Reply to: Seeing out difficult end to contract

[malvolio]

I have better things to do with my time but I have had a number of jobs over the years where I have no idea why they needed a contractor or why they kept me on longer and I was sat for most if not all the contract with hardly anything to do, if I had left each time there would be a lot more gaps on my CV that would not always have been ideal.

If they want me there and i want to be working due to time of year, something else going on etc I'm not going to put myself out of work but equally if I'm not bothered then maybe I would at that time.

That's a subtly different position. I've had gigs where things have stopped moving for a while (usually because someone at the end customer has changed their mind) and I've been largely idle for a while. All I do is add up the hours I did work that week and bill them for a roughly equivalent number of days; Since I work from home most of the time it's not like I'm sat at a desk somewhere twiddling my thumbs. Doesn't happen often, but it does demonstrate that I only charge for work done, not attendance.

[curtis]

I have better things to do with my time but I have had a number of jobs over the years where I have no idea why they needed a contractor or why they kept me on longer and I was sat for most if not all the contract with hardly anything to do, if I had left each time there would be a lot more gaps on my CV that would not always have been ideal.

If they want me there and i want to be working due to time of year, something else going on etc I'm not going to put myself out of work but equally if I'm not bothered then maybe I would at that time.

[eek]

OK. So client is paying you, you dont have another gig to go to but theres little work. so you tell the client your leaving because its not right to keep billing them for no work.

I call bulltulip.

Nope. I have other things that can fill my time so will happily on completion of a contract disappear for a while.

Personally I like breaks and time to work on other things far more than working..

[psychocandy]

OK. So client is paying you, you dont have another gig to go to but theres little work. so you tell the client your leaving because its not right to keep billing them for no work.

I call bulltulip.

[CloudWalker]

Keep your head down and keep on invoicing !
Never say I have no work to do.

[SussexSeagull]

Some clients do seem to go an extension further than need be as they feel better having you around.

Keep asking for work and they will either find you some or get bored and send you home.

[BolshieBastard]

LOL! After some of the stuff I've read here recently about terminating contracts early and IR35 blah, blah, blah.

Just keep invoicing and use your time to review documents or brush up some skills on the client's applications.

[Batcher]

That sounds great. 2 months to brush up before your next gig.

Yep and I actually left a day early as an urgent gig came in and I started that one on the Friday. That one ended 3 days early as the work was completed just in time for a nice Christmas/New Year break

[SpontaneousOrder]

+1, We have a tech debt backlog as well as a feature/bugs one. When not working on the latter (maybe due to waiting for requirements or for elaboration tasks to complete) the devs take a prioritised item off the 1st queue, spin up a branch in git and get improving . There is always stuff to do, you just need to be proactive is suggesting/sourcing it.

To a point. I've worked in several places where I was unable to fix glaring bugs because it wasn't signed off as part of anything to be released.

You can work on a separate branch, but then that branch just sits there and 2 or 3 years later it just gets deleted as it's be more hassle to merge it in at that point than it's worth.

Start setting up infrastructure to Mavenize the project's dependencies (something useful that needs doing)... wait 3 months for a nexus box.

[SpontaneousOrder]

I agree with most of the sentiments above but one previous contract I had was extended by two months after I had finished knowledge transfer to a permie (who worked at a different location).

They asked me to stay on and 'do nothing' purely so the permie could work away knowing that I was there as a safety net if he ran into problems. I spent most of my day on Jobserve and the client was happy knowing that I sorted out any problems before they became major incidents.

That sounds great. 2 months to brush up before your next gig.

[kal]

Don't just sit there being idle. Discuss it with the PM. It is your responsibility to tell the PM you're finished with your work.

It is not a good idea to sit there twiddling your thumbs because that is not what they expect. They're paying several hundred pounds a day.

There is usually something you can do, i.e. writing scripts to automatically generate something, make some proposal to refactor some code, or provide some documentation. At the very least you could at least discuss these ideas with the PM.

+1, We have a tech debt backlog as well as a feature/bugs one. When not working on the latter (maybe due to waiting for requirements or for elaboration tasks to complete) the devs take a prioritised item off the 1st queue, spin up a branch in git and get improving . There is always stuff to do, you just need to be proactive is suggesting/sourcing it.

[Batcher]

I agree with most of the sentiments above but one previous contract I had was extended by two months after I had finished knowledge transfer to a permie (who worked at a different location).

They asked me to stay on and 'do nothing' purely so the permie could work away knowing that I was there as a safety net if he ran into problems. I spent most of my day on Jobserve and the client was happy knowing that I sorted out any problems before they became major incidents.

[BlasterBates]

Don't just sit there being idle. Discuss it with the PM. It is your responsibility to tell the PM you're finished with your work.

It is not a good idea to sit there twiddling your thumbs because that is not what they expect. They're paying several hundred pounds a day.

There is usually something you can do, i.e. writing scripts to automatically generate something, make some proposal to refactor some code, or provide some documentation. At the very least you could at least discuss these ideas with the PM.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Like the others have said - sticking it out until the end even though there is no work to do sounds like the exact opposite of professionalism. Sounds more like you're ripping them off.

[NotAllThere]

If I have no work, I just let the client know I'll be off, and they can call me when they've something that they need me to do. That way I can get on with more interesting stuff, and they don't have to pay me for being idle.