I'm a consultant right now after doing software engineering for almost two decades. I owned a lot of my code before which got me to appreciate caring for maintainability.
I generally work as an advisor rather than a coder but if I do end up coding, one of my primary goals when working for a client is ensuring the code is high quality, maintainable, self-documenting and that any workarounds and cut corners are clearly marked as such and highlighted to the client.
You can just do this because you want to be proud of your work. Because you don't want to hate your life. Because you didn't spend 18 years of your life learning to end up writing unreliable diarrheas just to save yourself 30 mins a week.
And those dev shops in eastern Europe / asia are not consultancies. They're freelancing agencies with a sales pitch. Consulting implies expertise.
I generally work as an advisor rather than a coder but if I do end up coding, one of my primary goals when working for a client is ensuring the code is high quality, maintainable, self-documenting and that any workarounds and cut corners are clearly marked as such and highlighted to the client.
You can just do this because you want to be proud of your work. Because you don't want to hate your life. Because you didn't spend 18 years of your life learning to end up writing unreliable diarrheas just to save yourself 30 mins a week.
And those dev shops in eastern Europe / asia are not consultancies. They're freelancing agencies with a sales pitch. Consulting implies expertise.