Should I quit my current job before looking for contracts?

[Sysman]

Get a credit card. Quit your job.

Not a good idea without reserves for the essentials, and it's amazing how much you can cut down on expenditure if you really try.

One of the better ways into contracting is a nice fat redundancy package where the employer will organise head hunters for you and let you approach their existing clients... but that was a long time ago.

[Sysman]

When I quit my permie job to go contracting I had 4 months permie salary in the bank. The day after I resigned the turbo on my car blew, costing me 1500 euros in repairs plus 500 for car hire while waiting for repairs (not saying this will happen to you, and I hope not, but a setback can happen any time and Sod's law says it'll happen when you can't afford it). I got a contract very quickly, but had to stay in a B&B close to clientco, costing me 45 euros per night, plus eating out in the evenings, so my warchest was depleted very quickly. Turned out OK as the agent paid 30 days after first invoice, but it was close.

Sound advice. I had a car blow up on me on the way to a contract, which seriously dented my finances. Added to that the B&B wouldn't take credit cards or a company cheque, so it had to be cash each week.

[Sysman]

4 month project running a team of 12 developers which was sold for 2 million on the first year with one million coming in on the second.

12 contract banking devs + you + other's rate was probably a million itself.

Indeed. Even if the team were mainly permies, the project would have been costed out using full commercial rates for their hours. Then there's the cost, again at full commercial rate, of the infrastructure: office space, space in server rooms (not cheap), cost of hardware maintenance, networking etc.

By way of comparison, I costed out a 12 man team of (permie) software developers plus 2 or 3 book keepers / secretaries with their own offices, server room etc. at a million a year, and that was in 1992!

[jmo21]

You aren't suppose to be encouraging people into debt.

There are plenty of 12 month 0% interest on purchases credit cards out there, couple with 5/6 months war chest should be plenty to get anyone started into contracting.