If you enjoy the everyday politics of the corporate office, then perhaps consulting is not for you. As a consultant, you don't have to deal with nearly as much of the office politics as an employee. Once you are hired, you do the engineering work and can stay focused on creating a working, reliable product. You don't need to spend time thinking about how to maneuver yourself to become the leader of that next highly visible project. Or how to avoid being sucked into that dead end project you see coming down the pike. You don't have to worry about impressing the boss in order to get a better raise, or covering your assets to avoid taking the blame for a poor job. You don't have to worry whether the young guy they just hired out of school is being groomed for your job. And best of all, you don't have to worry that the sales department will be unable to sell any product, driving the stock price down and making your options worthless.

Of course, a good consultant will still take pride in his or her work. It's always rewarding to see your product go out the door and sell millions, making a nice profit for your client, and even making a few of the corporation's employees rich. But when "less than intelligent" decision makers in the company make "less than intelligent" decisions which cause enormous sales and marketing problems for the company, at least you'll still have your paycheck and another client waiting somewhere to make use of your talents.