In Missouri, you want the contractor. I've worked for Fortune 500 companies around here. The senior full time employees have been working at the same place for

In Missouri, you want the contractor. I've worked for Fortune 500 companies around here. The senior full time employees have been working at the same place forever, so their skills are often outdated. They get paid a lot less, but they are often fine with that, because the place gives them the one thing they want: status. Changing jobs means you might not get that status. In comparison, the top contractors get far better pay, have worked in more than one or two places in their career, and are the guys you want to hire. It's probably different in the bay, where big tech companies have little trouble paying 200K+ compensation packages, but around here, just contractors do. Why do the contractors get paid more? Because they can get paid without talking to HR, or meeting any pay bands. Last year, I worked with other three contractors, whose names anyone in the Scala community would recognize. 200-300K a year range. The best full timer they had (which just quit, after being told how silly he had been by being full time), made 110K. Being well known means that switching to work for TrendyCo isn't difficult though.