I spent about 16 years in consulting. Building practices, leading delivery teams, flying to client sites, presenting architectures, and handing over solutions. Then I moved to industry. Specifically, to a large global pharmaceutical company, leading IIoT architecture from the inside.
And honestly, it’s a completely different game.
I don’t mean the technology changes. OPC UA is still OPC UA. MQTT is still MQTT. What changes is everything around the technology. The pace, the accountability, the politics, the emotions.
So here’s what I’ve learned after a few years sitting on the other side.
1. You Stop Leaving
In consulting, you show up, do the work, deliver, and eventually move on to the next client. There’s always a fresh start around the corner.
In industry, there’s no “next client.” You live with your decisions. That architecture you designed? You’re still maintaining it two years later. That workaround you accepted under pressure? It’s now your daily headache.
This changes how you think. You become much more careful, sometimes slower, because you know you’ll be the one cleaning up the mess.
2. You Lose the “Expert Halo”
In consulting, when you walk into a room, people listen. You’re the external expert. You flew in. You have a fancy slide deck. There’s a built-in authority that comes with being an outsider.
In industry, you’re just another colleague. Nobody cares that you’ve done this 20 times before. They care about whether you understand their plant, their process, their constraints. And that takes time to earn.
For me, this was humbling. I went from being the person everyone looked to for answers, to the person who had to ask a lot of questions before anyone trusted my input.
3. The Pace Is Different (Not Slower, Just Different)
People in consulting often assume industry moves slowly. That’s not quite right.
Industry moves carefully. There are validation requirements, cybersecurity reviews, change control processes, GxP compliance gates. In pharma, you don’t just deploy something because it works. You deploy it because it’s proven, documented, and approved.
So the pace is not slow. It’s deliberate. And once you understand why, you actually start to appreciate it. I’ve seen too many consulting projects rush to go-live and leave the client with a fragile system.
4. Politics Hit Different
In consulting, organizational politics exist, but they are often easier to navigate. Since consultants usually work on temporary engagements, they are less tied to long-term internal structures and dynamics.
In industry roles, politics are much more embedded in day-to-day operations. Budget planning, headcount discussions, cross-functional priorities, and long-standing vendor relationships all play a role in how decisions are made. These factors cannot really be avoided, so learning how to work within them becomes important.
For me, this was one of the biggest adjustments. In consulting, most of my attention could stay on the technical solution itself. In industry, technical expertise is still important, but it is only part of the work. Alignment across teams, influencing stakeholders, and maintaining patience are just as critical for making progress.
5. You Actually See the Impact
This is the best part. And I mean it.
In consulting, you deliver something and move on. You rarely see how it performs over time. You don’t see the operator using your dashboard every morning. You don’t see the maintenance team catching a failure before it happens because of the alerting system you designed.
In industry, you see all of it. You walk the plant floor. You talk to the people using the system. You watch it evolve. And when something works, really works, it feels different. It feels real.
That moment when a site engineer says, “This actually helped us,” is worth more than any consulting milestone payment.
6. You Realize How Much Consulting Misses
This one might be unpopular, but I’ll say it anyway.
When I was in consulting, I thought we understood our clients deeply. We did workshops, interviews, assessments. We produced beautiful documents.
But from the inside, I now see how much we missed. The informal processes, the tribal knowledge, the real reasons certain decisions were made. Things that don’t show up in a workshop. Things people don’t tell consultants because they don’t trust them enough yet, or because they don’t even realize it’s important.
This doesn’t mean consulting is bad. It means there’s a gap. And the best consultants I’ve worked with, both as a peer and now as a client, are the ones who stay long enough and listen hard enough to close that gap.
7. Your Definition of Success Changes
In consulting, success is often tied to deliverables, timelines, and contract milestones. Did we finish on time? Did the client sign off?
In industry, success is adoption. Did people actually use what we built? Did it survive the first year? Did it scale to a second site? Did it reduce manual work or improve data quality?
I’ve seen plenty of “successful” consulting projects that delivered on time but were abandoned six months later. From the inside, you measure success very differently.
So, Would I Go Back?
Honestly, I miss some things about consulting. The variety, the pace, the constant learning from different industries and problems.
But I wouldn’t trade what I have now. Being embedded in a real operation, seeing the full lifecycle, understanding the true complexity of manufacturing at scale. That perspective is something consulting never fully gave me.
If you’re in consulting and thinking about making the switch, my advice is simple. Do it with your eyes open. Be ready to unlearn some habits. And be patient with yourself, because the first year is basically a reset.
And if you’re in industry wondering what consultants are really thinking when they show up at your site, well, now you know. We were doing our best. We just didn’t always have the full picture.
Leave a Comment