Dinerman said he has not seen more competition from fellow independents, but he is "seeing lots of layoffs."

"From the people that I spoken to that have lost positions, I have seen very few of them try to strike out on their own. A lot of them want to be told what to do," he said. They don't want to function as their own sales and accounting department, he said.

Because his overhead is low, Dinerman says he can charge less than the larger IT consulting firms. He enjoys the independence and says that "if you are going to make that transition [to self employment], you need to have business skills and personality along with it, because without those you are going to strike out."