Having scratched a living from a career in IT as a 'consultant' for many years, I'm occasionally asked for my advice on consultancy, although not as often as I'd like, and my advice is generally ignored. I usually tell people that, as IT Consultants, they should specialize in topic areas that are boring but important. It is a principle that has stood me in good stead throughout my career, and has even allowed me to do some pretty exciting things in IT.

IT people generally want to make a living through becoming experts in glamorous topics involving hot technologies. They assume that this is the road to success. You only have to cast your eyes down the list of MVP categories to see the point; the hot topics and exciting technologies predominate. There is a fantasy, probably gleaned from Hollywood, that an IT consultant is a figure of prestige and glamour, fast cars and expensive watches. She, or he, would be an expert on Ruby on rails, NoSQL, Scala and the like, familiar with NodeJS and AngularJS. The truth is more prosaic.

Consultants are hired for their expertise, but it is usually the sort of expertise that is actively repellent to permanent staff in organizations. Whereas, at PASS, you can fill a room with a topic such as Hekaton, you will empty it with a topic such as regulatory compliance, configuration management, database testing, disaster recovery, or data security. These topics form part of a long list that are absolutely essential to the success of corporate software projects, but which are generally unpopular with the average IT worker.

When a software project is confronted with reality, which is usually when it gets into serious trouble, or when a company discovers its IT infrastructure is flawed, then that company suddenly needs the sort of 'boring' expertise, they need it in a hurry, and are likely to pay well to get it.

As a consultant, you can thrive by being in a position to provide precisely this sort of 'boring' expertise.

Phil Factor.