Go permament?

[sasguru]

After many years of contracting I've gone permie - mainly beacuse I was bored tulipless and the technical work didn't challenge anymore. So far I don't regret it. The overall package is much higher than contracting, in my case, and I didn't want to leave it too late and find all the contracting jobs outsourced.

Yes you have to deal with crap politics and rotten permies, but your contracting instincts give you an edge (which may be blunted over time). And at some point in life it's interesting to do tactical/strategic work rather than code-monkeying.

[VectraMan]

It's possibly just me but I've had to take quite a rate drop to get a job again, and didn't seem to have much of a chance of getting the same rate I managed to get without too much hassle in September. If I was IR35 caught then financially it'd barely be worth it over what sort of permie salary I think I could get (it'd be a lot more than x1000 - that's just silly).

[expat]

Yes you have to deal with crap politics and rotten permies, but your contracting instincts give you an edge

Do you really?

What if you enter permiedom with the spirit of a contractor? Arrive on day 1 with your resignation letter already in your head. Do what you're paid for. Don't sell your soul for a good review.

[Francko]

They say a good rule of thumb is that a contract rate of £xx/hour corresponds to a permie salary of £xx,000/year.

Lookig on Jobstats today, 18 of the top 20 skills, and 19 of the top 20 locations, pay correspondingly more on salary than contract rate.

Is it time to think that contracting is dying, and go over to the Dark Side?

I agree with that expat. If you are in the middle-low end of the permanent salaries band (i.e. 30-50k in London) it's a no brain to go for a 30-50 an hour contract. However, if you are in the high end band (i.e. 70k + ) is very hard to find an equivalent contract and leaving for a 50 quid an hour contract is a very hard choice (although permie is so alienating that sometimes you wonder if the extra money is really worth it). Sure, there are contract of 70-80 quid an hour but they are so hard to find and they would probably require you to go direct or be someone known already.

[sasguru]

Do you really?

What if you enter permiedom with the spirit of a contractor? Arrive on day 1 with your resignation letter already in your head. Do what you're paid for. Don't sell your soul for a good review.

Techies have been spoilt for so long they've lost touch with reality, which is going to creep up and bite them on the ass.
They can't see beyond C++, Java, .NET, hashed arrays or whatever.
To initiate really interesting projects and make a difference requires business analysis, political, communication, influencing and customer-facing skills.
If all you can offer are your technical skills, why shouldn't I or anyone else outsource your job for someone cheaper?

[BlasterBates]

I think the xx'000 to xx is far too simplistic. The truth is you end up with thousands more cash in the bank. The other thing is that the comparison is somewhat dated. Permies retiring early on pensions and and a payoff had a comparable working life earnings perhaps with contractors, that I do see, but these days with companies slashing pension schemes the total benefits of these salaries are being cut with them.

[becker]

I recently posted this on another freelance forum.

I’ve been a freelance consultant for nearly 10 years. I prefer to call myself a consultant rather than a contractor, as both terms still carry certain positive and negative connotations.

During that time I’ve worked for a number of household names, meet some wonderful people (and some tossers), built an enviable track record and reputation, earned some good money and ridden out a severe recession which left me scratching around for work for nearly eighteen months before landing the current client over 2½ years ago.

In those 10 years I’ve also attempted a number of times to start much bigger ventures. In the late nineties I started a services business in parallel to the freelancing one, which won a few pieces of business and began to employee a few additional freelancers. However, when the recession arrived all new opportunities dried up and I was forced to close that business. If I’d had the same amount of knowledge five years earlier it would probably have been a success capable of riding the recession.

I’ve also tried a number of times to start consultancy joint ventures with various people, but even though most of them talked a good game, none of them was prepared to take the risks or show the level of commitment necessary and walk the walk.

During those 10 years I’ve never considered myself anything other than a real business. I always treated the money earned from freelancing as revenue and not salary, always took a longer term view of cashflow beyond the current week/month/contract, which resulted in me being able to ride nearly eighteen months of recession.

However, I now find that the freelance market has changed in a number of ways to such a point that it is no longer attractive and I've therefore declined an extension here at ‘client’ as the quality of project work is not there anymore and I have accepted a home based senior consulting BA position with a large consulting co on their BPO deals, starting in early Feb.

Some example changes to the contract market that I have observed and have influenced my decision.

Although the contract market is nowhere near as bad as it was during the recession, there are still too few roles for too many candidates. Clients are now far more choosey in their contractor selection, which on the whole is a good thing and I’m confident enough in what I offer to go up against any other candidate, however, it means that for even a quality, professional freelancer (and I place myself in this category), each contract selection process and interview is like going for a permanent position, therefore creating the need for a greater deal of investment in both time and emotion in each opportunity by me. Both of which I can little afford.

I still have ambitions to create a significant business in its own right, however, I don’t believe that I can do that with the near constant distraction of not knowing where or when I’ll win the next contract and the prospect of facing another eighteen months scratching around for work fills me with dread. I’m now of the opinion that I’ll have a better chance of creating a viable business proposition from within a steady permanent position, which carries a certain level of certainty about future employment and will therefore free time and energy otherwise used for next contract hunting, into new business venture research/development.

Tax:
The introduction of IR35, although a concern, never really bothered me, as I mentioned earlier, I always saw myself as a real business and behaved in every way just like one. If hector had (does) come calling about anything I’ve done over the past 10 years with an IR35 hat on, I’ll be quite confident in telling him to feck off and leave my business alone.

The S660a was a little more of a concern and it did cause me to adjust the structure of how the company money was divided between the co sec and me in order to fall under any perceived, or real, radar. The result of this has been an increase in our overall tax bill from Smith enterprises and a reduction in disposable income for both the company and us.

The latest tax amendment by Gordon has been one of the final straw type factors in the decision making process by further increasing the tax take and eroding the company and our disposal income.

If I continued to freelance I would be much worse off in the coming years than any other during the past 10.

In conclusion then, the balance has now swung far enough in favour of equivalent permanent positions, that I have, with some reluctance, agreed to move from the freelance world back to permanent employment. For anyone that knows me, this is not a decision I have taken lightly. I’m hoping that the seniority, autonomy and home based nature of the position will satisfy the maverick in me. If not, watch this space……

The new position I’ve secured has a number of other benefits on top of the ones outlined above. It comes with a significant salary + bonus + car allowance + + + etc, together with the amount of money freelancing costs me in terms of expenses, additional policies, etc, etc I believe that the net result will be in favour of the permanent position. Even if the net result was slightly in favour of freelancing, the added benefits of being home based, not constantly looking for the next contract and other associated ‘quality of life’ things would far out weigh any minor financial benefit currently offered by freelancing.

However, all that said, it still leaves me feeling pissed off and cheated by hector, the scumverment and in particular GB and his tax strategy on entrepreneurial individuals.

I will be sending a similar letter to this to, amongst others, my MP, possibly some press publications and I will be trying to continue to fight for a proper culture that truly supports enterprise and stops trying to trap the small number of people who take the piss out of the system, with blunderbuss tactics that adversely affect the majority of people who are just trying to play the game within the rules.

I may return to freelancing if the new position isn’t as advertised or I manage to start a successful plan b.

Good luck to everyone still swimming up stream. I’m going to take a rest on the side for a while.

[expat]

Techies have been spoilt for so long they've lost touch with reality, which is going to creep up and bite them on the ass.
They can't see beyond C++, Java, .NET, hashed arrays or whatever.
To initiate really interesting projects and make a difference requires business analysis, political, communication, influencing and customer-facing skills.
If all you can offer are your technical skills, why shouldn't I or anyone else outsource your job for someone cheaper?

No reason. That's why I'm thinking abot what made contracting, and whether it's still there.

[Francko]

Techies have been spoilt for so long they've lost touch with reality, which is going to creep up and bite them on the ass.
They can't see beyond C++, Java, .NET, hashed arrays or whatever.
To initiate really interesting projects and make a difference requires business analysis, political, communication, influencing and customer-facing skills.
If all you can offer are your technical skills, why shouldn't I or anyone else outsource your job for someone cheaper?

The biggest problem, I reckon, is not the lack of this or that, it's more the lack of combination of skills. People with just technical skills or with just business skills are limited in their actions and often can cause major disasters, but people with both skills are very useful. Unfortunately there are very few of them around. If you have to choose, however, I would prefer people with technical skills. At least, they know how to fix a pc should it break down for some reasons.

[sasguru]

The biggest problem, I reckon, is not the lack of this or that, it's more the lack of combination of skills. People with just technical skills or with just business skills are limited in their actions and often can cause major disasters, but people with both skills are very useful. Unfortunately there are very few of them around. If you have to choose, however, I would prefer people with technical skills. At least, they know how to fix a pc should it break down for some reasons.

Agreed. Most people on either side of the technical divide can't seem to cross over. I think I made the right move (more by luck than anything else) in doing a very technical degree, getting 10-12 years techie experience, then doing a specialised Business Masters.
I think another issue is that a lot of autistic and semi-autistic people go into IT - it's one of the careers where empathy is totally unnnecessary. You only have to look at this forum.