> "Why am I paying a consultant for something AI can do in 15 minutes?"
Tech consulting takes all kinds of forms. I've been doing it for a while. A lot of clients aren't thinking about time spent. A lot of clients have an in-house team that simply can't achieve something at all. Can't figure out how to do automated deployments, can't figure out their server OOM errors, can't figure out why a SQL query is slow. There is a huge swath of simply incapable teams. That's a whole class of opportunity potentially wiped out, I say potentially only because a lot of teams are so incapable that they still don't realize you can use an LLM to solve those kinds of problems.
And yes, every consultant loves to think they're getting paid for value, not time. Try telling a potential client that you're so much more skilled than their team, that you will finish the "200 hours" project in a single weekend, and that you would still like to bill 200 x market rate for it. Unless they are incredibly savvy, they will balk. If they are incredibly savvy, they probably don't have a shit eng team in the first place.
It's an interesting thought experiment, I have an existential disagreement with hourly tracking but that aside. Most agencies I know run on hourly rates. They are fundamental to all their calculations, all the way down to whether or not a single employee is profitable. But zero insight into whether that employee is necessary, enabling or valuable in other ways.
Many understand it puts you in the race to the bottom, and it maps really poorly to value, but it's the industry standard and I think companies really struggle to imagine alternative ways of organising their deals.
> "Why am I paying a consultant for something AI can do in 15 minutes?"
Tech consulting takes all kinds of forms. I've been doing it for a while. A lot of clients aren't thinking about time spent. A lot of clients have an in-house team that simply can't achieve something at all. Can't figure out how to do automated deployments, can't figure out their server OOM errors, can't figure out why a SQL query is slow. There is a huge swath of simply incapable teams. That's a whole class of opportunity potentially wiped out, I say potentially only because a lot of teams are so incapable that they still don't realize you can use an LLM to solve those kinds of problems.
And yes, every consultant loves to think they're getting paid for value, not time. Try telling a potential client that you're so much more skilled than their team, that you will finish the "200 hours" project in a single weekend, and that you would still like to bill 200 x market rate for it. Unless they are incredibly savvy, they will balk. If they are incredibly savvy, they probably don't have a shit eng team in the first place.
It's an interesting thought experiment, I have an existential disagreement with hourly tracking but that aside. Most agencies I know run on hourly rates. They are fundamental to all their calculations, all the way down to whether or not a single employee is profitable. But zero insight into whether that employee is necessary, enabling or valuable in other ways.
Many understand it puts you in the race to the bottom, and it maps really poorly to value, but it's the industry standard and I think companies really struggle to imagine alternative ways of organising their deals.
"Generative AI isn't making expertise less valuable. It's exposing the flaws in pricing knowledge work by time rather than outcomes."
Interestingly using AI is priced by tokens rather than outcomes.