Your mental health is more important than money.
Why do I say this? I worked with a client as a consultant who was just incapable of doing their job. That’s why I was there. They didn’t want to do anything to move the needle toward success. Not sharing information, not adding me so I could use the application, nothing.
Weeks went by when I tried to do other things to show value, but without critical access, I couldn’t do the most important things. I felt frustrated that I wasn’t able to do my job. I was given another job and in the course of interviewing someone, I found a serious security vulnerability that no one knew about. I told my supervisor and they told the appropriate person and I was told that I might have saved the company a $10 million dollar fine if it has been discovered. So I guess I paid my salary?
As a consultant, one of the things that you often wonder about is the value of what you are bringing to the table. I try to overdeliver, but it is only a benefit if the customer views it that way. This means that I have to find what the customer values, and do that not what I think brings value to a company.
A fair amount of IT is about how people perceive things, not how things are themselves. Since most people don’t understand IT, the perception is the reality for most customers. Many times you can provide a solid solution, but if they don’t feel good about it, they don’t/won’t use it.
This means that consultants are cheerleaders as much as technical people. They find a possible solution and then overcome objections and inertia and help people become excited about using it. I think finding people’s pain points and addressing that is the most effective way to get people excited about using something.
Now the point about mental health is this. People have to feel good about who they interact with and what they do on a daily basis. If you don’t feel that way, then no amount of money is worth what you are doing. Either change your attitude or your job.