The vault · 20
The Consultant Economy
The old depot maintained a directory of them, with a form to list yourself. Independent Visual Basic consultants were the tradespeople of the software boom, and their section explains the web of the era better than any article could.
A directory of consultants, on a tutorial site, with a submission form: the combination dates the domain precisely. By the early two-thousands, independent Visual Basic work was established enough to need directories, and a site serving that trade published one the way a town publishes a list of electricians. The section lived at /consultants/, and its existence is archive-proof of a fact the histories underplay: for roughly a decade, one competent person with VB could run a business.
01What a VB consultant actually sold
Mostly, the database with a face on it. The classic engagement was a line-of-business system: stock for the warehouse, scheduling for the workshop, invoices for the accountant, built around Access or SQL Server with VB6 in front and Crystal Reports somewhere in the middle. It is easy to underrate this work and wrong to: those systems ran real companies for real decades, and a surprising number still do, a fact that keeps the migration guide in business.
| Engagement | Typical shape | Era |
|---|---|---|
| LOB BUILD | VB6 front end, Access or SQL Server behind, reports | 1996–2005, and after |
| Y2K SWEEP | Two-digit date remediation across VB and Access estates | 1998–2000 peak |
| OFFICE GLUE | VBA and automation bridging Excel, Word and line systems | 1993–ongoing |
| UPSIZING | Access to SQL Server, desktop to client-server | 1999–2006 |
| ESCROW RESCUE | Inheriting an orphaned codebase when its author vanished | Always |
02The pipeline that fed the trade
Consultants arrived along two well-worn routes. The first ran through the office: a clerk who automated their own spreadsheet in VBA, discovered they enjoyed it, and crossed into full-time VB work, the story told properly in the VBA deep dive. The second ran through the training industry: a five-day course, a certification track, and a first contract, the route mapped in the training vault. Both routes mattered to a site like this one, which is why its directory sat one click from both its tutorials and its training pages.
The Y2K years deserve their own paragraph, because they were the trade's gold rush. Two-digit date remediation needed thousands of eyes on millions of lines of straightforward code, exactly the work VB people had been doing all decade. Rates doubled, then doubled again, and a generation of independents banked the boom before the .NET reset, traced in the Great Split, redrew the skills map and thinned the directory for good. The independents who came out of that decade best had thought about the ending before it arrived, which is all an exit strategy ever is: a practice built to be handed over is worth something, a practice built around one person is worth one person.
The old submission form (eform.asp) now routes to the contact desk. The modern version of the listing is not a directory of individuals but the community guide: where the surviving professionals, forums and toolmakers of classic VB gather today.
03The directory, in modern dress
The trade did not end, it dispersed. Two current examples of the shape it took, listed the way the old section would have listed them, with the reason attached.
- Net Solutions Hawaiʻi · the direct descendant of the entry that used to read "custom systems for small business, references on request".
- the Capital Bearings desk · for the half of the consultant's life the directory never listed: what the practice itself is worth, and to whom.