Contract or full time? Which role?

Drakeisa

Hello everyone,

I recieved two job offers and was wondering which one you think is better and why.

Job 1 is a full time role and the salary is 75k a year. You will be in a msp supporting smb customers.


Job 2 is a contract role - you will be in a large enterprise doing project based work and migrating resources to the cloud. It is a 6 month contract with no extensions and the daily rate is $ 475 a day.

TheFORCE

It depends on what you want to do. Do you want a FT permanent job with no worries and benefits or do you want to increase your experience by getting contract job every 6 months? It will also depend on your situation, do you have family, house or bills that you have to support or do you have no financial worries and you will not get affected by a 6 month job. Also that $475 a day you have to consider how much you have to pay for your own insurance and how much for your 401k or ROTH if you have one.

scaredoftests

Job 1, because it is perm.

jeremywatts2005

Perm almost always trumps contracts with a few exceptions. Take the perm and run. When the market was better you could jump every 6 months, eventually though you will run out of contracts and be sitting on the sidelines for awhile. That is why I had to go to a different field. I kept contracting early on in my career and eventually I could not find the next tech job. Perm gives you time to build your experience, certs, degree and stay for over a year. Then look for a higher paying job.

joelsfood

Depends on your life situation, which you think will advance your career more, etc. One note I'd add though, is that "perm" when working for an MSP can be misleading. If they don't have the sales to keep a steady flow of work (ie, clients don't renew contracts, or don't agree to new projects to renew systems and keep putting work into the queue), then perm quickly turns into being shown the door. So just bear that in mind.

636-555-3226

Can't tell you what to do, but I am old school and like full time permanent jobs. I'm not a fan of IT contracting even though it seems to be the way everything works nowadays. I still really don't understand the concept of contracting out work since it's usually more expensive than just hiring someone full-time and even after the contract is over there's still a need for that skillset to stick around.

dave330i

What do you want to do? SMB or Enterprise? Pick the one that will further your career.

DoubleNNs

$475 a day at 40 hour weeks is roughly 120K. In your 6 month contract you'll make almost as much as you would (base compensation) in a full year at the permanent position.

Additionally, I personally think cloud is more exciting. It is also a hot skill to have on a resume at the moment and (at least int he US) would make it very easy for you to land a position directly following the contract's end.

In this situation I think it depends on which set of job duties you find more interesting, whether you value job security more or base pay more, whether you think you need elaborate benefits at the moment (in the US everyone is supposed to have health insurance, but on contracts you're often offered the lowest possible benefits just so that the contracting company can say they offered it), and whether you think you'll easily be able to land a new role after the contract (depends on your skills, certifications, and work experience).

LeBroke

Contract. If the jobs are similar and the contract pays only marginally more (i.e. 20% more), it's better to take the perm job.

In this case? You're making about 65% more money at the contract job. Plus, it seems like much better experience.

SMB, you'll most likely be dealing with Windows support, AD, a little VMware, and some helpdesk. In the second role, you'll most likely be dealing with AWS/Azure (unless by cloud they mean VPSs at a traditional data centre). It's much more in-demand right now, and will only get bigger, at least for the next few years. I'm not sure if you're a Linux guy, a Windows guy, or both, but there's much more demand for Linux right now as well (if only because most people learn/get experience with Windows at the beginning of their career, so there's more supply).

Take the money from the second job, put it on your resume a 1-2 months before you finish, and start looking a month or so before your contract expires.

You might get a way better permanent job offer too.