Crossroads

[wantacontract]

Hello All,

would appreciate some career advice.....I've been evaluating my career and whilst very happy as a contractor, I'm getting the feeling that the contractor market is getting tougher and tougher, not that it was easy before. But now with the rates going down and more competition in my area of expertise, I am worried about my future, not in the next 3-5 years, but mainly 5-10 years from now. I see the job market shrinking and applicants increasing.

Currently I have three choices open to me:

1. Go into a local stable permie job, it will be easy but boring without much career prospect, pay isn't that great either, but lots of holidays, about 35 days. About £40k.
2. Go into a difficult permie job, again local, with lots to do, setting up PMO, just a truck load of work, long hours, about 55-60k, with an opportunity to move up the career ladder. I am a PM, and this role is programme manager. I have programme managed before, but they're dangling the carror of project director/assistant IT director when the company expands.
3. Carry on contracting, do more training in MSP, scrum master, etc, etc to try and differentiate myself from the competition. Typical rate between £350-450.

Since contracting 10 years ago, I have enjoyed this type of lifestye far more than being a permie. I like going to different companies, and have have been on over 10 contracts already. I have declined many renewals and permie offers to go off to new "exciting" or "worse" work environments.
I have young children and want to be around the next 4-5 years seeing them. I am a Work to live person, not live to work, and want to be financially independent and retire early....

Financially I can cope with option 1, just means I need to work longer and live without luxuries, forget the sports car.....as I've saved well from the last 10 years contracting...

tbh, if I can contract for just 10 more years....then I don't need the money from being higher up the career ladder.....i'll be able to generate enough passive income to take a boggo PM job somewhere....although part of me always will think I could have done more....

[NibblyPig]

You seem to have answered your own question in the last paragraph, but you just need to draw up pros and cons and compare them.

I wouldn't worry about the future of contracting unless it gets to a point where you reach a crossroads and have to ditch it or risk being stuck should it finally go. No point making a decision too early.

Having a family and contracting is probably the perfect combination. You set your own hours, you can take days off as and when you like, and you work a fixed 8 hours or so per day, no staying late to be a team player or because you've been told you must complete too much work by a deadline.

My personal advice is that you don't get rich working for someone else, so working for yourself is the key, in a style that you want, which is what contracting is a part of.

[northernladuk]

To the OP.. Have you any clue whatsoever of what is coming this April and the April after? It's not 5-10 years you want to be worrying about.

[wantacontract]

To the OP.. Have you any clue whatsoever of what is coming this April and the April after? It's not 5-10 years you want to be worrying about.

dividend tax, direction and control along with travel & accommodation expenses this April?

What's next April? You mean there's more!

[wantacontract]

You seem to have answered your own question in the last paragraph, but you just need to draw up pros and cons and compare them.

I wouldn't worry about the future of contracting unless it gets to a point where you reach a crossroads and have to ditch it or risk being stuck should it finally go. No point making a decision too early.

Having a family and contracting is probably the perfect combination. You set your own hours, you can take days off as and when you like, and you work a fixed 8 hours or so per day, no staying late to be a team player or because you've been told you must complete too much work by a deadline.

My personal advice is that you don't get rich working for someone else, so working for yourself is the key, in a style that you want, which is what contracting is a part of.

thank you for that.....

[northernladuk]

dividend tax, direction and control along with travel & accommodation expenses this April?

What's next April? You mean there's more!

http://forums.contractoruk.com/futur...published.html

[unixman]

Hi OP, interesting post. My 2 pence worth:

Rates for both contract and perm are not likely to improve much in the coming years due to offshoring, immigration and the rest of it. Keeping up with inflation is maybe the best than can be hoped for.

With the economy booming, and Britain booming more than most, both contract and perm jobs will continue to be available IMO, for the next 5 - 10 years as you say.

Early retirement isn't something I would want. You might just get bored and demotivated. Regarding wanting to see your children, understand that would be easier with local permy job. Local contracts a possibility?

[wantacontract]

Hi OP, interesting post. My 2 pence worth:

Rates for both contract and perm are not likely to improve much in the coming years due to offshoring, immigration and the rest of it. Keeping up with inflation is maybe the best than can be hoped for.

With the economy booming, and Britain booming more than most, both contract and perm jobs will continue to be available IMO, for the next 5 - 10 years as you say.

Early retirement isn't something I would want. You might just get bored and demotivated. Regarding wanting to see your children, understand that would be easier with local permy job. Local contracts a possibility?

if I lived down south, then yes, local contracts would be fine, but I live in a city that's pretty poor for it contracts....

I too thought what with the economy booming, that contracting would finally emerge from the doldrums, instead I find it worse....and may get really bad post April 16....sigh.....I've just worked out that after expenses and tax and provisioning for 2 months downtime a year for holidays (4 weeks) and 1 month looking for new contract, I'm a thousand pounds better off then a permie with a 50k wage....

[northernladuk]

The reason it's in the doldrums as you put it is because every permie that wants more money has gone contracting and it's becoming the defacto way to resource. It's a mass market for bodies. As more and more permies come over it just going to get worse until it's the only way clients use to get staff in. Oddly enough the proposed changes to IR35 might stem this flow but until then contracting is slowly chugging away to its death.

[uk contractor]

Option 2 is your best chance for work/family balance.

Contracting as others have already said is not going to get any easier anytime soon if we left EU it would expand suddenly but thats not likely to happen as the current gov will not allow all those EU gravy trains to leave that platform anytime soon!