Getting first IT Contractor gig

[TheDude]

Thank you all for your insights. The company and client I worked for lacked integrity or any sort of moral decency- I would rather gamble as a contractor than work as a permanent employee ever again.

There was no progression at the company I worked for either and 3 years of the role was during the pandemic. I can not afford to place my trust in a permanent role again, I would not wish what I went through on my worst enemy - but that's another story.

All of this is irrelevant - if people aren't willing to pay for your skills on a contract basis then contracting is not an option for you.

I would strongly suggest you find a perm role with a better company.

[Lance]

Few routes out of your mess. You don't sound like a programmer / developer, rather like someone who has come to information technology from a sociological background non-tech. Am I right?

Retrain as a people person Business analyst and Quality assurance. https://resources.workable.com/busin...ob-description

Retrain as a Agile SCRUM master if you can bridge between management and engineering https://www.scrumalliance.org/what-is-a-scrum-master

Retrain as a DevOps and angle towards support manager using you desktop telephonics skills.
https://aws.amazon.com/devops/what-is-devops/

Either way, contracting is not going to get you there fast. You might be extremely lucky to land the above, but the way the competition and the market is for jobs, it wiil be really difficult. Ergo, you need a permanent role and retraining first on the job. Good luck

nah. disagree,

Desktop Engineer train to Intune. That stuff is in demand and a techie skill, and also a great contracting opportunity (BAs and Scrum Masters are where incompetence goes to hide in permieland)

[ITF86]

Thank you RocktronAmp and Lance, the information you have provided has helped me a lot in the next steps to take, I now have a greater understanding of the direction to head in.

[rocktronAMP]

Thank you RocktronAmp and Lance, the information you have provided has helped me a lot in the next steps to take, I now have a greater understanding of the direction to head in.

Hello there ITF86. Thank you and no worries. I am glad to help.

My last bit of advice is to move in a functional direction that is not easily going to be automated in the near future. In other words, your new direction requires Brain.Work; creative, strategic and analytical thinking that only humans are good at doing (for now ;-).