Re: Is "GWT Consulting" a viable career path?

[RyanZA]

Not claiming to be an expert here, but from my experience GWT consulting is probably not viable. This would depend on if you have contacts/inroads into companies already using GWT. You'd probably just be better off going with plain Java consulting which is an enormous market, and it really comes down to the same thing: writing Java code.

Alternatively, you can develop some B2B systems in GWT, and then sell customized solutions of it to companies. Customizing a B2B GWT app would probably be the 1 week to 3 months timeframe. Support for businesses may be more difficult as a 1 man shop though, but it depends on the webapp. Definitely should be more fun and personally stimulating than trudging away on some companies monster GWT business app all your life though!

Ryan

On Wednesday, February 13, 2013 8:18:18 PM UTC+2, frankwal...@gmail.com wrote:

Hi everyone.  I've been working with GWT for several years (since 1.5) at 2 different companies, building medium/large enterprise web applications.  I love working with GWT, but don't always love the "employee" lifestyle, having to worry about conserving the tiny amount of PTO I get whenever I want to take a day or two off, set working hours, pointless meetings, etc.  I also like the variety of switching projects every now and then.  Therefore, I'm toying with the idea of starting my own 1-man consulting company, ideally working on projects lasting somewhere between 1 week and 3 months.  

I know this is kind of off topic, but I figured this would be the perfect community to ask.  Has anyone else done something like this?  Is there a large enough market for shorter term GWT specialists, or are the types of projects that use GWT generally more complex/longer term projects?  If so, any advice on how to go about finding jobs would be awesome.  

Thanks!

[Glenn]

I learned GWT back at 1.2 or so to more easily put a web front end on my server side code.  I have fairly wide and deep experience in server-side and cloud technologies, but it's the GWT on my resume that keeps recruiters calling week after week, year after year.  I've taken several GWT jobs, including two work-from-home jobs lasting a couple years.  I've had to make an actual effort to steer towards server-side programming for a change.  It seems like a strong market for a one-man operation to me.

Good Luck,
Glenn

[frankwal...@gmail.com]

Thanks guys....all good points.