First Contract! ... Bit like a wet party popper going off ...

[l35kee]

I'd be careful. That sounds suspicious.

A lot more cash comes your way as a contractor but a lot more gets taken away. I hope you are fully recognizing all the financial obligations you didn't have before.

A very very rough indicator is take your hourly rate and multiply it by one thousand. If that is twice your previous salary then maybe you are on to a good thing but if not, don't chuck your money around until you're sure how it's going to work out.

I didn't include insurance/accountant in that, or sick/holidays/bench time etc. But it accounted for all tax liabilities. 50% shareholding split probably needs a mention too.

[northernladuk]

Thanks - Like I said quite openly this is my first gig and I am new to this. I'll try and get some more predefined deliverables from the client, but at the moment the work is just being spoon fed mini-assignment by mini-assignment.

For example I was given a "project" to migrate 4 VM's from one host to another, rebuild the host, migrate back, then rebuild the other. Personally in my eyes that's a task not a project, but they see things very much differently here. A project in my mind is a storage forklift upgrade, cluster refresh, new VLAN design for a network, migrate to a different backup platform / technology, something like that.

Oh dear oh dear....

I'd say I hope you have IR35 insurance but it's too late for that. Spoon fed work is clear D&C. Part and parcel will hit almost immediately as well. Clearly inside IR35. Your take home has suddently dropped by quite a bit......

[stek]

Thanks - Like I said quite openly this is my first gig and I am new to this. I'll try and get some more predefined deliverables from the client, but at the moment the work is just being spoon fed mini-assignment by mini-assignment.

For example I was given a "project" to migrate 4 VM's from one host to another, rebuild the host, migrate back, then rebuild the other. Personally in my eyes that's a task not a project, but they see things very much differently here. A project in my mind is a storage forklift upgrade, cluster refresh, new VLAN design for a network, migrate to a different backup platform / technology, something like that.

You have to think deeper, I’m LPM’ing some AIX and IBMi LPARs from old frame to new - piece of piss but these are running tier 1 banking apps for a bank with nearly 100,000 users you can’t just do it. One’s already fallen over despite passing validation but it’s ok, it’s in a grid and it’s tasks offloaded and I live to contract another day...

Simple tasks are projects at enterprise level, you can’t afford to fuk up...

[BlasterBates]

In effect as a contractor you will be more of a dogs body, I would say par for the course. No one is going to give you much of an interesting role, and yes it does "hamper" your career if you're ambitious, as you will always be doing the stuff no-one else wants to do. The positive is the money, you'll get paid more for doing it. The most interesting bit of my career was as a permie before moving into contracting, I'm now back as a permie but shoved into the corner as if I was a contractor, though they do pay me a lot

[northernladuk]

Wait until the OP gets one of those gigs where you wonder whether they were ever looking for someone to do work or rather they wanted someone just to sit there and take the blame for everything. Not the best gigs by a country mile but thankfully not common.

[mattfx]

Wait until the OP gets one of those gigs where you wonder whether they were ever looking for someone to do work or rather they wanted someone just to sit there and take the blame for everything. Not the best gigs by a country mile but thankfully not common.

I honestly feel that there could be an element of this here.

[tiggat]

I recently started contracting, I've had one three month and am four months into an 11 month contract, both have/are as probably the most boring work I've ever done, but I'm earning ~twice my peers of similar tenure so I don't care.

[northernladyuk]

I recently started contracting, I've had one three month and am four months into an 11 month contract, both have/are as probably the most boring work I've ever done, but I'm earning ~twice my peers of similar tenure so I don't care.

A colleague of mine span up a little app that would tot up the billable time per second when in a meeting or making a cup of tea etc.

[northernladuk]

A colleague of mine span up a little app that would tot up the billable time per second when in a meeting or making a cup of tea etc.

Proper contractor can do that in their heads. Should be second nature.

[malvolio]

Proper contractor can do that in their heads. Should be second nature.

Proper contractor doesn't even try. He's on a day rate so time spent on doing "stuff" is immaterial.

HTH