This sounds somewhat familiar, though I approached what I saw a different way, with different outcome.
I'm getting out of independent technical consulting (just as soon as I find the right dotcom/startup employer), because the various business burdens, separate from the actual technical expertise I provide, kept increasing, and I could no longer cost-justify the burdens.
One kind of burden is regulatory compliances, and my favorite example is when a client needed me to be able to check a box in a compliance-tracking system Web form, attesting something like "I have an understanding of the FAR" document. I'm by-the-book about such things, so I put tech work on hold, dug in, and started reading. The FAR is actually not bad, pretty accessible, and I imagine a lot of serious straight-shooter accountant types put a lot of work into this, as part of making things run well, and I respect that immensely, and am glad they do that. But the current FAR PDF file is approx. 2,000 pages, and my expertise is in software. It took me a solid person-week to read through, so that I could possibly claim to have an understanding of it. Once I was done, at the time, I decided not to invoice those hours.
(On some later burdens, I had learned from this, and talked with the clients. Some burdens the client could help with, and some not.)
I agree with the need for such regulations and processes, but these and other burdens seemed to keep increasing, one of the architecture projects that would've made up for the overhead didn't seem to be coming through, and the burdens no longer made financial/personal sense for my particular one-person business. So, when a last straw burden was added (though reasonable, from a regulatory perspective), amidst some reorg on the parent contracts, I had to terminate a couple contracts for very positive projects that I'd been proud to be working on.
I'm getting out of independent technical consulting (just as soon as I find the right dotcom/startup employer), because the various business burdens, separate from the actual technical expertise I provide, kept increasing, and I could no longer cost-justify the burdens.
One kind of burden is regulatory compliances, and my favorite example is when a client needed me to be able to check a box in a compliance-tracking system Web form, attesting something like "I have an understanding of the FAR" document. I'm by-the-book about such things, so I put tech work on hold, dug in, and started reading. The FAR is actually not bad, pretty accessible, and I imagine a lot of serious straight-shooter accountant types put a lot of work into this, as part of making things run well, and I respect that immensely, and am glad they do that. But the current FAR PDF file is approx. 2,000 pages, and my expertise is in software. It took me a solid person-week to read through, so that I could possibly claim to have an understanding of it. Once I was done, at the time, I decided not to invoice those hours.
(On some later burdens, I had learned from this, and talked with the clients. Some burdens the client could help with, and some not.)
I agree with the need for such regulations and processes, but these and other burdens seemed to keep increasing, one of the architecture projects that would've made up for the overhead didn't seem to be coming through, and the burdens no longer made financial/personal sense for my particular one-person business. So, when a last straw burden was added (though reasonable, from a regulatory perspective), amidst some reorg on the parent contracts, I had to terminate a couple contracts for very positive projects that I'd been proud to be working on.