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IT Contractor vs full-time Employee. Disadvantages to going the contractor route?

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:49:02 -0800

I'm currently employed full-time for a large consulting firm and have recently been offered an opportunity to engage on contract as an independent consultant. I'm hesitant about the loss of stability that this may imply and request the communities feedback Background: Working for several years for a "Large IT Consulting Organization", which also sub-contracts with Contractors and Professional Services organizations to supplement existing in-house skills for our clients. I have a good relationship with these folks and have recently been offered an opportunity to leave my current organization and contract for an engagement of at least 6 months to a year.

The question of compensation, tax, and benefits I think I've got a decent handle on. I'm more interested in the stability aspects to going the contractor route.

I'm an IT professional, age 25-30, recently married, no children for at least another few more years. Wife has a well paying job, current medium term savings give us roughly 6 months cushion time if I'm not drawing a paycheck.

In my current organization, it's important to keep oneself 'billable'. At the same time, I'm salaried and so have a measure of guaranteed income which I find reassuring.

Does anyone have any feedback, or lessons learned one way or another about going this route? I'd like to know more about what everyone thinks about this from a long-term career growth perspective, as well as short term gotchas and things to be on the look out for.

You can contact me directly at itcntrctr5@gmail.com

Going from full-time to contract work?

um_maverick — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:47:53 -0800

A friend of mine is giving his notice tomorrow due to long hours and high stress not being worth it in the end. He would, however, be open to returning as a contractor or part-time, with limited hours and role. How does this work? The friend is pretty highly credentials (masters in finance and CPA), with both "Big 4" and corporate experience totalling about 6 years. He's fairly indispensable in his current role, which just makes it more stressful. He's already tried to get some of the tasks off his plate (for over a year at this point), with no success, and the company, like many, is in a hiring freeze so there's no relief coming. However, if he could lock in 16-20 hrs/week, maximum, to do the truly important tasks, he'd be ok with that. That being said:

Is coming back as a contractor something he should offer while tendering his resignation, or should he hope that the boss brings it up?
It seems like in this situation, working part time could eventually lead to full-time hours at part time salary, and contracting would be a better way to contain the hours. Is that a reasonable interpretation?
Is it better/easier to contract directly with the company, or go through a third-party firm?
What hourly rate can one expect? He's in a Seattle suburb at a rather large manufacturing company (no, not boeing :)), if that helps.

Thanks all!

How much do PHP developers in NYC get paid?

defreckled — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:26:43 -0800

What's the going rate for a PHP developer in NYC? I'm not actually defreckled but am borrowing this account.

I work as a PHP developer in NYC with a couple of years experience. A contract agency wants to pay me $50/hour on a contract (1099) basis and my friends think I'm being ripped off. What is the going rate for developers in this area? How much do people get paid full time?

Should I insist on a raise?

skryche — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 16:35:22 -0800

My employers say that my promised raise was accidentally included in my initial salary (and therefore I won't be getting one). Having recently gained certain qualifications, I started a new job in September of 2005. I started at a salary of (say) $60k and was promised a raise to $63k upon the completion of my state board certification. I got my results (passing!) yesterday. Today, my colleagues bought me cake and my superior brought me into his office and sheepishly told me there had been a mistake; I had already been getting the post-boards salary during my time with them. They wouldn't ask for the money back, but (of course) there would be no raise. He apologized many times.

I got home, and looked at my last paycheck, and realized that I'd been getting a $60k salary the whole time — what he'd meant was that I should have been getting paid less when I started!

I know what you'll ask — what does my contract say? I was told when I started “we don't have contracts here”. And I know what you'll think — No contract? This is a shady organization I've gotten involved with. But I'm sure that's not true. I love working here, and we're doing good things (it's a non-profit). I trust the people that I work for and I'm certain that this was a mistake.

But my salary is low for professionals in this field (even at non-profits) in this part of the country. If they had wanted to hire me at 5% less than what I'm making now, I'd have had second thought about working here.

So — should I rock the boat and insist on the raise? Should I, at the very least, insist on a contract? I have this dirty feeling of having been taken advantage of that I don't know how to get rid of.