When you are in IT you have nothing to do with the product. You don’t actually make what the company makes, you make and/or maintain software. The rest of the company does what the company does and you do something else that they don’t understand or like. If anything, you cost them their jobs by automating their tasks, so they don’t like you. Typically you are tolerated as (at best) a way to save the company some money, but more likely as a necessary evil.
When you are a consultant you are the product. You don’t make the product, you are it. You’d think that makes you valuable, but it actually doesn’t. The work you do for clients isn’t the product – in that regard you are essentially a temporary part of IT. Your time itself is the product. To make it worse, clients often dislike you, viewing you as an uncaring mercenary, or as someone out for their job. More commonly clients like but distrust you, expecting that you can’t be worth the rate your company charges for your time.
But working for an ISV you are actually making the product. You are actually the assembly line worker, the engineer, the craftsman. There’s a certain pride to actually doing what the company does that you just don’t get in IT or consulting. However, you get the same respect (in my experience) as an assembly line worker; which is to say not a whole lot. Deadlines are often shorter and harder than in IT or consulting, and what you do or don’t do directly affects the viability of the company and your job.
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