[consulting] A few basic questions about drupal consulting

[Nick Lewis]

walterbyrd wrote:
> If I ever learn enough about drupal, I might give it a try. Could anybody
> here answer a few basic questions:
>
> 1- In the USA, about how much does a drupal consultant charge, what is
> reasonable range? 
>   
Fees vary. Personally, I've never heard of an experienced consultant 
working for under $50.00 an hour (except in cases where their services 
are offered pro-bono, of course....). In some cases $150.00+ an hour 
might be reasonable. It depends on the objectives, timeframe, additional 
labor costs, and the amount of skills/knowledge the consultant can bring 
to the table. Its also worth noting that in some cases, consultants 
charge a flat rate. However, that's increasingly becoming rare.
> 2- Is foriegn competition an issue?
>   
No. Drupal consultants understand that their number one priority is 
keeping drupal competitive, and ahead of the game. Regardless of the 
source of conflict, infighting among the community is widely understood 
to be counter productive to this end. Not to mention, there is a 
shortage of experienced drupal developers and consultants, so any new 
ones that pop up are going to be viewed as "much needed help", not 
"competition". The only "competition" that ruffles our feathers are 
outsourced shops which claim to do drupal development, yet apparently 
don't know the first thing about how drupal works.
> 3- What skills, other than drupal, does a typical drupal consultant posses?
> MySQL, PHP, HTML, CSS, Linux?
>   
One couldn't be able to consistently get the job done if they didn't 
have a fair background in CSS/html/php/mysql -- so I'd consider those 
above skills a bare minimum. Really, what you are looking for is a 
specialization in drupal. I've seen numerous botched jobs done by expert 
php programmers who neither understood how the various parts of the core 
work together, nor where to look for the hundreds of 3rd party modules 
that were already coded for them.  

In addition to the skills you listed, I'd tack on interface design, 
version control, instructional writing,  and bug tracking.

Strong communication skills a must.

Best,
Nick Lewis
http://www.nicklewis.org
>
>