I think there is more learning for yourself when you are a part of the company, than working as an independent consultant. What are your thoughts on this? How has been your experience so far?

Are you talking about dedicated time to learn as part of the working week or just more free time to self study? I've worked for 4 NetSuite partners and an end user, never independant. My experience has been, despite the promises of time to study, and I believe this is said in good faith, it never materialises. Add to this the fact I'm usually the most experienced dev/ ns dev, it's rare for me to have a moment to think as I tend to pick up the lion's share of work and known for being quick k to deliver solutions. This does however, sometimes lead to me spending my own time investigating different approaches, and trying to get to grips with modules I'm less familiar with. (yes n/query I am still talking about you... 😄 ) I learn much better form doing than reading though so it's kind of a given that I need to tinker 🙂

Regardless of whether an individual is an independent consultant or part of the team, one needs to dedicate time to learn / try new things out. For a fresher / less experienced person being in a team can boost the learning curve as one might get to see what others are doing. But eventually when a person becomes more experienced working in a team will not matter as much specially if the company provides a similar kind of task (where one has to build some logic but still work on the similar module/features) as the team will also keep on working the same kind of thing. IMO at that point changing the company or being a consultant can provide more learning opportunities. Or one can just learn on your own free time.

Totally depends on the employer. I've worked at companies where solution design was pretty much done for me. I've worked at companies where there was no formal requirements gathering at all. I learned the least when the solution design was done for me.

I think it's much more about the project than the company. Larger enterprise projects are longer, more complex, more stressful, and more painful. But on a huge 18-month (or more) project, you're probably going to learn way more (at least as a general rule) than six small 3 month projects. Probably harder to get onto huge projects as an independent though since there's no way you can handle it on your own and the implementation company/team that was hired may not want you there versus their own people.

I've never worked for a partner that hasn't encouraged you to learn more about netsuite.

"encouraged" absolutely, given time to investigate / study, not so much in my case. Wondering if I misunderstood the original question though looking at other responses.🤣

I was implying that time was given too if needed. I can see it going the other way just as easily though.

Companies never ending requirements doesn't let you study even though they hold multiple workshops/classes to upskill their employees. One has to manage and make time on their own.

there's some truth to that too

Wow, I am glad to know about your experiences, Thank you for writing those. Here is my experience, working as a team in a company facilitates learning from peers/colleagues, and lets you understand other’s perspectives as well, due to which good things become better, eg: a code, a logic or a solution, Working as independent I have to figure out all by myself, it’s more like a furnace sometimes. Although I try to choose and implement optimised solutions that don’t have any side effects, sometimes I am sceptical that, I don’t know if there is something left, I didn’t consider. That is when I remember the team. By learning, I just meant learning and growing in the field, not ‘worthless’ certifications 😄 (I am certifived though, nothing changed ), In independent contracting, I limit myself to things that I can feel like this can happen, I don’t want to waste time and say, that was a bad thing that’s not. In the company, I was thrown work, which I didn’t think was possible at the start but did it anyway, that might also be due to a lack of knowledge. I might not be able to articulate it well enough, but I have learned one thing from your experiences: I have found more time aside from work. More time more learning and more growth.