looking for first contract

[LittlestHobbo]

2 years .NET is more than enough. Anybody who says they've got more than 2w years' .NET experience has just repeated the second year a few times over.

I never seem to stop learning!!! design patterns, methodolgies, new frameworks to learn every two years, new databases, new technologies, there always seems to be a new and better way to work, and there is usually someone with far more experience than I have that I can always learn a trick or two from.

I'd say I'd learned far more in years 3 -5 than in 1 to 2.

I also learnt most when things go wrong, you don't want things to be going wrong as a contractor or at least you'll need to know exactly what to do if crap starts flying, you also need to know how to manage clients and their expectations.

Its not just .net experience you need its development and enterprise level experience.

I'm in year 7, i'm still constantly suprised by how much there is to learn..

[d000hg]

2 years .NET is more than enough. Anybody who says they've got more than 2w years' .NET experience has just repeated the second year a few times over.

I don't think that's true. You could spend 2 years working on a Windows C# application. Then 2 years working on web applications using ASP.net & WPF/silverlight. Then probably a year or 2 writing server applications with WCF, remoting, web-services and a healthy dose of COM (lucky you!).

To my mind, .NET is a massive collection of stuff, you could have "3 years .NET experience" and know absolutely nothing needed for a new .NET project. Of course a good person can pick stuff up fast but some technologies do need more than a week or two to master... COM is a good example of something needing a special way of thinking sometimes.

[jim2406]

I agree strongly with the last two posts

Someone posted on here a while ago asking about .NET and I gave the following as a list of stuff it would be 'good to know about':

The framework itself
C# / VB
ASP.NET
HTML / CSS (may seem obvious but its amazing how many people dont know how to do this properly)
Winforms
Windows services
Threading / multi-threading
SQL Server 2005 (and ideally 2000 and the differences between the two)
Ideally at least 1 other DBMS just so you have a basis for comparison eg oracle, mysql
WebServices
XML / XSLT / XSD etc
JavaScript
AJAX (probably using MS Framework and JQuery)
some form of source control (VSS or subversion)
continuous integration (eg cruisecontrol), NANT, MSBuild etc..
unit testing (NUnit, MSTest)
COM
COM Interop (both consuming .NET From COM and vice versa)
legacy stuff (ASP, VB6, VB5, some C++, etc)
COM+ / DCOM / MSMQ
ORM Frameworks (NHibernate, perhaps the entity framework)
Deployment and different ways of deploying software (click-once, MSI etc)
The GAC and how it works


on top of the above there's a bunch of new stuff that's going to be increasingly important, for example:

The entity framework
LINQ
MVC
Windows workflow foundation
Windows comms foundation
Silverlight
inversion of control / aspect orientated programming (SPRING.net etc)

and VS2010 CTP was just released with all the C# 4.0 stuff in it!

then you've got the softer side - as was mentioned, understanding enterprise-level development and all the cr*p that comes with it.

don't see how you pick up all of this in 2 years to be honest!

that's not to say you can't be an extremely useful and valuable developer after 2 years, just that there's always something else to learn

[Wilmslow]

thanks everyone for the help

I had to leave my perm job and have been thinking about contracting for a while, so it seemed as I had no job anyway that this would be a good time to look for a contract. I had some good interview feedback from the last interview I had for a.NET contract (although I didnt get it)

Does everyone stick to one role when they contract or do people tend to carry out different roles? I am also interested in Testing, I only have about 3 months experience with that though.

I have eight years experience in testing and would not fancy getting a gig at present!!

when you say you have testing experience, can you be more accurate? Types, methodology, approaches used, type of project etc?

[Ifrit]

The three months testing experience i have is from when I first graduated and worked for an It consultancy. It was mainly manual testing, going through spreadsheets running scripts, adding tickets to track bugs.

I guess i am saying it is something I am interested in but really 3 months experience doing what I have been doing is probably not going to get me very far! I thought about maybe training for my ISEB but even then with such limited experience it still wouldn't be enough. As you say there are lots of testers without contracts at the moment.

hmmm it's not looking too good is it ...........

[minestrone]

I think this is one of the times when you just want to get into a job, stay there and be happy with your lot. There will be literally hundreds of applications for every job just now and many will be from time served contractors.

Having hired contractors I would want to see 5 years exp and evidence that you can hit the ground running and be productive in a few days.

Best of luck but just be realistic.

I have seen the market much worse though, I got the bump the day after 9/11 and there was no jobs about anywhere. Much worse than this. I was pretty young and had 3 years experience, I got a job with a guy I knew from school running a software company in a garage. Place fluked a massive contract and 1 year later I was tech lead sitting in a nice office in charge of 10 folk. I have been contracting off that story for the last 6 years. Sometimes the chances come from places you dont expect.

[Ifrit]

I think this is one of the times when you just want to get into a job, stay there and be happy with your lot. There will be literally hundreds of applications for every job just now and many will be from time served contractors.

Having hired contractors I would want to see 5 years exp and evidence that you can hit the ground running and be productive in a few days.

Best of luck but just be realistic.

Do you think it is even possible to get a contract then? For example if my rate was low compared to others? In a previous post someone said that more experienced contractors are willing to do the job for lower rates anyway.

Are there any other types of contract I could apply for apart from .NET Developer? It really is looking like I should give up on trying to get a contract and just go back to perm jobs.

[minestrone]

Can't ever say that you wont get a contract, I have seen people with 2 years get them. IT's just going to be harder when the market is flat.

It costs nothing to send a CV out to agencies as well so you are not losing anything.

Dunno much about the .NET market as I do java. Could be great for all I know, but it's pretty flat here in Scotland.

[jim2406]

ifrit:

of the skills list I posted, how many of them are you familiar with?

can you post your CV? If so people can critique.. if you don't want to post it PM it me ill have a look if you like

cheers

[d000hg]

Maybe if you were willing to accept £200/day... some contractors say this is not worth working for but when you do the sums it's still not bad compared to a typical salary for a developer, especially one who hasn't been working that long.