Contracting - go for higher rate or repeated business?

[northernladuk]

Yes, especially with 7.5% dividend tax. I did the maths and best financial option would be to pay myself low salary just to pay for life and commute, and keep the rest in the company.
So the plan A is to get 7 digits in about a decade by investing in dividend yielding funds, buying high-yielding HMO properties, and maybe buying-refurbishing-reselling properties, using indexation to my advantage

I can't tell if you are just trolling or you have a screw loose.

[diseasex]

I can't tell if you are just trolling or you have a screw loose.

Right, before you start flaming me for being overenthusiastic - thanks for this thread - I've learned few things. Now back to business as usual.
Good luck

[MrMarkyMark]

Topic for another time/thread

You took the thread this way, so don't understand this statement.

I've learned few things.

Great, but these should have been things you should be totally aware of.
That was my original point.

[stek]

Right, before you start flaming me for being overenthusiastic - thanks for this thread - I've learned few things. Now back to business as usual.
Good luck

How are things over there in Cloud Cuckoo Land?

[LondonManc]

400pd+ in Manc are hard to get ( not so common). So is 700 in London probably. It's more of a goal than a realistic thing at this moment.

But London is not my point. I was just thinking whether should I hunt for smaller clients and service them or should I just opt for higher rates and live comfortably as it is.
Option 1 would require proper gigs selection for years to come to build the clientbase. So Not an easy one - probably would have to meet someone that did this and ask him how he did it.

Option 2 would require different contracts set to get the right stack of skills for that 600-700 - finance front office , real time trading etc. I don't think I should be wasting time trying to achieve both and should focus on something.

London is typically a 60% markup on Manchester comparing like-for-like projects in terms of complexity, industry, skillset, etc. I roughly see a £300 in Manchester being £500 in London for the same sort of project role and scale up (or down ) accordingly.

[northernladuk]

Right, before you start flaming me for being overenthusiastic - thanks for this thread - I've learned few things. Now back to business as usual.
Good luck

There is over enthusiastic and there is completely unachievable. A sure way for a plan to fail is to have unreasonable and unachievable goals. I'll bet it's all as badly researched as your contracting career as well. Why not come down to earth and make some more realistic plans?

And learning some things from a free forum that you should have already known doesn't bode well for you either.

[ShandyDrinker]

The market has died for WPF in London, believe me I'm in it. I have a colleague with several years WPF, MVVM, Rx, etc. with a fantastic CV, better than mine even. Today is his first day on the bench in 8 years. You may see the odd role around but not many and the competition is immense. You're competing with the technical authors who write the books that you learn from. At £ 700 you're going to need to have been around the block and know the business side of it as well. Expect several stages of interview including pair-programming tests and grilling by the business.

Probably lucky I'm not in WPF although I know of a few people have done ok with it over the last few years. Perhaps they have just been very lucky although I know they're typically on rates hovering around the £500-£650 per day mark and not £700. At that rate I can well believe the competition is immense.

The thing that annoys me about reading stories such as IT bosses tell Cameron to rethink visa curb plan is that we're all meant to believe there are skills shortages in the UK yet I suspect plenty of homegrown talent is regularly benched. I know... this is a whole different thread, can of worms, etc etc.

[oliverson]

Probably lucky I'm not in WPF although I know of a few people have done ok with it over the last few years. Perhaps they have just been very lucky although I know they're typically on rates hovering around the £500-£650 per day mark and not £700. At that rate I can well believe the competition is immense.

The thing that annoys me about reading stories such as IT bosses tell Cameron to rethink visa curb plan is that we're all meant to believe there are skills shortages in the UK yet I suspect plenty of homegrown talent is regularly benched. I know... this is a whole different thread, can of worms, etc etc.

It died about a year ago, or more specifically it was killed off by HTML5, Javascript, AngularJS, etc. There are some BAU roles around but zero greenfield. All the WPF greenfield roles we enjoyed at £ 600-650 a couple of years ago are now being advertised but with a search and replace. Whereas you read WPF...MVVM....XAML....RX, you now see HTML5, javaScript, AngularJS, Grunt, Gulp, Karma, etc.

[diseasex]

It died about a year ago, or more specifically it was killed off by HTML5, Javascript, AngularJS, etc. There are some BAU roles around but zero greenfield. All the WPF greenfield roles we enjoyed at £ 600-650 a couple of years ago are now being advertised but with a search and replace. Whereas you read WPF...MVVM....XAML....RX, you now see HTML5, javaScript, AngularJS, Grunt, Gulp, Karma, etc.

I guess, at your age (no offence whatsoever), it's hard to sit on that angular and pick this up? Or you can't be bothered?

[oliverson]

I guess, at your age (no offence whatsoever), it's hard to sit on that angular and pick this up? Or you can't be bothered?

AngularJS has far more in common with WPF, MVVM, PRISM, and desktop development than web development! I like the framework but there are several issues - 1) Javascript sucks, 2) Javascript frameworks suck because they are a product of an immature community that likes to knock something up, dump it and move on to the next one. I fear for the banks that have embraced AngularJS only to find that the next version (v2.x) is totally incompatible with v1.x. No conrollers, no scope, no migration path I believe. One of the key devs has left the Angular team and is working on his own framework. Aurelia I think it's called. Whilst on the subject, one of the main guys who wrote loads of Node.js modules has also dumped that platform and gone elsewhere. It's anarchy out there. Like I said, a very immature platform. Not that I'm not going to be a part of it ;-)