I've done mostly contract work because I liked the freedom when I was younger. Now I notice a lot of people my age have moved on to management or jobs "higher on the ladder" while I stress about the uncertainty of income when contracts end. I assume the lifestyle might suit people who are extraordinarily good networkers, but I feel mostly tired these days. My younger self didn't know about the fatigue the responsibility for a family brings.
In a fixed career you have a chance to build something up, while in contracting you're often back to square one with each new contract. You might have more experience, but you don't have the sort of trust and responsibility which you earn if you work long enough in a company or with the same group of people.
It's hard to find truly permanent jobs these days.
I think it's also biting companies in the long run, as I notice more and more graveyards of abandoned projects and services running without anybody present who was involved in building or setting up. But those costs don't seem as obvious to those in charge who'd rather not have to hire permanent workers.
And contracting in a high-paying field like software development is one thing. Contracting for low-skill labor through a marketplace like Uber, TaskRabbit, Handy, etc. provides even less opportunity for any sort of career development.
Exactly. I'm doing quite well, but I notice that the people remodelling my house make only half my hourly rate. One of them got injured on his motorbike and turns out not to have a disability insurance, because that insurance is way too expensive in his line of work.
What could be more alluring, living in a shipping container in one of the shanty slums most of Snow Crash's people live in or being one of the lucky few to live in a corporate enclave?
I'm just glad we're going to have the opportunity to live in a cyber-punk dystopia!!!
Read The Diamond Age afterward. It's not exactly a sequel, but all indications seem to show that it takes place in the same world, a couple decades later.
Approx 80-100 years according to Wikipedia [1]. Though no source is cited.
The world of Snow Crash, where a few corporations own the entire world with a very tiny government, is also the basis of the book Jennifer Government [2] by Max Barry.
I found that book a bit easier to read. Diamond Age, I can't get through it yet. Cryptonomicon, also by Neil Stephenson is on my list, as well as Neuromancer by Gibson.
The best kind of dystopia! Better than a fascist totalitarian surveillance state dystopia, anyway. Or at least it is for the people that can hack the cyber-stuff to get at the sweet cyber-juice inside.
I can't wait to get my first neuro-implant, and to crash my first 747 filled with telephone books into my brain.
> ...I notice more and more graveyards of abandoned projects and services running without anybody present who was involved in building or setting up.
I've seen this happen a lot in full-time-only shops. It's possible it happens more often in shops that lean heavily on contract work, but it happens everywhere.
It takes strong technical leadership to keep that sort of technical debt quantified and prioritized without killing productivity. Especially since it's generally a huge strategic issue, but not something that generally sinks a project, department, or company overnight. So ignorant or unscrupulous leadership can run the show for extended periods of time, get promoted, and not be held accountable for making a problem worse by ignoring it.
The IT department in my company is an example of the result of a totally outsourced organization. At the top you have a huge layer of well spoken, very personable people who "facilitate", "align" and call meetings. They have no technical knowledge. Then there are a few "architects" who sit in these meetings. The architects come up with a solution and then send the work to India. At the place the work is actually done the people have no idea why things are the way they are and they often do nonsensical stuff. The organization never learns anything because next time around it will be a different set of people working on the system. It's really bad. The overhead is enormous and even the simplest project need weeks of meetings, planning and budgeting.
But to the CEO it looks like a lean organization because the permanent headcount is so low. I bet they would be better off if they had a fixed staff of experienced people who actually know the systems they are working with.
I see this type of organization often. I wonder if there needs to be a deeper evaluation of the costs of delegation. Institutional knowledge becomes even more abstract when trained algorithms and their developers are in the mix.
I was sitting in yet another meeting the other day and started thinking...
We have two of our managers on this call, one of their managers, three of their engineers, and me. But I'm only there for some vague technical guidance. I don't even know the system/language they're working in.
That's 3 managers for 4 technical people, 1 of which is simply babysitting. So really that's 4 people making sure 3 people do the work right.
That's actually a quite good ratio:). When I deal with our IT, it's usually 1 or 2 line managers, 1 business analyst, 1 or 2 project managers and 2 architects. Double this up if two groups are involved. None of them is involved in doing the work. The work goes to India and then if you want to get the work done right you try to schedule night late meetings with the one or two people there and explain everything from scratch.
From the outside it looks like they have a rigorous process of estimating, evaluating, writing requirements and stuff but it's almost pure overhead.
Ugh, pure overhead, exactly... Apparently someone produces some technical looking but actually vague document every week as a result of these meetings. Some date is thrown out, and _something_ is always deployed by that date, albiet buggy and destined to get rolled back. Eventually, someone figures out that the implementation doesn't actually work at all, and we go back to the weekly meeting with the "new requirements", and repeat until the thing actually works in some semblance of the manner that we need -- or run out of time, scrap it, and move on to more pressing things.
Maybe I should try scheduling some late-night meetings with the senior guy... He's sharp as hell, but we never get too technical during the meetings because that would just confuse people.
I've been on projects where between the project managers, technical managers, and other managers... there are 9 people in the room...and I'm the only technical resource -- on the project.
Fortunately for me, those projects are few and far between these days, but, earlier on in my career, they were common and frequent.
Yup, at one place I worked, I got the epiphany that everything was going straight to hell when I realized during the hazy stupor of an interminable conference call that I was the only non-PM. There were 6 people on the call. I got out of there shortly thereafter.
It depends. If you can’t manage contracts well, you can’t run IT either.
This is why SaaS and other productized services are so valuable. Buying O365 or Salesforce by the drink is dramatically more efficient due to the fixed deliverable and scale.
"As an evolving program is continually changed, its complexity, reflecting deteriorating structure, increases unless work is done to maintain or reduce it." - Lehman.
The same is true with those old applications and services. They may have been running fine for years, but they are eventually going to have to be worked on.
The longer they wait, even though they are currently static, the more problematic they are going to be. They are going to break when something underneath them changes - and change is pretty inevitable. It's not just that they are going to break, the undocumented things built atop them are going to break.
I think you have captured technical contract work accurately.
In my experience the people I've met who only wanted to do contracting appreciated the clear specification of the work required, the lack of competition with other people in the office, and the simplicity of working when they wanted to and not working when they didn't want to. That contrasted with people who wanted to be full time because they were looking to evolve with the job or experience a wide array of roles. They were looking to "grow with the company" either in a technical leadership sort of way or a company leadership sort of way. The founder/entrepreneur is a sort of outlier in that they have some vision/idea of what they are trying to build and their world is wrapped around that rather than their career or monetary goals.
That is completely different than the rise of locally outsourced labor where a company hires a janitorial company who contracts out for janitors. At least in the Bay area you can pretty much contract out almost all of the non-technical stuff, from HR to building operation and security. I hadn't thought a whole lot about that until the Times article about janitorial staff as employees and as contractors. I cannot imagine (although I recognize it is possible) a contract janitor for ABC Janitorial being able to ask a line manager if there were programming tasks they could try at the company. Or to switch from janitorial to adminstrative assistant or security guard to sales. Sadly, I don't have access any more to the contract I signed when I hired a janitorial company for keeping the Blekko offices clean. Because now I am curious if there were in prohibitions in that contract that would have prevented me from hiring any of their contractors as employees.
I'm a contractor. Have been for six years. Why do you care about other people's titles? A title won't save you during a lay off.
A company can call me janitor as long as they pay my rate on time.
At the end of the day, the risk for you and your family is a lack of cash. A "permanent" job is anything but that (you think they'll keep you around if the company is headed South?)
Learn to negotiate better. Build a bigger savings. So that when you're in between jobs, burnt out, you can sit back for a bit and calculate your next move(s).
I worked contract for a while in NYC. The pay was great but the contract was abruptly terminated with just a few days notice about a year or so in. I landed on my feet but don't think I'd go contract again because as a single individual things can get pretty stressful, as you mentioned.
It seems to work pretty nicely, however, if you have a partner that has a stable, full-time gig while you work contract. The full-time gig usually has higher stability + health benefits, while the contract gig brings in more money. Also, if your contract is suddenly gone, at least you don't have to jump into survival mode ASAP since there's still money comin in.
That's the most common arrangment I noticed among my contractor peers at least, at the time.
The other thing I learned was that I was only entitled to unemployment support if I had been on a W-2 sometime in the previous two years in NY. While this was not the case for me, fortunately, I had been in CA on a W-2 so I qualified for unemployment from CA. Had I been contracting for more than two years straight, that support would not have been available. Something to keep in mind.
Re: Having a partner with a "stable" coporate job.
I agree that this is helpful. When I was looking into going solo/freelancing in the legal field, I asked several solo lawyers how they provided health benefits for their families. All of them said that their spouse had a corporate job with good benefits.
You make some good points about the stress associated with contracting and bringing up a family. It is stressful knowing that in x months your back looking, or back on the market.
But at the same time I dont think the grass is greener being permanent. I know lots of people who have been made redundant more than once in permanent roles, and couple that with being tied to some near obsolete technology places you in a worse position than having to keep on top of your skillset for contracting.
I dont mind staying a developer at the moment, but even in contracting terms there is still opportunity to move sideways to analyst roles, or at the moment data roles by being selective with contracts
I sometimes wish I was permanent - but then realise that actually offers me more security in spite of the downside
There is no security in larger companies either. It seems easy to look and say, "All my friends in senior spots stayed at the same place for 12 years" but you miss everyone caught by layoffs. (Survivorship bias)
That's exactly why i dropped out of the legal/privacy consulting game and enlisted. I now have one client and actually more control over my hours than when i was "independant". Today is a "pt" day, which means we start a few hours late. My employer is actually paying me for time spent at the gym. Even the most exclusive law firms I worked for didnt have such perks.
"In a fixed career you have a chance to build something up, while in contracting you're often back to square one with each new contract."
When you are "contracting" (I assume you mean freelancing) you ARE working for a "company" - YOU. Your boss is you, your accountant is you, your assistant is you, your maid is you. If you don't give yourself a promotion, sure you won't "build something up".
What you describe is not inherent to "contracting" it's up to you. Some people thrive in that scenario.
Edit: somewhat connected tangent life experience thought
I'm still a noob myself but I landed a long term contract developing a web application and I like being able to bill (invoice) and just get paid. It's a surprising thing haha, I haven't been working through UpWork in a while but that's still my primary place to look. I work a more-than-part time job in a restaurant (pays my bills as a restaurant drone).
I am trying to land a "full time" position somewhere for security (financially) but I'm lacking in skill/specific stack requirement/degree with almost all the jobs I see near me and also if I do match the majority of the requirements I don't have transportation (working on it).
Remote is cool with regard to picking up random jobs online.
Also regarding freedom, I have a terrible sleep pattern and work mostly at night/sleep in the day. I often go to the restaurant job without sleep just because of the fixed operating time (case against me).
I just think if the "permanent position" I could get would be those people (who I work for) getting contracts from other people, why can't I do it myself and get the whole pie. Granted I'm one person and not a company/can only do so much. But I also wonder can't I generate value myself and not just be dependent on a "full time position". A full time position would be great, better than doing the same thing over and over everyday which is what I currently do at my day job.
I'd like to be an entrepreneur and develop some service/product but I haven't thought of anything yet. Probably not exposed enough to pick up on pain points that people experience. I'm starting to learn/work with hardware though, maybe something there.
Edit: What's hard right now with regard to catching up to a tech stack "just for the sake of getting hired" is the time/expertise. I learned LAMP when I started to develop back in 2013 and I know like why is that still the only thing I know how to do aside from Python, granted I'm full stack can build a full web application but it's not using NoSQL, JavaScript framework, function as as service, serverless etc... The nice thing is LAMP is still pretty prevalent especially in WordPress but most of those jobs aren't great/high paying I guess depends.
I'm working on it though, trying to catch up I just don't know what to learn because it seems there are so many, Angular or React (heard React is easier), can't use MongoDB yet because I need to use at least Node.js or something else that can interface with it. Not sure about postgresql. Working on learning Git, and probably Docker for my local environment setup, having problems with hosts/variables/directories.
If I had an idea that I could execute on I could build it with LAMP for myself not for another requirement. I'm not defending LAMP, already I'm experiencing MySQL's memory/resource intensiveness for example, it keeps growing in RAM usage.
I'm not financially secure so that's why I'm looking for a full time position. But... I'm also technically/stack wise behind so working on it, gotta wait/learn on my free time.
I can empathize with your goals and your current situation, so please take this in that light: I don't come away from your post thinking that you really understand how the proper nouns in your post really fit together. My initial reaction was "this is pretty word salad-y." If you're going to write a longer thing about tech, it's probably worth investing a little bit of stylistic and structural effort into not dismissing something as rigorous and well-tested as PostgreSQL with three words or investigating MongoDB deeply enough that you can totally use it with languages and runtimes you already know (which you can).
And don't get me wrong, you totally might have a handle on it! But conveying that you do is a very large part of being successful both in contracting and in landing high-value permanent positions. You gotta talk the talk as well as walk the walk. It really does matter. I wouldn't hire even a junior developer if I thought their mental process was as all-over-the-place as this post suggests.
I didn't mean to dismiss postgressql, I want to learn it but currently, well actually not sure about postgres with what I briefly looked at it was involving the MERN stack with regard to express (haven't used before). I think if I saw correctly you can use JavaScript not sure if plain, that's what I know how to use but not the most current ES6/TypeScript etc...
Yes I barely know these nouns I mentioned not arguing that.
Also agree with the verbose I was going to post it into a pastebin (why would anyone want to read it) but alas, it is etched into hard drive(s) somewhere, under my social mistakes.
Same thing with MongoDB, I like the idea of not having to setup a schema before using the DB, but I also have to get into the environment to start using it (talking about my current knowledge).
Edit: yes my thought process is kind of all over the place this is also the end of my day/brain spent after developing earlier today.
He's working on those things. I didn't get the impression that he tried to pretend to be a senior developer.
I really dislike the attitude that he has to "talk the talk as well as walk the walk". I know exactly what you mean and it's very important especially while freelancing, but in this context it sounds condescending. To paraphrase your words: I wouldn't hire someone who judges other people who just talk about their experiences.
@jcun4128: No worries, you don't have to meet some type of stylistic standard to express your opinion on HN (except the standards outlined in the HN guidelines, of course - and your comment satisfies all rules). Your comment was absolutely appropriate and reasonable.
Find and solve a pain point in the industry you currently work in. So, in food service, what can you make more efficient, less expensive, or less of a hassle? How can you reduce/remove pain in the industry you work in?
When you figure that out, you can work in selling the idea.
Maybe I'm not an entrpreneur if I don't actively think of that place that way. I mean I don't know the logistics of the supply of restaurants. Closest thing would be POS/menus for cooking those look realtively old or maybe it's one of those "does its job no need to fix".
Haha the restaurant industry for me is like purgatory haha I look forward to the day that I work as a developer full time. Poverty is my never ending nightmare but I live in opportunity up to me to save myself haha.
Just an idea, why have a POS system at all? Why have a waitstaff that take orders? Why not just give the orders to the cooks and eliminate mistakes made by servers? What about in-kitchen optimizations? What about reducing spoilage?
The possible places to improve are limited mostly by your imagination. What complaints do the bossss have? What do the workers complain about most?
Those are rhetorical questions, I don't know enough about the industry to help. The goal is to start with something, it hasn't even got to sell and make a profit. The goal is to learn and improve, to learn new thinking, to see where changes can be made.
The cooks are in the back and the waitstaff are in the front, with different specialised skills. Oh and you can't go from kitchen to front of house and back to kitchen without washing your hands or at least changing gloves.
The POS system is not just a communications system, it's also a means of taking EFT payment and a means of auditing. Even trivial places like donut shops have a POS system in order to take payments. And as soon as you get a business large enough that the owner isn't the only one handling money, you need an auditing system to avoid being defrauded by your staff.
(I work in a POS company at the moment. Our origin story is exactly that of an hotel entrepreneur solving his audit problems by building a POS system - in the early 1980s.)
Yeah I mean automation is expected to happen however the entire "redesign" of restaurants and the dexterity of human slave hands. I'm glad that hopefully I have a way out of this industry that will ideally be fully automated.
I do find comfort in knowing that I could build the scheduling system that they use. Granted not at scale (yet). Any script kiddie I imagine like me could put something together.
I don't know, I'm not looking into the restaurant industry" as something to work on passion drives things and the food industry is not for me.
Also regarding orders people may ask for some random thing that isn't programmed an "exception".
Anyway thanks for responding to my needlessly long initial post, I will actually edit it, (nope I can't anymore) ahh my social interactions are usually a cringe moment due to my own social ineptitude.
I'm impatient is all, takes time, work, gotta earn it.
Edit: I should expand (human slave hands), I can't judge other people(choices in work occupation/not a choice), I'm laughing at myself/think of myself, well... performing a menial task. But someday if I work hard I will get out. Look at that, two sentences. Grateful to have a chance.
What new tasks? And how are these people going to train to work on these new tasks if they've just lost their job, and therefore their ability to pay rent and buy food?
The "progress" argument doesn't mean much from people who aren't going to have to bear the negative effects of it.
We've had this same conversation since the start of the industrial revolution. Each time, people have insisted that this time it was different and sure to be the end of civilization. Famously, we called them Luddites.
As for predicting what jobs will be made available, that's a fool's errand. Nobody would have been able to accurately predict the many jobs we regularly do today. At one point, the expectation for the total number of programmers needed, across the globe, wasn't more than a few dozen. Yet, loom where we are today.
Back when I was young, in the 1960s, a common horror and science fiction trope was computers putting everyone out of work. The trope included such gems as the big brain eliminating entire office staffs and those people being unable to get work elsewhere.
The trope was so common that the first programmable computer I touched was called a calculator because HP didn't want the term computer to scare people away. This was the early 1970s.
Yet, with each stage of automation, we've improved our overall average lives and been able to make use of the excess labor for new and innovative tasks. I see no evidence, other than hysterics, that this is going to be any different.
If you want to keep people employed for no reason other than as an excuse to exchange money for labor, maybe you could just have them dig ditches? Holding back progress for the sake of keeping people employed is counterproductive. Automating tasks, making tasks simpler, is the point of technology and is what has afforded you to live the luxurious life you live when compared to the lives of people just a generation ago.
I'm not sure where the neo-Luddite trend has been coming from, but it has been strong for the past few years. If you want a suggestion, it is to embrace it and be at the forefront of it. It's not something you can prevent, legally or ethically.
Where, exactly, would you draw the lines? No more cars, because it puts furriers out of business? No more computers, because it puts human computers out of business? No more email, because it puts curriers out of business?
You live in a society created by the fruits of technology. You're happy to post your comment on HN instead of using the postal service or private currier.
No. Your tone is incredibly incivil, and ignores the entirety of my point. Nowhere did I say we shouldn't have progress. Nowhere did I say progress was bad. I pointed out that we need to watch out for those who are going to be displaced because of that progress.
Your outright dismissal of others who are going to suffer because of the progress is extremely insensitive. Sadly, this is to be expected from this community. People who push "disruption for disruption's sake," and give no thought to those who are effected, because they feel they will never have to deal with the negative consequences.
Next time this comes up, do not outright dismiss people as being "against progress."
I am taking a break from being a senior sysadmin because I got burnt out for the third time and am happily pursuing a data science degree. I've been the contractor and the employee.
My two cents is that companies have become so focused on killing upward mobility on purpose as a cost saving measure due to what I feel is increasingly more short term thinking. I can't tell you how many times during my contracting days I heard a story about how $company used to have one or more full time employees who setup, managed, and knew all their systems, but they decided they would rather save the salaries and just use the contractor "when needed". Of course half the time it was some halfassed MSP type shop that didn't know their ass from their elbow, didn't really care about being proactive, and milked billing enough the companies ended up spending just as much money as the salaries but with 1/8 the effectiveness. Throw in outsourcing to foreign countries (Goldman Sachs) and abuse of H1Bs and yeah, I'd say the rise of contract workers is killing upward mobility.
That said, its not the contractors fault, its managements. My view is this is largely because the CTO and CIO positions are failing to properly brief the Cs/board of directors on why they shouldn't be doing this, and that is largely because the CTO/CIO is too much a management and not enough tech. Often I would even see companies without a CTO/CIO, and some poor greybeard would be haphazardly trying to run an IT department and speak board speak at the same time, in the end doing neither well because they had little backing from higher up.
This is why so many companies are literally drowning in their own technical debt due to greediness and short term thinking!
I think its time for more technical people to go get an MBA and shake up the stagnant CTO/CIO positions.
For a long time I just wanted to be in a cold data center all day with my head in a terminal doing good work. As a senior sysadmin though I have learned that I should have been playing the politics game in the meeting room to protect my department and the company. I wish I had learned this sooner.
Contract workers or Uber workers is a bad deal for all, with some short term gains.
For a worker, yes, its less of office politics and having to deal with crappy co-workers. But that is how you grow. I learned so much when I am working with people than being all alone. So, having couple of people approach the same problem in different ways, helps you learn, teach & grow. I was learning something new everyday, when I was working in a team. Plus contract jobs are effecting the basic needs of human beings - "food, clothing & shelter", due to the very nature of uncertainly. Basically I am more worried about the basics and not as focused at my job when I have a full time job. I feel that I am just completing the task at hand to get paid. I don't analyse the issue and try to find a solution or seek for some improvement. Plus working in a specific domain for a period will help in gaining experience and you have build up skills.
For a employer, how much ever you document a solution, there is going to be knowledge gaps. Only when you have someone working on a problem for a while, will they be able to come up with a better solution. Each employee comes come a different background and will view the problems differently. That will bring about a nice work culture.
Team work is not given enough credit. Instead, there is always the focus on one rock star that does it all. I personally feel that for that one rock star to actually perform, there needs to be a team behind to support.
You write as if "contract work" means you never talk to anyone at all, and it's just not the case. As a freelance developer, I have to communicate with clients and end users all the time. I subcontract out some work, so I have to work with them, oversee some work, manage timelines, etc.
> Plus contract jobs are effecting the basic needs of human beings - "food, clothing & shelter", due to the very nature of uncertainly...
Until your job (or department) is eliminated, or targeted for reductions. You'll have a similar level of uncertainty, but will have less control over doing anything about it.
> I was learning something new everyday, when I was working in a team.
Great for you, but at some point, you won't be learning much. Or you'll start to learn that "we're doing it joe's way because he's been here the longest". Or "we're going to use nodejs because XYZ... " but what it really means is dave wanted to learn node so his resume looked better when he left for the next job last month.
> and having to deal with crappy co-workers. But that is how you grow.
You can "grow" in a number of ways. Figuring out how to get clients, get work done and deliver projects to get paid is at least as much 'growth' as learning how to deal with office politics and crappy co-workers, many of whom may not share your work ethics, drive or priorities (yet their ethics, drive and priorities will still impact your ability to get things done).
> I personally feel that for that one rock star to actually perform, there needs to be a team behind to support.
And I've seen the opposite - where 1 or 2 people did 90% of the work - they were the true experts (domain, tech, etc) yet the entire team was praised, even when they either didn't contribute or in some cases were actual drains on the project. To publicly call out the bad team members, by, say, moving them to a different project, would look bad and make the manager(s) look bad, so things were kept as they were.
There is no one right setup for all projects or personalities.
I've done a lot of contract work as a software engineer over the past 5 years. It's a good way to experiment with a lot of different companies and industries.
It's generally true that contractors can't get promoted within the company. It's not unusual to see 40+ year old contractors still working as engineers.
The money is great but you really need to have a low risk investment strategy on the side... I don't think you can get rich from contracting but you can have a very decent retirement.
Contracting is good if you're burned out with startups that lead nowhere. It's the closest I've felt to being my own boss.
As a contractor in the UK I feel like I have better pay and prospects than 90% of staff members.
Not 'promotion', but more respect for my expertise and more choice about my working practices.
'Promotion' is not something I've often observed happening in any of the software departments I've worked with of late.
It does scare me when people say things like "40+ contractors still working as engineers", as if 40 is old. I'm 40 next year and less than halfway through my working life (according to the government, obviously I'd like to retire early).
I agree with your assessment of being a contractor in the UK. I work as an IT contractor in the UK as well and have been a permanent employee before that.
Permanent members of staff seldom get the same money as skilled contractors and have to put up with a lot more restrictions around holiday and work life balance.
I would equate a contractor in the UK to being the equivalent experience of being a consultant without the politics and drama that comes with it. I have worked for almost a decade as a consultant in different countries and much prefer being a contractor to that.
Promotions seem to normally equate to more responsibility with a meagre if at all pay increase for permanent members of staff. People forget that there is only 1 CTO in an organisation, not everyone can ever get to that level. Most get stuck in middle management hell doing unfulfilling jobs.
Apply for contract work. Ask for it from recruiters who contact you. There's plenty out there in the UK, as long as you look. It's easy enough to get set up with an Ltd in 2-3 business days for everything you need, so don't worry about applying for stuff. Just manage your permanent role's notice period - contracts are generally looking for folks in a short time frame.
You shoulf have a buffer of about 3-4 months money put away. You may not need it but there is always a significant delay between doing the work and actually getting paid.
After that, just have the confidence to push for it, to ignore the recruiters who will tell you you won't be able to - they just want the commission for placing you in perm work - yeah. I waited until I had about 12 years experience. I don't think I needed to wait that long.
Unfortunately for every qualified contractor you have 20 clueless people hired from some body shop who make a mess of things. Good contractors are a rare breed.
I get what you are saying. There are plenty of sub par contractors out there. Unfortunately there are just as many sub par permanent employees and consulting firms.
I have seen terrible disasters developed by every single sort of person. The issue normally comes when we as developers seem more interested in doing "clever" things at the expense of making sure we code for maintainability and support ability.
Combine the above with a large part of our community being terrible at communicating and you have a recipe for confusion and chaos.
> developers seem more interested in doing "clever" things
[looks at current codebase]
> at the expense of making sure we code for maintainability and support ability
[cries, etc.]
(The current codebase is a masterpiece of cleverness - a single person's homegrown ORM and ObjectModel in Perl. Unfortunately that also means it's an overly complex, horribly unreadable, utterly unmaintainable piece of crap.)
Yes when I worked for BT full time in my divison (systems Engineering) there might be 20 possible promotions from MPG2 to MPG 4 every 18 months.
As my boss said getting on the short list meant that the company thought you where good enough but with say 600-800 potential candidates for promotion the competition was brutal I knew better developers than me who just gave up
Don't get scared by peoples labels. There is nothing you SHOULD. There are choices and consequences. If you make a good living and enjoy what you do, then why suddenly question it.
Oh I don't, it's not so much about what I enjoy as the threat of ageist hiring practices that worries me.
That said, I am moving to be more independent over time, and hope to have my own thing going within the next few years (over and above my current contracting business)
This is my experience in the UK. After a little under a decade in SWE I've consistently seen contractors grossing about 3x the salary of full time employees, with little prospects of "promotion" for engineers without changing employer.
I've done contracting in Australia, UK and The Netherlands.
Australia and EU are great for contracting.
There are some really well paid London software engineering contracts (often paying higher than EU ones) but most are for big finance firms and they often want people to have a finance background so it's harder to get in.
Also from my experience, UK contract recruiters tend to be more picky about having an exact technical skill match.
Australian contracts are the easiest to get. Some pay ridiculously well.
I did an indefinite rolling contract that paid the AUD equivalent of USD $650 per day, $13K per month.
It wasn't particularly challenging either.
I later travelled to other countries where software engineers were treated like factory workers so the country definitely matters.
I used to do contracting in Germany and the US. In Germany there was an understanding that you have a higher risk and therefore a contractor should make more money than an employee to compensate for that risk. In the US most companies view contractors as cheap labor and pay their employees more. No idea how general this is. It's just my personal experience.
(Warning: this post contains personal opinions and analysis, some of which might be deemed political.)
There are really two classes of 'contract work' in the US.
The first class is what I'd call skilled specialists. These are your independent marketing consultants, security experts, developers, designers, copywriters, etc. These folks are usually, but not always, fairly experienced. They take up contracting or consulting as a career choice, and while they have to hustle to stay above water, they accept the hustle as the price of freedom from a corporate life. Often they work remotely. If they're strong and well-networked, they have some leeway in negotiating fees and terms for their services. The catch is that there are very few availabilities on the market for their services at any given time, and most firms don't appropriately value those services. As such, skilled specialists thrive or stumble on the strength of their reputations and rolodexes. Many of them have served for years in the corporate world, or in high level academia. They may have the ability to reeenter corporate America at will, e.g., for a client who really wants to bring them in house.
The second class is what I'd call no-choice contractors. These are most often (but not always) younger workers, whom a company will hire for short term jobs, and then spit back out whenever it's done with them. Many of these workers are placed by temp agencies, or respond to open positions for fixed term jobs, and would probably take full time jobs if the jobs were available to them. This category includes seasonal hires, unskilled laborers, and skilled laborers placed at companies on short-term assignments with the vague (and usually fruitless) hope of ascending to full-time status.
Skilled specialists are a much smaller pool, on the whole, than no-choice contractors. And many skilled specialists are but one wrong decision, or bad run of luck, away from slipping into the no-choice pool.
If you're unfamiliar with US corporate culture, the best way to understand my distinction is to first realize that labor lost the war with capital here about 30-odd years ago. During the Reagan era, labor rights one might take for granted in Europe were effectively positioned here as socialistic, and thus cancerous to the 'competitiveness' (read: profit margins) of the firm. Wall Street and hedge funds, along with prevailing MBA management culture, have convinced us that the flexibility afforded to big firms by contracting out their jobs is necessarily a good thing. It allows them to be more nimble, and to operate with a higher degree of tactical freedom from quarter to quarter, or from year to year. More important, if not all important, is that a contract labor force is better in the short run for returning shareholder value.
This line of reasoning is very attractive, but almost too attractive. What we have now is a system, and a culture, that treats more and more jobs as holes to be filled, and which treats individuals not as prospects to be groomed, but as cogs to be worked hard and replaced when worn out. We have also traded strategic thinking for tactical thinking, and we no longer understand the difference. But that's a rant for another time, perhaps. :)
It's fun to poke fun at the system we have in the US, but we're doing fairly well from a numbers standpoint. Our GDP is fantastic, our median income is quite good, and we still manufacture a bunch of stuff.
China didn't actually start to manufacture more than us until just a few years ago, and they have something like three times the population.
People say the middle class is shrinking, but seldom mention that the number of people in the upper class is growing. We have pretty good employment numbers and our securities market is booming.
Many of our businesses are the most profitable in the world. We are still sought out as the place to go for education and starting a business. We have more people trying to come here than we can even accommodate.
So, from a numbers view, we are doing okay. We may not be number one in every category, but we're up there on the list and still doing quite well.
Of course, there's more to life than numbers, but hopefully I expressed it well enough.
Numbers are only useful in relative terms. Median is going up, but so is the income and wealth gap. What most people look to achieve in their life is security. Security of resources, water, food, electricity, and physical safety. People want the security of being able to plan for a future, a family, education for their children, seeing their children and children's children move ahead in the world.
What GDP and median income don't capture is that the above security is slipping away from more and more people. Increasingly, you're either a professional married to another professional making $200k+ or $300k+ as a household, which is great. Then you search which metropolitan areas other high income households are moving to and go there and your life is pretty good.
The flip side is you marry someone who makes little, or not marry at all because it's not a prudent financial decision. Wherever you live, your kids are stuck going to school with worse resources and only have other poor kids to become friends with, many in single parent households.
I don't know how it plays out in the end, but I would postulate that large class divides aren't good for societies and nations. Everyone doesn't need to be equal, but there has to be a veneer of everyone being "in this together", and if it becomes too obvious that we're not, then it incentives behavior of "steal or be stolen from", meaning too many people start to game the system and we lost trust in each other.
I've been reading that we are doomed since the days of reagonomics. Well, technically longer. I've seen the very same predictions and arguments made, yet here we are.
To be absolutely clear - the system isn't perfect and could use improvements. My post was merely to point out that we're not only not doomed but are doing fairly well.
We have hungry people, but we don't have people dying of hunger in the streets. We have crappy medical coverage, but we have some of the best practices in the world - and horribly unaffordable emergency treatment that will probably financially ruin you. We have both wealthy and poor, but our poor are rather wealthy on the global scale.
It's not perfect, there's room to make improvements, but it's not really that terrible and the doom and gloom predictions haven't changed since the 80s. They've barely changed since the 60s. I can't speak for earlier than that, I wasn't cognizant.
Society isn't breaking down. The kids are as reckless as they ever were and old people complain about them as they always have. There isn't going to be a revolution, class warfare isn't going to erupt into violent confrontations on a mass scale, and nobody is going to eat the rich.
Call me when they are hanging bankers and politicians from lamp posts. It's not perfect but it's not horrible. It's actually pretty good for the average person. Even the below average have it pretty good if we examine them from the perspective of a global community.
Our poor people get more monthly food assistance than some people spend on food for an entire year. Not that we should emulate them, but we should stand back and admit that it's not that bad and acknowledge that the many predictions of doom have been grossly inaccurate.
Can we improve? Of course, and we should. Only insane people would think the system is perfect and can't be improved. I'm fact, the only differences I see between groups of people are the things they want to improve. I don't think anyone seriously believes it is currently ideal.
It's just not that terrible for the average person. You don't start getting massive uprisings with serious revolution potential until those average people can't get their football and beer.
I agree, people need to be pushed quite far to literally revolt. As long as they have something to lose (and they can't afford to lose it or are willing to, such as football and beer), they will behave .
But societies rise and fall on a greater timeline than one's lifetime. Wages haven't risen since the 70s or 80s and there is still no revolution, so it will take time. But recognizing that there is a problem is the first step to fixing it, before it's too late and it snowballs. Or perhaps ups and downs are unavoidable, and it's best to just plan for yourself.
Either way, the declines in birth rate, marriage, and equality are, by all indications, due to structural economic factors. Society is changing, maybe not breaking down to the point of violent confrontations yet, but it is something to watch out for in the future, but it could take a while.
> It's fun to poke fun at the system we have in the US, but we're doing fairly well from a numbers standpoint. Our GDP is fantastic, our median income is quite good, and we still manufacture a bunch of stuff.
NONE of that matters because those metrics measure the winners. The key measure is, does our system have a lot of big losers? If the answer is yes, then that system has failed.
No, those are your metrics. Your goals don't match those of the system. Ill defined terms like big losers don't really help.
I don't think anyone would argue the system is perfect. I'd conclude that it's not nearly as bad as you seem to think it is. By being a part of the system, you're already better off than some 40% of the globe, by default.
taking your argument to its logical extreme, the goals of the system are met so long as the median and averages look favorable relative to other countries... an ultra wealthy 1% can offset the relative lack of wealth in the rest of the 99% and the median can still look good - I think this is the point you may have been missing above
> an ultra wealthy 1% can offset the relative lack of wealth in the rest of the 99%
Citizens of western nations (the US in particular, median income there puts you among the .3% globally) and the rest of the globe have a similar dynamic yet I have seen no westerners who proclaim the evils of income inequality attempt to resolve that disparity, in fact they seem set to increase their own income making the problem worse. Thus I don't take that argument on it's face as a serious one.
Please point out where and how you believe I've been "poking fun at the system," or predicting its downfall, or in some broad way denouncing the US, as you seem to suggest I am doing? Critiquing an element of a system does not = opposing that system in its entirety. In this case, the element I take issue with is our short-term-optimized view of the value of human capital. Essentially, we fail to rationally calculate the NPV of a skilled worker's contribution as he or she grows more skilled over time.
In the context of this subthread, which you have missed entirely, I am explaining to someone outside the US what's led to the rise of the contract labor force here in the US, and providing a framework by which we might view the different types of contract labor in our industry. That is all I am doing. That is the whole, fairly narrow subject of my post.
Yes, I'm pointing some fingers in very specific directions where blame is due. I'm hardly denouncing the whole US system, or even the whole financial culture, and I'm hardly throwing the baby out with the bathwater. To be clear, neither is the Wharton professor in the interview we are ostensibly here to discuss.
You have also failed to cite a single number, which is ironic, given the crux of your post. You have provided a broad sweep of claims without citation or data. Put some specific numbers on the table if you're going to make them the basis of your argument. (And hopefully someone else can take you up on that argument, because once again, it's not at all the argument my post seeks to open. If you want to bait me into some broad argument about whether or not the US system is superior to the European or Chinese or Turkish or Brazilian or whatever system, I am not interested in taking the bait.)
Going forward, I'd appreciate if you actually took the time to read what I am saying in the context in which I am saying it. Instead, you seem to have latched onto my use of the words "MBA" and "Reagan" and possibly "Europe," and have thus attempted to beat me in some imaginary debate on a point I didn't even make. If all you're here to do is torch strawmen, you won't find many interested takers.
Now, if you feel you were attacked that is unfortunate, but the system isn't that bad and histrionics about Reagan and being seen as cogs in a wheel is rather dramatic when the system has demonstrated itself to be reasonably effective.
i seemed to have missed the part where you lavished us with citations. i really hate it when people go on for like 9 paragraphs without a single citation and you say something and they are like 'whats your source?! no source no truth!'
most of what you said I generally agree with (about contract workers). then you lamented with the trite: "if only we were like europe" type comment.
tbh, i want to be nothing like europe. who's economy do you lionize? Portugaul 9% ump, Ireland 6.1% ump, Greece 22% ump, Spain 17.6% ump? Even France isn't doing great.
Or would you prefer to cherry pick one of the more Nordic countries like Sweden with virtually no ethnic or geographic diversity?
I'm sure Europe is great, but they are by no means an archetype of economic success. Nor is our situation anything like theirs, so this is why people get irritated by such comments.
"Many of our businesses are the most profitable in the world."
As an employee, who's not invited to share in those profits, why do I care? Why would I rather have that, than have more stability and more vacation time like they do in Europe?
Not really. And that doesn't address my question. Why do I care that our businesses are more profitable if I don't get any of the benefits of it? What do I get for that "more profitable"? Do I get to work less? Do I get more vacation? Do I get more stability? Do I get more pay? The answer to all of these is no. So what do I get?
You don't have to care, though you might be grateful that they are profitable and thus able to pay your salary. Given that you're on HN, you're probably paid quite well and better than you would be in other countries.
So, it's in your best interest that they continue to be profitable. Your benefit is contined employment and the benefits that go along with that.
If you want to get more from a business profiting more, your best choice would be to buy shares of that business through the stock market. Even those that don't pay dividends can increase in value and increase your wealth along with it.
You are, of course, perfectly entitled to not care one iota. You don't need my permission to do that.
"You don't have to care, though you might be grateful that they are profitable and thus able to pay your salary."
Companies in Europe are profitable, too.
"So, it's in your best interest that they continue to be profitable."
I wasn't asking why I should care that they're profitable. I was asking why I should care why they're more profitable.
"You are, of course, perfectly entitled to not care one iota. You don't need my permission to do that."
So your answer to my original question of why I should care that companies in the US are more profitable while offering crappier benefits to employees than European companies is that I really shouldn't; and that it's a raw deal for everyone else.
When I was contracting in IT I liked that I wasn't looking for promotion, I could just get on with doing what I was good at. I haven't got the skills to be a project manager, head of department, CTO etc. Many of the permanent staff were always looking to their next cushy job in the company and were laden down with politics and not being constrained by that was great. I also liked moving to new companies, learning new ways of doing things and being exposed to different environments.
Long term I've no idea if it was the right choice but it certainly suited how my mind worked.
As contractor I found useless meetings much easier to bear. Every 15 minutes I would look at the clock and think " you just wasted another $30". Now as employee I feel they are wasting my time instead of their money.
That detachment from the things going on in the office is probably what I liked the most about contracting. No matter how bad it is you know in a month or two you will be out of there and at another site.
Is it though? Upward mobility is a long-term trajectory. Sustaining a profitable career for 10, 20, 30+ years even as an independent software contractor is extremely difficult (especially as the market floods with competition). I think most devs who jump into the freelance world only see the short term hourly wage and miss the risks/opportunity costs involved with running a business. Those risks and opportunity costs will manifest themselves in the future.
Stagnation on a higher level is much less of a problem than stagnation on a lower level. But the much bigger difference is that software contractors usually decide to contract, whereas warehouse contractors and the like do contracting work because they would not be hired as permanents, the decision happens mostly on the hiring side.
I was about to make this exact argument, but on inspection, the authors of the article are making a more subtle point. Their claim is that extensive use of even "white collar" contractors may cause long term harm to organisations, projects and staff.
Upward mobility? Research came out 3-4 years ago I believe that showed that social mobility no longer existed in the US. It is normally measured by how many people die in a different tax bracket from their parents. As of a few years ago, that simply wasn't happening. If you were born to poor parents, you die poor. If you were born to rich parents, you die rich. On the overall statistical scale, there is no mobility.
Trying to find references for this, I've found a New York Times article(1) that claims that upwards social mobility has not changed in 50 years. The article points to the research site(2), where they say:
> Our work shows that children's prospects of earning more than their parents have fallen from 90% to 50% over the past half century.
Is the second source referring to absolute mobility?
> “One big issue is training,” notes Bidwell. “As an employee, your employer may pay to train you and keep you up to date on new technologies. They will also give you a chance to try new kinds of work and learn that way. As a contractor, nobody is paying for you to learn
I've now been contracting as a developer for as long as I was a permanent employee and I've learnt more as a contractor. Sometimes it's been a bit of luck with a job but the rest is mostly from only having to do the job you're in for - so no reviews, company meetings and the rest, plus I can pick and choose (and afford) to go to more workshops and conferences.
It can be easier to be complacent as a perm employee but less so as a contractor.
I come from a blue collar family and was one of the first to take a white collar job in 2007. I planned on making a long term commitment to my first employer, but spent 6 years fighting tooth and nail for more responsibility and money.
Eventually I had enough and tried jumping into contracting (but ended up in consulting). At this point my career and pay went through the roof. I'm making (literally) twice as much money now, and finally achieved the title I was after.
Most of the companies I've worked at don't value the domain knowledge their current work force has. They waste time and money taking risks on new resources like myself.
I don't feel I'm personally a bad investment, but if companies we're willing to prioritize their current work force, I wouldn't have to bounce around employers to get where I feel I'm best utilized.
Or upward mobility was dead and spurred contract working. Rates have changed little in the last 20 years. We know our masters sell us for $120/hour when we only make $40/hour. I was stagnated for 10 years before I went solo in 2006.
Look to Japan for an example of a working underclass of part-timers / contractors and their lack of stability, mobility and career prospects vs full timers.
Japan's unusual hiring practices in large traditional corporations (Straight from university or bust) doesn't help.
Any time you can earn more than you spend, and take advantage of compound interest (index funds, etc), you could eventually become rich, i.e. upward mobility.
In terms of jobs, it seems there are fewer guarantees and fewer formulas to follow (you used to be able to work somewhere for 30 years and count on a pension).
Upward mobility is still alive and well, but it's through self education and using the internet. Constantly improving is the only way to beat the game. Discipline, etc.
Agreed, upward mobility exists, it just takes forever, literally a full lifetime. Chances are you won't really benefit from it, either you'll have a nice retirement or your kids will get a better start.
Its always struck me as odd that Contractors in IT in the USA don't get the premium you do in the UK. I would expect 3x my FTE rate as a self employed contractor and that's before the better tax treatment even after the reforms to tax on dividends.
Yes. Bus/tube drivers have similar salaries to what many companies are offering to software engineers. So it's a bit ridiculous situation. Often the same company which offers low perm salary will hire contractors with high daily rate (which roughly translate to 2-3x money after taxes) without blinking an eye.
Any idea about why? I could understand a big difference if firing employees was very difficult for employers, but AFAIK after Thatcher firing people in the UK is pretty easy.
IMO, in the UK the FT employment (for "senior" roles) is for suckers who don't realize their actual value. If companies can't find enough of them, they bite the bullet and supplement with contractors. Hence the two separate pays for the same job.
As a software contract worker, the last thing I want is "upward mobility".
That means more bullshit and less actualy hands on development.
Being a contract worker let's you control your taxes better and you can find another gig without feeling like you killed the family cat when you 'leave for another opportunity'.
If your thing is upward mobility, then incorporate yourself. Slap on CEO and Director title on your LinkedIn profile and call it a day.
This mentality is far worse then the article describes. The short sighted lack of institutional knowledge is, for technology companies, a serious issue. We are knowledge workers, and we know too clearly how technology management tries to treat salaried developers as inter-changeable. Add in contract technology developers and you have a recipe for success-causes-failure situations as there are black holes in the institutional knowledge of the flagship revenue generating product the company offers.
I see time and time again, technology management not grasping it is the comprehensive solution, the product that allows customers to solve their problems without other software that make the difference. Any key technology is great, but without all the "document / project" wrapper, multiple import/export options, and API interfaces that contract developers are often tasked to create that enable the "key technology" to have the accessibility to be successful. Without all the "interface and GUI stuff" you do not have a product. That "interface and GUI stuff" is a core competency, yet technology management rarely recognizes this.
> This mentality is far worse then the article describes. The short sighted lack of institutional knowledge is, for technology companies, a serious issue. We are knowledge workers, and we know too clearly how technology management tries to treat salaried developers as inter-changeable. Add in contract technology developers and you have a recipe for success-causes-failure situations as there are black holes in the institutional knowledge of the flagship revenue generating product the company offers.
Quoting a bit of comedy:
As long as there are ill-defined goals,
bizarre bugs, and unrealistic schedules, there will be
Real Programmers willing to jump in and
Solve The Problem, saving the documentation for
later.
-- "Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL"[0]
There are a lot of consultants who stand to make a ton of money due to lack of institutional knowledge.
Here in Germany you normally have some form of liability protection e.g. IT liability insurance so you don't give unsatisfied clients your house. Another way is a UG (it's similar to Ltd.) where you get some type of limited capital liability protection.
Bookkeeping is not too cumbersome, you just have to account for such tasks and their overhead in your hourly rate.
Factoring all costs is the only big hassle, but after this, it's no hassle at all.
I don't do it myself, I pay an accountant. There are lots of accountants around that cater for this sort of stuff. I pay £120 per month and they keep the company ticking over, let me know what it owes and who to, when I need to pay etc. They also prepare my personal tax return each year.
Yes, automation will replace people in a lot of jobs. That worries me, as an individual subject to that disruption, and as a citizen/steward of my country.
But I've also been wondering if there might be a new kind of job coming, "person who does a new thing until it can be understood well enough to be 'autoficialized'."
Artificial intelligence may be great at running complex but well bounded problems, but intelligence of the wet kind probably won't be surpassed at recognizing and dealing with "exceptions" real-time for some time to come.
Also, AI will fail at being subversive, which is sometimes necessary. "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that ..."
In addition to your point let me provide an example. We can get machines to cook burgers or pizzas because the task is bounded and there is an economy of scale to do it. But it is a lot harder to build a machine that can cook anything.
But similar to a hamburger machine, it's relatively easy to build a machine that can cook what's on the menu, or to buy the small number of machines required.
"Sorry, no fajitas today, the machine's service has been called. We just got a crepes machine ..."
We’ve heard the same argument throughout industrialization. And everything was fine. Nothing is uniquely different now.
Starving blacksmith, out of work horse trainers; yet an entire new industry, the automobile essentially created from nothing that employed more, created more wealth than all horse related commerce in the history of the world.
It’s arrogant to think that this time it’s different, that somehow our technology advances are finally going to wipe out the common worker. These arguments that automation is going to collapse society, etc— straight out of the Marxist playbook; they were saying the same thing about factory machinery a century ago, weaving looms, for example.
Industrialization replaced skilled physical work, automation is replacing unskilled physical work and increasingly attacking skilled 'brain' work. Might other jobs appear from that at some point in the future? Sure, but that doesn't give any comfort to the unemployed textile worker or laid off office admin whose prospects for retraining are low and won't ever find a job that offered the same pay/benefits they enjoyed 15 years ago.
I would love to say something against this because I'm convinced that the industrial revolution is a whole different game than the deep learning / outsourcing / computer revolution, but I can't.
"Everything will be fine." is just too ambiguous to argue against. Being fine is not an objective quality. I'm sure the world will be fine. But maybe it won't be fine in my eyes or for most people in a sense that they'll lose a significant amount of wealth compared to their current situation. But maybe they'll still be fine in another way. So maybe both sides are right - in their own regard.
IMHO the single best thing about contracting is not having to deal with office politics and chasing promotions... which is also a downside, career-wise, as you don't get promoted, ever.
As a contract worker it's unlikely you move up thru the organization you've been placed with. You may move up the org of the company who you contract with but your best bet is to opt for the trigger strategy and hop from one job to another with the accrued expertise, of there is expertise you can leverage. If it's repetitive stuff, then, there is little leverage and the best bet might be in moving to the management track.
I'm a consultant and think about going independent every so often. The thing is there's only so many hours to sell.
I'd rather be at my firm with bonus tied to account revenue which is generated by teams of people. That way your pay is disconnected from your time and has much more room to grow.
There are costs and benefits to choosing this line of work. The benefit is obviously the freedom to work when you want. Meanwhile, there is a hefty cost of being a contract worker - which comes with a lot of hurdles.
In a fixed career you have a chance to build something up, while in contracting you're often back to square one with each new contract. You might have more experience, but you don't have the sort of trust and responsibility which you earn if you work long enough in a company or with the same group of people.
It's hard to find truly permanent jobs these days.
I think it's also biting companies in the long run, as I notice more and more graveyards of abandoned projects and services running without anybody present who was involved in building or setting up. But those costs don't seem as obvious to those in charge who'd rather not have to hire permanent workers.
(I work in software engineering and security.)