Help me make some decisions...

[BlasterBates]

If you want to start your own company no-one is going to give you work unless you have a real company. No-one is going to trust their support to a guy ringing them up from his living room.

You would need offices and support staff, which means you would need a fifty to a hundred grand at least, probably more to get the thing rolling.

The main thing you need as a founder of a company is the ability to get money and sales leads, you can easily hire someone to run the day to day operation.

That's what people miss, it's far harder to do successful sales and get capital than it is to do the tech stuff.

If it was that easy to start a company we'd all be doing it

[Sausage Surprise]

1. Experience counts, certs are nice but without underlying real-world on the job from day one experience worthless. Enterprise is best....

2. Depends on a lot of factors - I'd say £250-300/day?

3. Mostly its working away but depends on your location, whilst away its what you make of it - sone enjoy bettering themselves, some enjoy wanking, some get in a clique and enjoy good company and fines ales every night, while some sit in their sordid little grief holes crying themselves to sleep. I'm mostly in the wanking and ales category.

Contracting doesn't really sound like your bag to me I'm afraid...

I'm in the "Find a room in a house owned by fit unattached divorcee/single mother who likes night out" category...

[flipFlop]

Clients take you on because you are an expert in your field.

No. Clients rarely are able to judge whether this is true.

[Avalonia]

For my current gig I had a choice of two "grief holes" the first one was a room in a freezing council house with a horse in the garden , the second was in a warm box room where cat swinging is not possible . I don't have a cat so went for option 2

[sociopath]

Clients take you on also through reputation and recommendation.

[TheFaQQer]

For my current gig I had a choice of two "grief holes" the first one was a room in a freezing council house with a horse in the garden , the second was in a warm box room where cat swinging is not possible . I don't have a cat so went for option 2

At least it wasn't a choice between two glory holes...