Contracting can also be lose-lose: 1) Software engineers have to be salesmen as well to find companies willing to pay them well for jobs. Software engineers th

Contracting can also be lose-lose: 1) Software engineers have to be salesmen as well to find companies willing to pay them well for jobs. Software engineers that can sell themselves do very well. The rest do not. Rule of thumb is that "sales" for contractors is at least a half-time job. 2) Companies do not like to hire contractors for critical software because (a) they are unable to tell the difference between a good engineer and a crap engineer until it is too late and (b) if the contractor disappears, they are stuck with software that may or may not be maintainable and no way forward other than hiring another contractor (goto (a)).