Consultants versus Employees

Some key differences:

• Consultants get paid more per hour.
• Consultants can be let go without a lot of justification and paperwork.
• Employees get benefits, consultants have to get their own.
• Consultants get to (legally) work for multiple organizations.
• Employees have to worry about dealing with organization politics for furthering their career.
• Consultants are expected to be specialized and be very, very good at what they do. Not every employee needs to be best in class in what they do, they need to demonstrate general management skills and depend on collaboration/teamwork.
• Employees can be rewarded in ways consultants can't: stock options, bonuses, recognition, paid vacations etc.
  

Otherwise, they seem to be very similar:

• Both have to worry about contract/employment renewals and finding their next gig. Apart from some exceptions, those days of doing the same job lifelong are gone.
• Both have to continuously provide value: immediate and long term.
• Both have to continuously develop skills to stay current with their chosen areas of interest.
• Both have to show entrepreneurial behavior to make a difference and to move to the next level.

At some level, this could be a pedantic argument. The point here is, employees have a lot to gain by learning from what consultants do to be successful. For certain tasks, the lines between them blur and are irrelevant.