Comment by Cthulhu_

Hello, I'm a consultant. In practice it's just a fancy word for temps. Company hsa money and needs some engineers but don't want to hire or take up the burden of employment, and / or needs some fresh bodies to wake up their in-house developers / make them fear for their own jobs because they've stagnated, they call us.

But we're a relatively small consultancy (think hundreds instead of tens of thousands like the bigger players), so it's a bit more refined. We do have decent developers, but the issue with consultancy on that level is they're too smart for their own good, they will suggest an over-engineered solution that can't be maintained by anyone BUT these consultants and / or hired self-employed people. It's a weird fallacy, a weird rotating door of consultants and cycles of development where every 10 or so years they do a full rearchitecture / rebuild of their back-ends, while meanwhile some people just sit and maintain the existing - and working - core systems.

It's massively wasteful. But it usually pays better than a regular in-house developer, and it's lower risk than going self-employed because you still work for an employer who pays you per month. I'm just salty that said employer creams off 2/3rds of my hourly rate.