Contract Work

The Silent Assassin

For those of you that have worked contracts, what have they been like? I have stayed away from contract jobs, even if contract to hire because I like job security but I am getting the urge to try this contract and contract to hire because the pay would be worth it... $25 per hour as a desktop technician for a 6-12 month contract.

What was the deciding factor in if you took a contract, money, career advancement/exposure, or just a change of scenery?

RockinRobin

Wow! That's a GREAT salary! Better jump on it!

kurosaki00

For IN/KY area, thats pretty good. The way I see is... if longer than 6 months, I would consider it. Look at your expenses, benefits and so on and see if it's worth it.

BlackBeret

I hate the lack of stability, even though we end up getting extended every year, I wonder when a new company comes in if they'll keep me, or I'll be jobless with a family to take care of. Most of the companies pay well enough that I'm still doing it. Something else I noticed with contract jobs is they tend to be more relaxed on their hiring. The company I'm with now figures that if you have the certs, they can teach you what they want you to know. The issue is I work with a bunch of test dumping idiots....

GForce75

BlackBeret wrote: »

I hate the lack of stability, even though we end up getting extended every year, I wonder when a new company comes in if they'll keep me, or I'll be jobless with a family to take care of. Most of the companies pay well enough that I'm still doing it. Something else I noticed with contract jobs is they tend to be more relaxed on their hiring. The company I'm with now figures that if you have the certs, they can teach you what they want you to know. The issue is I work with a bunch of test dumping idiots....

Hey bro! Anyways, seeing contractors constantly on military bases... it's like what you said. The contracts can suddenly be dropped and I have known people who went from making 150k a year to 40k and lost their house and everything due to the bills they had. It's great money, but contracting is good if you have no bills and backup savings, willing to move around, and have little to no family (stressor). I want to go GS after hitting 20 military time.

gespenstern

I personally prefer contracting jobs because of change and challenge, new clients, new projects. Working for the same company for a long time becomes pretty boring in the end and you are limited to what your company buys and does. However, it will probably be a good thing when I get old but still I become bored and just lose any motivation to work hard and basically have to leave in order to feel alive.

Plus, I love situation when companies hire me to solve difficult problems that their own FTEs aren't capable to solve, it feeds my ego well when I show up and fix the issue that lasted for months if not years and nobody was able to solve it.

But I consider now no less than $70/hour for regular hours. And 6 months is kind of short. And it depends on how many hours you can bill them, they may have a limitation say no more than 30 hours/week, that would suck, unless you have another contract to fill the gap. But if you can, plus, there are 1.5x or 2x pay for overtime hours, that's great.

And yeah, you have to be a hard worker and love what you do. If you hate your job -- full time position is your best bet.

Chitownjedi

Contracting work is just fine, there are pros and cons to each situation.

If you are worried then start your own business and take your destiny into your own hands. Everything has risk--- contracts, fte, entrepreneurship.
Instead of being worried put time into creating a top notch portfolio of skills, brand yourself, and make sure you bring high quality value to businesses with solutions that will always be highly in-demand.

Consulting and Contracting personally gives me freedom to learn more about businesses and technologies as I see more. I network more, and I am coming to the conclusion that I would never be happy as a FTE under some generic "employeer" as I thrive in challenges, change, adapting, and growth. I would much rather operate my own company/business if I was going to commit to something "indefinitely"

There is nothing wrong with contract jobs. The more knowledge you have about the IT Market, and what business want, and the trends in IT employment the better you will feel about that situation.