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Yes that never made sense to me. Employees who have been around for a couple of years are much more efficient and know their way around - They are worth more, a

Yes that never made sense to me. Employees who have been around for a couple of years are much more efficient and know their way around - They are worth more, and yet they always get paid much less than 3-month or 6-month contractors or even new full-time employees in many cases. Also if they say that they want to leave a company, usually employers let them go relatively easily without making any significant counter-offer. It means that employers don't even see the value there; they actually think that every employee is 100% replaceable and don't account for the massive efficiency loss incurred.

Xylakant 9y ago
> yet they always get paid much less than 3-month or 6-month contractors I'd be careful comparing the salaries of fixed employees to contractors. The math works significantly different for contractors: They need to spend time on job acquisition, billing, ... etc. They don't get any of the benefits that an employee gets - PTO, potentially health insurance, retirement plan, whatever, ... They're also the first to let go when things turn sour.
- pas 9y ago
  A friend of mine has a small dev shop, he likes recessions. Why? Because when things look up for big corps, they hire like mad, no outsourcing, yes insourcing! But when life gets harder, it's easier to start with a small company, just order an app, a website redesign, and maybe just provisionally start a project about that new backend feature, you don't have to sign a 1 year employment agreement and so on. (This is mostly EU, so no fire at will going on.)
- jondubois 9y ago
  Not really, there are plenty of 12-months and indefinite rolling contracts. I've met a few engineers who made $800 USD per day for several years and many (including myself) who earned at least $650 per day doing rolling contracts... You can stay as long as you want - The main problem is boredom that kicks in after 3 to 6 months. I don't usually have any gap between jobs. On two occasions, companies offered me to work for them for two weeks because I had a 2-week gap before starting at a different company. If you plan correctly, have a broad enough skillset and you know your value, there should be no gap; on the contrary, there should be a queue.
  - mdpopescu 9y ago
    > companies offered me to work for them for two weeks Damn. I haven't yet found something like this, most companies want a six-month minimum. I would love to take a two-week contract in Australia, just so I can delete "visit Australia" from my bucket list :)
    - jondubois 9y ago
      In one case, a digital agency had one of their developers going on holiday and the deadline for the project was two weeks away. So they needed a quick replacement. If you know some good recruiters and you let them know about your situation, they can get very creative.
cooervo 9y ago
contractors != permanent employees

Xylakant 9y ago

> yet they always get paid much less than 3-month or 6-month contractors I'd be careful comparing the salaries of fixed employees to contractors. The math works significantly different for contractors: They need to spend time on job acquisition, billing, ... etc. They don't get any of the benefits that an employee gets - PTO, potentially health insurance, retirement plan, whatever, ... They're also the first to let go when things turn sour.

pas 9y ago
A friend of mine has a small dev shop, he likes recessions. Why? Because when things look up for big corps, they hire like mad, no outsourcing, yes insourcing! But when life gets harder, it's easier to start with a small company, just order an app, a website redesign, and maybe just provisionally start a project about that new backend feature, you don't have to sign a 1 year employment agreement and so on. (This is mostly EU, so no fire at will going on.)
jondubois 9y ago
Not really, there are plenty of 12-months and indefinite rolling contracts. I've met a few engineers who made $800 USD per day for several years and many (including myself) who earned at least $650 per day doing rolling contracts... You can stay as long as you want - The main problem is boredom that kicks in after 3 to 6 months. I don't usually have any gap between jobs. On two occasions, companies offered me to work for them for two weeks because I had a 2-week gap before starting at a different company. If you plan correctly, have a broad enough skillset and you know your value, there should be no gap; on the contrary, there should be a queue.
- mdpopescu 9y ago
  > companies offered me to work for them for two weeks Damn. I haven't yet found something like this, most companies want a six-month minimum. I would love to take a two-week contract in Australia, just so I can delete "visit Australia" from my bucket list :)
  - jondubois 9y ago
    In one case, a digital agency had one of their developers going on holiday and the deadline for the project was two weeks away. So they needed a quick replacement. If you know some good recruiters and you let them know about your situation, they can get very creative.

cooervo 9y ago

contractors != permanent employees