>>>>>>I'm interested to hear stories from consultants about when they realized the time was right to go out on their own.
>>>>>
>>>>>In my case I worked for a guy who was a consultant for 3 years and was his ONLY employee. During that time I learned how he went about handling the business side of running a company. I already had 10+ years of programming experience when I met him and had worked for small and large organziations in the past. After working for him for several years I took another position somewhere else for a few months, then stumbled across a 'tele-commute' gig - so I started that and never looked back. The 3 years I spent sharing a tiny office with the consultant has proved to be quite handy.
>>>>
>>>>That is my major roadblock - I have no idea where to start to learn the business end of things.
>>>
>>>Well, at lot of it is just common sense and knowing how to properly communicate with someone. Any books you can dig up on running a small biz is good - and check out your local Chamber of Commerce.
>>>
>>>>I'm starting to get really sick of working at places that are more about politics than good work. I feel that where I'm at now, my good suggestions and ideas are ignored and the only reason I can think of this happening is because possibly people are threatened. They don't care that I can go home and exploit a security vulnerability that I have been complaining about for 2 years to post stuff to their GL. They don't care that the website runs like crap and nobody wants to use it. They just don't want to accept anything as less than a huge success, and put on the blinders about the stuff that needs to be fixed.
>>>>
>>>>I'm getting really tired of taking orders from business people who have no business telling me specifically how to do my job.
>>>
>>>hahaha. - one thing to keep in mind. When you're in biz for yourself, suddenly EVERYONE of your clients your boss.
>>
>>I have no problem working with clients and end users, and I really do enjoy my relationship with them. I pride myself on not only being an IT resource, but also a friendly person. The problem I do have is when my boss basically wants me to make every single code change on paper before I make it in code. Most of my work involves learning on the job and I am unable to just sit down and tell them exactly how I am going to do the code change before actually do it and experimenting with it.
>
>
>That is a real bummer. He is stuck in old school application development. It may have made sense in the old days when it took 24 hours to get a trial run of code back from a main frame but he should also think about how long it took to complete projects. Too often the development time outlasted the users who wrote the specs.
>
>Maybe you an convince your boss that using the prototype development method along with good version control tools greatly enhances creativity and speeds up the development process. The many prototype iterations involve the end users who then have ownership in the finished product. With a good working relationship with end users (which you have) they will appreciate the concept and overlook the fact that they get to see all of your deveopment miscues.
>
>Just watch out for feature creep in this method, especially if you bid fixed price. BTW, there are a lot more developers than you think that do fixed price. GURU's can afford to shun the concept and perhaps, since I am no millionaire, I should too .
>
>I think I am up to, in $.02 increments, about a dime.
>
>Ken

I've tried to discuss methodologies several times, but always get the mightly "we'll look into it" response. There is a contract developer that works part-time for us, and he keeps coming over to me raging about how Dilbert-like this environment is.