Flippity-Flop: Weighing up a Return to Contracting

[sadkingbilly]

Delighted to be part of this community and looking forward to hearing the reply to this topic!!

It's already been posted...

whs

[SussexSeagull]

Oddly I have yet to have an inside contract, although I have also been out of work since late October so swings and roundabouts!

[edison]

Oddly I have yet to have an inside contract, although I have also been out of work since late October so swings and roundabouts!

But have you had any inside opportunities that might have been worth taking?

[northernladuk]

Oddly I have yet to have an inside contract, although I have also been out of work since late October so swings and roundabouts!

Me neither but you have to be prepared for it, particularly if you are in the finance sector.

[sadkingbilly]

Me neither but you have to be prepared for it, particularly if you are in the finance sector.

by wearing a christmas hat in march?

[SussexSeagull]

But have you had any inside opportunities that might have been worth taking?

I did actually get quite close to getting a FTC. TBH the money was quite agreeable.

[SussexSeagull]

Me neither but you have to be prepared for it, particularly if you are in the finance sector.

Don't get me wrong, I assume it is only a matter of time.

[Protagoras]

Not a vast data set I’ll admit, but the folks I know who are still contracting are more those excluded from permiedom; over 55s, disabled, remote from centres of work.

Younger ones seem to have headed for permiedom, especially those who would struggle to find ‘outside’ roles and are able to cope with permie-tulip.

About 15 years ago, I moved from contracting to permie, having been headhunted for an ‘interesting’ opportunity (oh, those were the days!). I lasted 2 months; permiedom was too stressful for me, never again.

I don’t see the government policies against flexible labour changing for the better.
The only flexible labour the government wants is zero hours zero rights workers maximising profits for business. It seems to me that if one is younger, the best option now is to leave the UK.

As other posters have commented, there would seem to be little compelling reason to leave a £90k permie job for the contact market. That’s £90k with the employer NI paid, and no doubt some useful permie-benefits too.

I’d be staying put - one would need to command a high day rate and have a high utilisation factor to make contracting attractive. Even then one may end up as a worker rather than a contractor.

[rocktronAMP]

What is the formula people use for weighing up a permanent versus contractor salary? I seem to recall day rate * a certain no. of days gave an approximate equivalent permie salary.

How is the contracting landscape / IR35 / changing corporation tax impacting your ability to get contracts / at same level as before?

I think that contracting has got harder. It was always FEAST versus FAMINE.
If you going to get anywhere be VERY GOOD, NETWORK and INDISPENSABLE.

I'm an ex-contractor from the insurance industry turned perm last year, predominantly due to growing family and being attracted by the certainty of a perm income to cover ever increasing household bills. My current situation is quite fortunate - £90k and a fairly easy role, nearly fully remote, with 1 day a month in the office and all travel paid, and a nice company/team to work with.

You seem to have it good. There is no toxic / blame culture. You don't have to jump on trains or drive 2 to 3 times a week to get your workplace. Travel is even paid.
Does your company furnish you with a top of the range Apple MacBook Pro 16" M1 processor 2021 edition by any chance?

I (or moreover, my wife) am starting to get tempted again by contracting opportunities just 16-odd months after turning perm, with rates for similar roles around the £600-650/day mark outside IR35. I seem to think these rates are broadly equivalent to my salary, but I can't remember the formula to prove this to myself/wife.

Return to the cut and thrust of contracting, or stick within the relative safety of permiedom?

As others have said, it is really hard to get Outside IR35 contracts. Because of the blanket IR35 determinations in 2020, you will not find many financial clients offering them. Santander, HSBC, NatWest and Lloyds will not offer them to developers, devops, secdevops, ux/ui, solution architects and even senior program managers. If you can find someone who will, then you will be a foreigner (Spanish, French, Italian, etc) who can work some magic somehow, but then they need to KNOW YOU very well and you will need an excellent TRACK RECORD of delivery so that they can vouch for you to their boss. Not got any of it? Forget about it.

The other thing is that you should realise, there are TECH.Layoffs happening in the USA/CA and some in the UK right now. So if you jump into contracting now, then you might become a victim of the hiring rule LAST IN FIRST OUT, should the inevitable apply to your ultimate client.

Instead, why don't you jump ship to another permanent job with more money? As I said you are lucky. People are the issue thesedays. "It's always a people problem in the end" If you are in non-toxic pleasant environment with folk who have your back (and ofcourse you have theirs), IMHO you are in nice trustworthy team, then why leave just for paper? There are bad people / bad leaders outside your current company and you really don't want to cussing 6 months from now in mad-bad leader when you had that nice job. Talk to your wife about that.

[NowPermOutsideUK]

The problem which I have and I am sure a lot of ex contractors have is that the take home pay on perm salary even on 120K plus is awful - I am talking about 5K a month after doing some salary sacrifice which is not much once you got used to seeing 20K as a contractor come into the bank account and being able to buy property / take director loans.

5K a month when you have a 3k mortgage is simply hand to mouth bread money so I always dream of going back to 700 a day as a contractor and having nearly 20k a month clearing the bank account and being able to use that money for cashflow whilst VAT was not due. Quite apart from the LTD tax advantages where lunch and everything was bookable against the company