That very much meets with my general career pattern. If you want to make quick advancement (especially if, like me you started as a developer at 33 instead of

That very much meets with my general career pattern. If you want to make quick advancement (especially if, like me you started as a developer at 33 instead of 23), then this make s a whole lot of sense. I literally doubled my hourly rate every three months for a year (it didn't hurt that I started off crapping out small marketing sites for $14/hr). I gave each group I moved on from chances to match whatever offer I was moving to, but usually when confronted with having to pay me almost double, they were quite happy for me and totally understood why I was moving on (even though it's not about the money). To add to the other things that I agree with (don't burn bridges, neither lie nor undersell yourself, don't move to "perm", money isn't the motivator as much as finding higher quality projects): having a pad of cash saved up when you can do it makes all of that a lot less risky and makes decisions easier to make. If you're used to living on $16/hr, the first step is risky and hard to take, but if you can maintain that way of living the next several steps all seem increasingly less risky, to the point where I have tow concurrent contracts who want to hire me and I don't know if I want to get pinned.