IT Consulting - how to get a higher cut of bill rate?

Not going to happen at any large firm unless you become a partner. MAYBE if you bring in new business you could negotiate a cut but the whole point of a professional services firm (law, consulting, accounting, etc) is to pay the lowest possible ratio of your bill rate.

You don't pay the firm back when you are not staffed (and they still have to pay your salary, healthcare and all the overhead). Neither do you take unpaid vacation to take advantage of your 4-5 weeks vacation time. It all averages out, somehow.

Yeah. Bear in mind that there's a lot of risk and cost built into that billing rate- the risk that they can't hire you out. The fact that nobody pays their bills on time. A lot of administrativia.

My Dad struck out on his own as an independent CPA for a year. After dealing with all that craziness, he came back to his old firm.

In order to make more money, you have to take more risk.

You only get a big cut if you actually bring in the business (i.e. if you're a partner). That $200 covers so much more than your salary that the $60 that you get may actually be all that's left (allowing for a pretty fat partner cut, of course). MBB bill their analysts out at like $500,000 per year, but don't even pay then 20% of that. Once you climb the totem pole, though, you get a nice cut of everyone else's billings.

What if you do in fact bring in the business? Why can’t a consultant get paid a reasonable portion of the bill rate under a firms umbrella?

Are there consulting firms that allow you to bring in leads and don’t mind doing things in turn, like possibly negotiating the bill rate for you while still allowing you to take home a fair cut? 20-30% seems REALLY low.

thanks in advance, appreciate the reponses guys.

What's a "fair cut"? I'd have LOVED to bring home 20-30% of what I billed when I was consulting. It's just not going to happen unless you're a partner, and even if you are, there's a ton of overhead. Do you think you'd be getting even 50% of your bill rate if you were a solo consultant? Would you bring in enough business to keep you year round? What about liability if you get sued?

You think that's bad? I was being billed out at $350 per hour, and I was 100% utilized for the three months that I was there, and staffed on enough stuff to keep me fully utilized for the entire year at 45 hours per week. Thats 49 weeks * 45 hours * 350$/hour = $771,500.00 they would have made off my work. And my salary was 70K base plus a bonus of like 15K year end. I don't feel so bad quitting after three months now that I think about it. They still made over 150K off me those three months I was there.

If you actually can bring in business as a low-level person, you should have no trouble advancing to partner, and doing so quickly.

At the end of the day, if you're not happy with your cut of your billings, you can always go somewhere that will pay you more. And if nowhere will do that, you're more than free to set up your own shop and keep it all. The reason why people prefer to try to make partner is that doing it yourself makes it much harder to get business, plus you bear all the overhead yourself.

Thanks again for the advice everyone… I’m now looking at a couple of companies – Comsys and IQ Tech Pros (see here for example: www.iqtechpros.com/Freelance/Consulting_Jobs/Best_Solution.aspx) – that look like they pay closer to the rates that I’m looking for. Has anyone worked with either of them?