Reply to: Did you consciously become a contractor or fall into it?

[norrahe]

Fell into it after a year out and plan B not quite working out.

[minestrone]

Always knew I would do it it but the moment of it happening was quite by accident. 5 years permie and now nearly 10 years contracting.

[Lockhouse]

Fell into it.

I got burned by office politics after 4 years of slavish permiedom, I told the manager to go **** himself, stormed out of his office slamming the door in his face, went back to my desk, told my oppo that "I'm outta here" and started to empty my desk.

At that exact second the phone rang and an agent said "have you ever thought of going contract?". Job done.

It was fate I tell's ye.

I still like a good flounce every now and then.

[Dearnla]

I was under consultation when my company were merging with another 6 years ago. As there were two of us doing similar jobs, obviously they only needed one, which turned out not to be me.
At the time I'd been to 8 different permie interviews and got nowhere, so when they actually gave me notice (and £20k) I landed a contract whilst on gardening leave.
So I thought I'd rather carry on in this line, thanks.

[MaryPoppins]

I'm never going staff again.

Me neither. Only been perm once, about 10 years ago. Yucky.

[Fred Bloggs]

I suppose I'm a slow learner. 19.5 years at one employer and 10 years at the next one. Then I realised I was being an idiot and went contract, never looked back. First contract lasted ~18 months and set me up for long term contracting. Should have done it 25 years earlier but I didn't have the bottle. I'm never going staff again.

[MrMark]

Quite a good question from MF there - who's stole his log-in?
I fell into it, when I couldn't get interviews for permie roles anymore, so ended up taking contract roles. Still wouldn't turn down a decent permie opportunity, as I hate bench time. There again, at least you get variety with contracting. I don't know how the permies have stuck it for years at my current client - conditions are nice, but the work is so tedious...

[lukemg]

Good for you Trace, most people can't face the uncertainty, especially after that long perm. Sounds like you would have done ok going contracting many moons ago....

[TraceRacing]

Been permie most of my working life (some 30 odd years now) apart from a short term contract a couple of years ago. Now the kids have grown up and left home I have deceided to throw in the towel of trying to make the money last as long as the month and start contracting. My first gig (with an ex-employer) starts 2 weeks today after I finish my notice at current company...not that I'm doing anything anyway...

At least it beats having to answer the question "what do you want to be doing 5 years from now" which is asked of every permie interview... feck, I could never answer that! Now my 5 year plan is to save enough to retire..

[TestMangler]

Was a (redundant) research scientist in the civil service for 14 years.

When i got redundo'd in '93, I went to the job centre and found there was very little call for anyone to build earth quake simulator tables or log data from gas meter callibration or inlet manifold flow modelling.

The bloke in the job centre asked me if I 'knew anything about them computer things' and I scored a contract building prototype server kit with IBM, which let to getting OS/2 gigs in the banking/insurance sector which led to test environment management/test management/infrastructure PM gigs, mostly in banking/insurance.

[gingerjedi]

My first IT support job paid 14k + van.

It wasn't a hard decision to make when I was offered a 12 month contract on £25ph with only 2 month experience.

[mudskipper]

It was semi-conscious.

Was fed up with permie job, so when opportunity arose decided to go contracting and volunteered for redundancy so that I'd have a few quid to see me through. If the redundancy hadn't been on offer it probably wouldn't have happened.

Currently benched, so have gone for AndyW option.

[realityhack]

Fell into it - my first good job offer after uni was a contract that was too good to turn down, got the bug and continued in that vein for the next 10 years.

[Spacecadet]

Conscious decision, although was persuaded by my manager to hang on for a redundancy package which was imminent. In the end it was almost 12 months later

[alreadypacked]

I'm a

Planned to go into contracting since I was in Uni.
Took permie roles that would look good on my contracting CV, like Consulting company, blue chip etc.
While contracting have stuck to blue chip companies in different markets.

It's worked for me so far, my current goal is to reach the 1K a day.