with the tasks of your normal job You want to do something different There isn’t any training You like dynamic work environments David tells us if you’re pursuing a role as a consultant, be prepared to learn! David likes consulting because every day is totally different. This can also be a downfall sometimes. Full-time employees of a company can end up working in an environment with a boss they don’t like or a co-worker with which they clash. David mentions working a short consulting engagement in a less-than-ideal environment is more tolerable knowing he will move on to something else once it’s complete. Consulting can keep things fresh, allow you to see new types of problems or environments, or give you the chance to do something new. Being a consultant can remove you from some of the politics within companies. David, for example, doesn’t deal with corporate politics very well. If politics get in the way of getting something accomplished it can be frustrating because the roadblock is not technical. The consultant would prefer to just be able to do their job. David, as the owner of a consulting firm, can say no to taking on a project. What can a full-time employee do if they are told to do something that is the wrong approach? David feels the employee cannot realistically say no. David shares an example from one of his first jobs out of college. He worked on a specific application’s programming language and was asked to fix all the bugs. After presenting the people in charge a choice between rebuilding on the latest software version (3 months) or patching the existing version (9 months), they chose the 9 months. It was not the right approach because of all the new bugs that were found which took longer to fix based on that decision. A consultant may have to present options and make a recommendation, but it is the customer who makes the decision on what is to be done. If a consultant feels like it is the wrong approach or not in their best interest and they are empowered to do so, they can decline the project. Does a consultant need to bring a deep expertise in one or more areas into the role, or are there other qualities one might possess that can make up for this? It’s ok to not be as deep, but you must be willing to ramp up to meet or exceed the expectations of the employer. “A lot of people can do the technical work. Can you talk to the people in the business in a way that represents their role in the organization? Talking to a CFO is totally different than talking to an application owner and totally different than talking to an infrastructure engineer or software engineer. That’s one of the biggest things…understanding how to take what you know and interpret it to what you need out of that individual role and convey it in a way that matters to them and a way that they can digest and actually comprehend. It’s a hard art…and I’ve been working on that for a very, very, very long time. It took being placed in a n
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