Reply to: What is the best & worst gig you ever had?

[Lockhouse]

Be careful with that. You don't want to be sitting at home at 60 thinking where the f*** did my life go?

It's just a means to an end. Where else can I get £x00 per day for sitting at a desk not trying very hard? My life outside work is very nice but it has to be paid for somehow!

[Doggy Styles]

They all blur into one. I'm only here for the money. I was only there for the money as well. And there, and there, and there....

Be careful with that. You don't want to be sitting at home at 60 thinking where the f*** did my life go?

[Lockhouse]

They all blur into one. I'm only here for the money. I was only there for the money as well. And there, and there, and there....

[Doggy Styles]

Best One:

3 years worth of renewals on good rate at a London branch of a Japanese bank, very laid back environment and very friendly and social.

You are male then.

Unless by laid back you mean...

[Ruse]

Worst One:

Current one doing a DC migration for an IB, was told after 1 week in the pub by my manager that his boss had already given him the option of firing me beecause I wan't "agressive enough", nast bulltulip environemt where nobody shares info and everyone is always trying to get one over on the next person, luverly...

Best One:

3 years worth of renewals on good rate at a London branch of a Japanese bank, very laid back environment and very friendly and social.

[shaunbhoy]

Best one - had to be working in southern Poland for a Mobile operator there. Good daily rate and could usually book at least 6 days a week. Did not have to do much but oversee my local permie replacement who was mad keen to do everything anyway.

Worst one - no really bad ones, but worked for a few weeks for Siemens in Den Haag on a GSM-R project. Decent daily rate but mega boring as I spent the entire 6 weeks that I lasted doing sod all as I was waiting for all the customer specifications to be translated from Cloggie to English.

[alreadypacked]

Best role: current role, get to travel to India for the winter.

Worst role: Was sent to client site to intergrate an application written in C++ on UNIX. Client site was Windows, PM suggested: "just re-write the application, we have 6 weeks" I tried to explain the application required a lot of UNIX functions like Sendmail etc. "Just re-write them too"

[Sysman]

Best job - stand in system manager while bringing some permies up to speed. Decent rate, bags of overtime and I stayed in an excellent, friendly hotel which didn't break the bank.

Worst job - a place where they wouldn't give contractors their own user accounts, nobody knew where systems were when the hardware guys called, overtime was banned because previous guys had taken the pee. The final straw was being bollocked for not solving a problem which was hidden in a problem tracking queue that I didn't have access to.

[stillooking]

worst: home office & some ctrl govt gigs

best: RollsRoyce/Bentley - very low rates but generally a laugh & BT, Ldn in dot.com days

[Ravello]

Best: Current one, local, decent rate, reasonably interesting projects, happy to let me get on with it... Second stint here, returned after an 18 month break at:

Worst: Government - nuff said.

[alreadypacked]

As Sophocles said, count no contract best until it's finished.

& what's all this "gig" business? Can we all stop pretending we're Miley Cyrus and talk like grown ups?

When you work as a contractor among Permie's you are always on stage.

HTH

[moorfield]

Best: Current one. Best rate I've ever had, plus all expenses flights, hotels paid for. Least amount of work I've ever had to do. WFH one (occasionally two) days a week.

Worst: Current one. The dutch work ethic does my flipping nut.

[Doggy Styles]

Worst - large, well-known property management company in Holborn Rd. Some seriously unpleasant people.

Best - large, well-known assurance company in Euston at the time. Great people, interesting work, easy commute.

Both with the same name and both in the 1990s.

[TimberWolf]

Best: Local contract 10 minutes from home which lasted years.

Worst: Hmm. I disliked one place so didn't renew, but later returned and found it crap again and didn't renew again. Not been back since.

[gingerjedi]

I had the odd situation where my best and worst gigs were in the same place, I even sat at the same desk.

The first was with the MoD working for the DCSA, good people, interesting work, great money.

The second was with the private outsource consortium that took over, some good people but some bad, boring as hell with tulip money (40% of the first).