Will I be marketable with these skills in London?

[northernladuk]

I tend to get bored in jobs after a year or two. I'm also quite motivated to learn and improve my skills.

Well contracting isn't really the best place for that. You are brought on to do a specific task that you've got considerable demonstrable skill which means you'll tend to eat rinse repeat. You can gain extra sideline skills occasionally but it's difficult to get enough to make them marketable. You can, but it's certainly not a given.

I feel I'm in a perfect position to take a risk for the possibility of getting more control of what I do and when.

I'm not so sure you are as you don't have enough experience. You'll be up against people that have been contracting 10's of years even if they are dealing with new and emerging technologies.

Weirdly, we talk about all this flexibility but it often doesn't end up like that. We tend to be at the mercy of the client, have less flexibility than the permies and have to deliver to the clients needs. You do have the option to pick and chose gigs but that doesn't tend to start happening until you've been contracting many years.

The worst thing I can think of doing is staying in the same job, doing the same thing year after year.

Well you'll be doing the same thing year after year, just up and down the country.

I'd also rather not deal with office politics and stick to project based work.

It's certainly better for that but new politics open up you being an overpaid scumbag contractor but yes most of the permie tripe does tend to disappear.

My hope is that after a few years of contracting I'll have a whole list of projects and have demonstrable ability to complete them. That should give me more control over what I do and where.

You need the demonstrable ability to do that BEFORE you go contracting to be fair but yeah sounds OK.

I'm giving you the worst case here but I do think some of your expectations are a little flawed.

[nomadd]

Hello, I'm hoping to get some advice on the below questions...

1) Yes
2) Yes. And no.
3) No.