A small senior layer shapes the engagement.
The consultancy model
Why do consultancies run pyramids?
Because the economics are excellent. A partner sells the engagement, a small senior layer designs it, and a wide base of junior staff delivers it at rates that fund the whole structure. Nobody is being dishonest; it is simply how the industry scales revenue.
The catch sits with the client: the judgement that was in the room when the work was sold is rarely in the room when the work is done, and the gap gets bridged with process, escalation and meetings.
Two structures
Process carries decisions between sales and delivery.
Judgement leaves the room after the sale.
The person in the meeting is the person in the codebase.
One delivery model scales headcount; the other keeps experienced judgment close to the work.
Draft quote · for Alec's approval
I can put a price on a day of engineering. I can't put one on the judgement that tells you which day matters. That is what clients are actually buying.
Alec Bennett · CTO, TBSCG
The inverted structure
What changes when the structure inverts?
Estimates get honest, because the person giving them is the person who has to live with them. Handoffs disappear, because there is nobody to hand off to. Problems get caught early, by someone who has met them before on another live platform.
Clients tend to notice it first in what stops happening: the re-explaining, the waiting, the surprises that used to arrive politely, in a status deck, three weeks late.
The engineering career
What does it mean for the people?
A senior-only bench is a statement about how engineers are valued. Nobody here is leverage on someone else's rate card. Engineers own outcomes end to end, work on live enterprise platforms rather than internal tooling, and are trusted with the judgement calls, which is the part of the job that builds twenty-year careers instead of two-year stints.
It also costs us something, said plainly and without regret: scale. A smaller bench that clients trust beats a bigger one they have to manage.
Draft quote · for Mark's approval
We don't sell hours, we sell people who have done this before. It changes every conversation we have, including the commercial ones.
Mark · TBSCG
Asked plainly
Frequently asked questions.
Who does the engineering work at TBSCG?
Senior engineers, directly. There is no junior delivery tier and no account layer between the client and the person building the platform.
Why do most consultancies work differently?
Pyramid economics: sell senior, staff junior, bill the difference. It scales revenue efficiently. It does not scale judgement.
Is TBSCG hiring engineers?
Always, for people who want to own outcomes end to end. No agencies and no recruiters; we assess engineering ourselves, over a conversation about real work.
Next step
We are always interested in engineers who work this way.
No agencies and no recruiters. Assessing engineering is our own trade, and we would rather do it ourselves, over a conversation about real work you have shipped.