Reply to: Trying to do contractor work after working full time 10 years in the same company

[techperson]

What kind of job/task did you envision that would last days/weeks, but can't be done with the already existing resource in a company?

The reason why the contracts are 3m+ is that usually there is a longer term need for additional resource. Odd jobs are usually handled by the existing members of staff.

The admin overhead of getting someone on board for couple of days/weeks is not worth it for larger companies and smaller companies generally can't afford contractors on one hand and are happier to take on the risk of their existing staff trying it on with a new technology, rather than paying extra for external help.

General sysadmin stuff I was hoping, but clearly that is not the case. I'm gravitating to start Office 365 certifications and then Azure and focus on that going forward.

Most contractors work for large companies, this is completely different to what you do. You are probably going to have to build the business in the way you are doing at the moment, providing a service for several companies coming in for no more than a few weeks to migrate their systems. I think this is much more challenging but sounds like an opportunity to build a real business rather than work as a temporary employee, which is what most contractors do, however much they won't like that label. I imagine you'll find it difficult to find similar kind of work for large companies. If you want to do that you'll have to be more technically focused, and work as one member of a larger team. Simply perusing jobserve will give you an idea as to what is available.

Yep, I've been running another company for a few years but unfortunately it was a lifestyle instead of a performance drive company and I got dragged into it. I'll keep building my budisiness as a MSP but focus my skill set on O365 and Azure and then manage to hire other people to do the lower level work as I get a better higher level understanding and sell more of my services. I've had a look on Jobserver, thansk for that. It seems Office 365 and Teams are in demand over there with good pay so that is a good direction to take in case decide to go contracting in the future.

I am currently doing something similar to what you want.
Consulting for a small company on Office 365. This is only something on the side (1-2 days/week) while I am working mainly for a large PS client.

Everyone is right, these types of contracts are VERY rare. Mostly because of 2 reasons:

1 - Cost, as mentioned by others small companies dont have the budget to hire contractors
2 - MSP, Most small companies (if they dont have IT in house) have their IT needs supported by an existing MSP so dont need contractors

The only reason this gig came along was because the small company were not happy with their MSP and didnt trust them with the work.

Thanks for sharing this, much appreciated. Indeed I'm getting most of my leads from people I know but hopefully in the near future I can nurture new leads from business I don't know. Time will tell. Are you just consulting or are you also building a company?

As some have already replied, you need to have a very clear business proposition. I think you are conflating several different types of work or proposition under the catch all of 'contract' and each of these has a different model on the buyer and supplier side.

I would suggest you spend a day on the internet searching for very small companies/consultancies to see if there are other people in your market segment and size already doing the same thing.

You need to be very precise on your potential offering. For example 'soft skill side as well helping with IT strategy' is rather vague. Strategy is one of those areas that some companies will hire people for short term work or a few days a month. Typically this is at senior leadership level. Search for 'fractional CIO' to get an idea of what I mean.

As for soft skills, this can mean anything. I would expect any hire I make to my existing IT function to already have soft skills so what gap are you proposing to help out with? The soft skills IT functions normally lack are usually around leadership. This includes stakeholder management, collaboration, communication, creativity, problem solving. This is not the same as management.

Until you can answer these questions, I think you'll struggle to win any customers outside people you already know well.

Yeah, you are right and I believe O365 Azure route will be the one that fits what I like most and also narrows down my knowledge enough to be relevant in the market

Thanks!

[edison]

I'm at the moment doing some small jobs for other IT companies that I met through events and friends, so they are outsourcing some of their work to me for example Office 365 deployments, migrating VMware environment to a private cloud provider and so on. I was hoping I could do some of these jobs directly to the customers, but indeed that doesn't seem to be how the market works.

I'm planning to deep dive in O365 world and stop doing VMware stuff and focus more on Azure. I would like to have my own clients and just run my company, slowly expanding. The idea of doing these contracts would be to fill the gap in between and be exposed to different industries while doing some cool work.

I was doing Aribnb hosting a few years ago and I hosted a person that was doing some IT contractor work upgrading/installing software for about 2 weeks. I never got into detail back then so I'm planning to contact the chap and get some more info. That is the kind of stuff I was hoping to find for the time being until my other work becomes more consistent.

I'm all ears, pretty fresh here from 10 years working for a small MSP has narrowed down my field of view....

As some have already replied, you need to have a very clear business proposition. I think you are conflating several different types of work or proposition under the catch all of 'contract' and each of these has a different model on the buyer and supplier side.

I would suggest you spend a day on the internet searching for very small companies/consultancies to see if there are other people in your market segment and size already doing the same thing.

You need to be very precise on your potential offering. For example 'soft skill side as well helping with IT strategy' is rather vague. Strategy is one of those areas that some companies will hire people for short term work or a few days a month. Typically this is at senior leadership level. Search for 'fractional CIO' to get an idea of what I mean.

As for soft skills, this can mean anything. I would expect any hire I make to my existing IT function to already have soft skills so what gap are you proposing to help out with? The soft skills IT functions normally lack are usually around leadership. This includes stakeholder management, collaboration, communication, creativity, problem solving. This is not the same as management.

Until you can answer these questions, I think you'll struggle to win any customers outside people you already know well.

[MonkeysUncle]

I am currently doing something similar to what you want.
Consulting for a small company on Office 365. This is only something on the side (1-2 days/week) while I am working mainly for a large PS client.

Everyone is right, these types of contracts are VERY rare. Mostly because of 2 reasons:

1 - Cost, as mentioned by others small companies dont have the budget to hire contractors
2 - MSP, Most small companies (if they dont have IT in house) have their IT needs supported by an existing MSP so dont need contractors

The only reason this gig came along was because the small company were not happy with their MSP and didnt trust them with the work.

[cojak]

What kind of job/task did you envision that would last days/weeks, but can't be done with the already existing resource in a company?

The reason why the contracts are 3m+ is that usually there is a longer term need for additional resource. Odd jobs are usually handled by the existing members of staff.

The admin overhead of getting someone on board for couple of days/weeks is not worth it for larger companies and smaller companies generally can't afford contractors on one hand and are happier to take on the risk of their existing staff trying it on with a new technology, rather than paying extra for external help.

Yep, and any quick/easy jobs in the cloud will be automated soon if they're not already.

[BlasterBates]

Most contractors work for large companies, this is completely different to what you do. You are probably going to have to build the business in the way you are doing at the moment, providing a service for several companies coming in for no more than a few weeks to migrate their systems. I think this is much more challenging but sounds like an opportunity to build a real business rather than work as a temporary employee, which is what most contractors do, however much they won't like that label. I imagine you'll find it difficult to find similar kind of work for large companies. If you want to do that you'll have to be more technically focused, and work as one member of a larger team. Simply perusing jobserve will give you an idea as to what is available.

[sal]

Just out of curiosity, how long normally does your contracts last? Are these jobs always sort of long term like several months? Maybe I had the wrong impression that there would be jobs for a few days/weeks?

What kind of job/task did you envision that would last days/weeks, but can't be done with the already existing resource in a company?

The reason why the contracts are 3m+ is that usually there is a longer term need for additional resource. Odd jobs are usually handled by the existing members of staff.

The admin overhead of getting someone on board for couple of days/weeks is not worth it for larger companies and smaller companies generally can't afford contractors on one hand and are happier to take on the risk of their existing staff trying it on with a new technology, rather than paying extra for external help.

[techperson]

Azure is a very good idea. I am an AWS specialist and my day rate is around £600 and I've only been doing this for a couple of years (my background is very data heavy though and I have some high value certificates).

More importantly, there is a TON of work.

Speak to as many people you can even if just to discard some ideas. Figure out your market, what you think will be worth your while medium term (probably impossible to plan long term with certainty).

Azure is becoming a strong competitor for AWS, especially in the Enterprise space.

Just out of curiosity, how long normally does your contracts last? Are these jobs always sort of long term like several months? Maybe I had the wrong impression that there would be jobs for a few days/weeks?

Just remember that even small companies hire people who can do the job and have done the job for other companies successfully enough that those other companies will tell them that. In this market, no matter how big the potential client, generalists are not wanted nor needed.

But I agree with the others. First work out what you are selling, or perhaps what you can sell is a better phrase. then find out if anyone wants to buy it, and if they do can you make enough money at it to make it worthwhile for you. Then go look for the work.

I've been a generalist for a long time, from being cisco engineer, account manager, sales, vmware, datacentre engineer, storage engineer, cyber sec, you name it. I've done pretty much anything a sysadmin can do, that has kept me as a generalist and over the last few years I've focused a bit on office 365, but again that was just another thing added to my list of generalist. I guess me running my own MSP now won't make things much better in this aspect, but I'm hoping to deep dive in Office 365 and Azure as it is the stuff I feel most comfortable working with and then I'll get my customers to use these technologies.

The advantage of having skills in more recent technologies (such as AWS or Azure) is that there are far far fewer people with a lot of experience or having the ability to judge that experience. At the same time there is a lot of demand.

Which you can turn to your advantage if you are smart. Practice pitching, anticipate questions. You are not looking at your traditional contracting market where you would only get work if you had delivered exactly the same solution for the past 5 years. Partly because there is so much variety even in similar solutions.

Figure out where it's safe for you to blag it, basically.

Are you just contracting for other bigger companies then as part of bigger jobs? Would you mind sharing a bit more about your experience doing this please?

[PermieToContractorAndBack]

The advantage of having skills in more recent technologies (such as AWS or Azure) is that there are far far fewer people with a lot of experience or having the ability to judge that experience. At the same time there is a lot of demand.

Which you can turn to your advantage if you are smart. Practice pitching, anticipate questions. You are not looking at your traditional contracting market where you would only get work if you had delivered exactly the same solution for the past 5 years. Partly because there is so much variety even in similar solutions.

Figure out where it's safe for you to blag it, basically.

[malvolio]

Just remember that even small companies hire people who can do the job and have done the job for other companies successfully enough that those other companies will tell them that. In this market, no matter how big the potential client, generalists are not wanted nor needed.

But I agree with the others. First work out what you are selling, or perhaps what you can sell is a better phrase. then find out if anyone wants to buy it, and if they do can you make enough money at it to make it worthwhile for you. Then go look for the work.

[PermieToContractorAndBack]

I'm at the moment doing some small jobs for other IT companies that I met through events and friends, so they are outsourcing some of their work to me for example Office 365 deployments, migrating VMware environment to a private cloud provider and so on. I was hoping I could do some of these jobs directly to the customers, but indeed that doesn't seem to be how the market works.

I'm planning to deep dive in O365 world and stop doing VMware stuff and focus more on Azure. I would like to have my own clients and just run my company, slowly expanding. The idea of doing these contracts would be to fill the gap in between and be exposed to different industries while doing some cool work.

I was doing Aribnb hosting a few years ago and I hosted a person that was doing some IT contractor work upgrading/installing software for about 2 weeks. I never got into detail back then so I'm planning to contact the chap and get some more info. That is the kind of stuff I was hoping to find for the time being until my other work becomes more consistent.

I'm all ears, pretty fresh here from 10 years working for a small MSP has narrowed down my field of view....

Azure is a very good idea. I am an AWS specialist and my day rate is around £600 and I've only been doing this for a couple of years (my background is very data heavy though and I have some high value certificates).

More importantly, there is a TON of work.

Speak to as many people you can even if just to discard some ideas. Figure out your market, what you think will be worth your while medium term (probably impossible to plan long term with certainty).

Azure is becoming a strong competitor for AWS, especially in the Enterprise space.

[techperson]

I'm at the moment doing some small jobs for other IT companies that I met through events and friends, so they are outsourcing some of their work to me for example Office 365 deployments, migrating VMware environment to a private cloud provider and so on. I was hoping I could do some of these jobs directly to the customers, but indeed that doesn't seem to be how the market works.

I'm planning to deep dive in O365 world and stop doing VMware stuff and focus more on Azure. I would like to have my own clients and just run my company, slowly expanding. The idea of doing these contracts would be to fill the gap in between and be exposed to different industries while doing some cool work.

I was doing Aribnb hosting a few years ago and I hosted a person that was doing some IT contractor work upgrading/installing software for about 2 weeks. I never got into detail back then so I'm planning to contact the chap and get some more info. That is the kind of stuff I was hoping to find for the time being until my other work becomes more consistent.

I'm all ears, pretty fresh here from 10 years working for a small MSP has narrowed down my field of view....

[PermieToContractorAndBack]

Smaller organisations often don't have the money to engage contractors. If they don't have the permanent staff to do this sort of work already, they probably don't have the confidence to jump into a migration project and will keep buying off the self solutions. They will only save money through these migrations on larger scales anyway, if they are small, the cost of any kind of solution may not make that much difference, especially if they have to then employ different skillset and pay for that on top of everything else.

Larger companies contract large consultancies that have the bodies to do the grunt work.

The problem with your plan is that it's not specialist enough. A lot of large organisations do this already, it's their bread and butter. You are competing with cheap Indian labour.

It's not really a business plan you are supposed to start with, it's market research. then business plan.

[Old Greg]

I'm thinking about small companies to begin with, but I'm not sure there is such type of work out there for contractors as all the roles I find on jobs search are for long contracts asking for a very specific vertical. I'm after some small jobs first to see how it feels like, the idea to do some migrations for small companies is what I had in mind first but I'm not sure there is such work out there.

There are contractors who do 3 month to 3 year contracts. They are people who do freelance small scale web design. There may be an opportunity to do the kind of thing you're talking about.

[techperson]

This is for small clients? The big big boys work differently. You need to be clear with your offerings and your prices, and what sort of customer you’re going for. Write out a business plan before you do anything else.

I'm thinking about small companies to begin with, but I'm not sure there is such type of work out there for contractors as all the roles I find on jobs search are for long contracts asking for a very specific vertical. I'm after some small jobs first to see how it feels like, the idea to do some migrations for small companies is what I had in mind first but I'm not sure there is such work out there.

[cojak]

This is for small clients? The big big boys work differently. You need to be clear with your offerings and your prices, and what sort of customer you’re going for. Write out a business plan before you do anything else.