Hello from Newbury UK

[LutuVarka]

I am a PAYE looking to get into contracting. The main reason is that I am too cynical to work in an organisation for very long. I fake it until I simply can't take any more

I want to post a question with my situation (my skills and how much I get yearly) and then ask whether a shift to contracting is likely to result in more, less or the same kind of money for me?

In particular, I am a QA / SDET with decades of experience but I don't know if there are enough contracting jobs for engineers like me.

Hopefully if my intended post is not acceptable, I could be told about it here Looks like a very nice forum and I hope to not aggravate anyone!

[NotAllThere]

Just lurk in General a while before venturing to comment, and you'll be fine. I used to work in Newbury for a telecoms company. My word, how dinosauric it was then. But that was about 95. Perhaps they've been dragged into the 20th century by now.

[ladymuck]

Maybe think about the financial side of contracting as offering you more flexibility around what you do with your money as you may not always end up with more in your pocket. For example, if you take a contract for six months and then are out of work for a few months before finding the next one, your annual take home could well be less.

How much you end up with depends on whether it's inside or outside IR35 and what options you can choose to apply to your earnings. Take a look in the accounting / legal section for discussions on this.

[LutuVarka]

Oh, I doubt if actual contractors are still arguing what is the Daily equivalent of 60k, than I could figure it out...
Will hire an accountant and hope for the best

I am more interested in knowing what's it like for QA / SDET doing contract jobs.
Demand? Maybe even an idea of the daily rate?

I notice people here don't tend to comment what they actually do. Some even obfuscate the role, when trying to give an example like "I was recently hired as a ___ dev and this and that happend blah blah"
Is it wrong to ask what kind of engineering specific people deal with and/or mention what kind of engineering I deal with?

[ladymuck]

There's nothing wrong with going into specifics, it's just that people don't talk specifics because either (a) they're lying or (b) they think you'll steal their clients