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"I would rather have an 8 month contract job during which I work 60 hours a week, and then I have 4 months to work on my own projects." That sounds interesting,

• wallflower 16y ago
  Most contractors I know end up spinning plates (like in that circus trick) when they have periods of too much work - they usually don't like turning down certain jobs because it is revenue. And have periods of downtime (not necessarily voluntary). Of course, if you are an elite bespoke developer, you can turn down work and always have work. I met a guy who installed sprinkler systems in rich people's lawns. He worked all Spring/Summer/less during the Fall and took off to Barbados or Jamaica for the remaining 3-4 months of the year.
• lkrubner 16y ago
  Partly it depends on the business cycle. From 2003 to late 2008 I was offered far more work than I could accept, so I felt free to turn down whatever I wanted to, confident there would be more. And in that situation, I preferred to overwork for stretches, and then claim whole months for personal projects. That was a personal preference of mine. Since the onset of the recession, picking up work has taken slightly more effort, though I've been lucky in that corporations seem more interested now in developing with some of the web frameworks that became available for PHP, and I have a track record with frameworks like Symfony.