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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 o

by wvh 9y ago

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. (I work in software engineering and security.)

fiftyacorn 9y ago
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
jcun4128 9y ago
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. sorry verbose
- KGIII 9y ago
  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.
  - jcun4128 9y ago
    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.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      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.
      - jcun4128 9y ago
        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.
humanrebar 9y ago
> ...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.
- KGIII 9y ago
  One of my favorite quotes: "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 suspect I'm preaching to the choir, however.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  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.
twobyfour 9y ago
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.
- RationPhantoms 9y ago
  I feel an odd magnetic sway towards the future envisioned in Neil Stephenson's "Snow Crash" where the gig-economy IS the economy.
  - wavefunction 9y ago
    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!!!
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      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.
    - creaghpatr 9y ago
      I just started reading Snow Crash, really loving it.
      - s73ver_ 9y ago
        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.
sandworm101 9y ago
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.
mathattack 9y ago
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)
jpwagner 9y ago
"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.
aantix 9y ago
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).
- moocowtruck 9y ago
  where i work there's an IT union and you could sleep all day and they can't get rid of you... mwuhahha
ElysianEagle 9y ago
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. Agree with all else you mentioned, though.
- jimmydddd 9y ago
  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.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
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.

by wvh 9y ago

fiftyacorn 9y ago

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

jcun4128 9y ago

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. sorry verbose

KGIII 9y ago
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.
- jcun4128 9y ago
  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.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    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.
    - jcun4128 9y ago
      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.

humanrebar 9y ago

> ...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.

KGIII 9y ago
One of my favorite quotes: "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 suspect I'm preaching to the choir, however.
maxxxxx 9y ago
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.

twobyfour 9y ago

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.

RationPhantoms 9y ago
I feel an odd magnetic sway towards the future envisioned in Neil Stephenson's "Snow Crash" where the gig-economy IS the economy.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  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!!!
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    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.
  - creaghpatr 9y ago
    I just started reading Snow Crash, really loving it.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      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.

sandworm101 9y ago

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.

mathattack 9y ago

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)

jpwagner 9y ago

"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.

aantix 9y ago

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).

moocowtruck 9y ago
where i work there's an IT union and you could sleep all day and they can't get rid of you... mwuhahha

ElysianEagle 9y ago

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. Agree with all else you mentioned, though.

jimmydddd 9y ago
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.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

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.