> Employment is dead, contract is the way of the future.

I am pretty happy with my employment. Paid vacation, paid sick days, reasonable hours and all that good stuff.

Ok. Now imagine you are getting twice as much after taxes for the same work but without benefits. Would you still be as happy? Hell, even 50% more. And you are spreading the work across multiple clients so any one client 'firing' you is suddenly not a huge thing since your income is distributed across multiple clients. Sure, you don't get paid benefits, but you get higher income and the ability to work for multiple clients. Not every person can do that and even among those that can, not every one has the motivation to do it.

>so any one client 'firing' you is suddenly not a huge thing

With 3 months notice and strong union protection (public sector) it already isn't.

I'd much rather work for a single excellent organisation where I know I'm doing good than many who can't hold on to good staff and need contractors.

I'd love those protections personally, but I have no such luck.

It's minimum requirement for a hire contract in Norway. 3 months mutual notification, and only in a few cases can you be fired on spot without compensation (theft and such). You can contractually increase the notification time from the baseline, but not decrease.

Makes for happy and productive workers, and also benefits companies who don't have to worry about loosing their best worker without notice.

3 months notice period seems a very bad deal to me. If you want to change job you simply cannot because no one would wait for 3 months, unless you are at executive level.

If everyone is the same situation then that delay becomes just a normal aspect of the hiring process. I'd be more concerned about the types of abuses that the delay could allow in countries with a less mature employment culture: backing off at the last minute and wasting 3 months of that company's time, bullying a leaver for all of 3 months to discourage other people, etc.

>backing off at the last minute and wasting 3 months of that company's time

Means you're unlikely to get another job in the industry.

>bullying a leaver for all of 3 months to discourage other people

Would result in an easy case for constructive dismissal.

Yes, they would wait. Everybody else in the setting does.

And then there probably is a way to shorten the notice period when both sides agree (I extrapolate to Norway how in my country it works).

I was shocked to see that a month of notice is common here (Ireland). It actually was an issue when I wanted to attend a conference for my new employer (gave notice around 11 PM exactly 30 days before I had to fly).

I get that it's apparently an employee protection but it does seem kind of ludicrous. What happens if you rage quit? Win the lottery?

>What happens if you rage quit? Win the lottery?

Well, I'm a professional, so I finish my job...

I shouldn't be changing job more than once every 2 years, so 3 months is nothing. The notice period is often reduced for the first 6 months, or you can ask for that before signing your contract.

In reality a company has no real desire to keep a disgruntled employee longer than they have to, so you can burn bridges and leave earlier if force the issue. It's a pretty unprofessional thing to do though.

Well sure, I think the difference is between what's courteous and what's contractually stipulated. It's rude to give short or no notice regardless, but it's not always a contractual obligation.

you can always negotiate to get out earlier if you want to. That's the way it works in Germany and Belgium, probably in most other European countries as well.

I think I read Norway just moved into #1 happiest country in the world...

Always Be Interviewing.

> Now imagine you are getting twice as much after taxes for the same work but without benefits.

No, I wouldn't. I value stability and simplicity in my life, and I will gladly eschew higher pay for a more traditional lifestyle. I'm a conservative suburbanite with no ambition, and I'm proud of it.

On top of that, non-employer insurance is terrible. In some states, you actually cannot get a PPO unless you're on an employer's policy (I refuse to get an HMO for moral reasons), and large megacorps (we're talking Disney-sized corporations here) will package their own insurance and offer benefits that go above and beyond what you can get anywhere else.

> and the ability to work for multiple clients

That's a negative for me. I'm a strict 9-5er. I just want to show up at the office every weekday, put in my eight hours, then go home and relax. I actively do not want to run my own business or do anything that resembles negotiating with anyone. I'm not an entrepreneur or a risk-taker of any kind.

I'd argue that being an employee is less stable than you think it is in general, at least in the tech sector.

I had my own private PPO for a decade (geez!) at least, and the policy provisions were better than most employer policies I saw offered to me. Well, at least until the ACA came around and shook everything up a little.

I'm happy you're a happy 9-5er with zero business desire and that you are 100% risk averse. You are not the target of my comment.

"(I refuse to get an HMO for moral reasons)"

Can you elaborate on this?

HMOs mandate that Primary Care Physicians act as gatekeepers, and their job is to control how and when you seek the services of other doctors.

Medical gatekeeping is a violation of the fundamental human right to body autonomy.

Well that all sounds nice and dandy, but imagine you don't find new clients or they don't pay your invoices or you get seriously sick or something in your private life needs all your attention.

Employment isn't so bad in those cases.

Yes, you have to get new clients, that is always a risk. Proper structuring of payment schedules and IP transfer helps with invoice payment. Also, having long-term relationships with clients also helps there. I would hope you carry some sort of insurance in the case of life taking a sudden left-turn, but perhaps you don't. Ideally you financially plan enough to cover something like that.

I've been a contractor as several points in my life and loved it mostly. It is sometimes stressful making sure everything is on track, but the freedom of not depending on any one client and the difference in income that allowed me to work less If I wanted was great.

I currently work as an employee and also like the benefits it provides and the people I work with. But, I also know that ultimately companies now days have very little loyalty so my mind never lets me think of being an employee as some absolute guarantee of stability.

Time I need to spend managing clients is time I don't spend on self improvement or development. I'd prefer to specialize and be a better software developer than a decent software developer and mediocre client wrangler.

> I currently work as an employee and also like the benefits it provides and the people I work with.

So you broadly claim that "employment is dead" using big words like "feudal system" and how you can make so much more money contracting etc. etc. and then it turns out you are an employee after all? Seriously?

I never made any such claim nor would I agree with such a claim. Perhaps you should pay a bit more attention before getting outraged?

Check the usernames; unless Isaferite is the same person as VLM, Isaferite didn't make the comments you're quoting.

true, but isaferite was agreeing with OP, so I stick to my words.

Nope. Never said anything about agreeing with that comment. I was strictly commenting on the "I am pretty happy with my employment. Paid vacation, paid sick days, reasonable hours and all that good stuff."

So, please don't put words in my mouth.

That's my struggle with this - it feels like living in constant fear of something going awry and a bout of extreme anxiety every 6-12 months.

I'll take my impostor syndrome and constant medium-high anxiety thank you very much.

"so any one client 'firing' you is suddenly not a huge thing since your income is distributed across multiple clients"

For whom you have to spend roughly 1/3 of your time on collection because companies don't get rich writing a lot of checks. If it fits your psyche, great. Not everyone is like you.

As I said in another comment, part of that is covered by proper payment structuring and IP transfer provisions while the rest is covered by having long-term clients that you have a good relationship with.

This never happens, as there is a minimum time to create a "minimum viable work unit" and often you're paid to deliver as soon as possible, not a year later. I've never seen a contract with enough slack to make overlapping work reasonable. It is not physically possible. Might only work if you're selling templates or are a Mechanical Turk.

Generally higher income is not much higher either way, at least around here. Nobody wants to hire contractors for more than they have to pay full time employees.

You still get to pay your health insurance (typically covered by employer automatically here) and taxes.

Well, from personal, non-template, work I can say that I was frequently running work from 2-4 clients easily enough. If a client was more demanding of time then I was more demanding on cost.

If contract work is getting paid the same as FTE, then something is messed up. I literally charged double what I make right now as an FTE.

And yeah, I even called out the missing benefits, but that's something you pay for out of the income differential.

I've been a contract worker several times in my life. I'm currently a FTE and like the people I work for. Going contract is certainly not for everyone and is perhaps a panic inducing decision depending on your current situation.

> Now imagine you are getting twice as much after taxes for the same work

That would have been wonderful!

Honestly, I like unlimited unpaid days off: they give me the freedom to choose when to work, and when not to, with no hard feelings.

It's surprising how few companies will bend on this. In my experience it seemed like they were more concerned about the possibility of other employees getting notions. It's a big reason to move somewhere that mandates vacation time (though again, I'd rather just take as much time as I want unpaid).

Employment is lower risk. It's tougher to fire employees than contractors, so there's lower firing risk for employees. It also reduces your work overhead for stuff that HR can take care of for you (health insurance, life insurance, etc). As well as sick days.

And at some places, this lets you focus on larger problems that you'd never get solved working from contract to contract.

I've seen good people get fired for what seem like purely political reason (in California). They got a month of severance but come on. My father worked for a handful of companies his entire career and had true loyalty for them. The company, in turn, took care of him his whole life. This does not exist anymore in the private sector. If your org seems to have it, I'm sorry to tell you that it might change one day (and very abruptly). I've seen this happen to places that were considered unassailable.

In my experience employment is not lower risk at all, in terms of continuity of employment. Companies will fire you even in countries where your rights are strongly protected, the only difference being you get paid for the nuisance. This is not really a differentiator: let's say that incentivised employees get a month of salary for each year of service, then you can factor that in your daily rate as a contractor.

The big advantage is when you have strong rights and we're talking about long term illness. For example in Italy you can't be fired if you are truly sick for months: your employment will be retained, however you might not get paid, or not get paid fully.

Other advantages might be related to discrimination: for a young white male it might be easier to get a developer job, or for a seasoned white male might be easier to get a lead/manager role. It's the same with employment, but as a contractor, passing job interviews becomes a significant part of your job, as well as cultivating relationships.

> It's tougher to fire employees than contractors

I keep reading this here, but this doesn't square with the reality I see all around me (this may be specific to the USA). I've observed plenty of people getting fired, sometimes on short notice and for non-obvious reasons, often only known to the employer and employee. As someone who does not run a business, could someone explain to me the details about exactly what makes firing someone "difficult" for an employer?

Not all states have at will employment.

This is right. Lower risk, lower reward. You'll make some money, but won't share in most of the upside.

Up to you to decide which path you want to take. Depends what you want from life.

Apparently lots of downvotes here but most companies will screw you over as soon as it's convenient for them to do so.

Most of the arguments against contracting, so far as of this timestamp, seem to boil down to anecdotal "I've got mine so who cares about everyone else" with a side dish of if I can imagine how in a utopia idealized employment could be for everyone, and if that imaginary "could be" employment is superior to how contracting actually is in reality, then its proven with no need to implement it for any individual or entire culture that employment is better, because being better in theory trumps how it is in reality.

Is there any stronger argument in opposition than "I got mine..." or "In a utopia..." ?

In all fairness, as of the timestamp of my comment, all of the pro-contract-work arguments I've seen include things like "and it's so easy when you have good relationships with long-time clients" and other such things. Which is really the same argument as the anti-contract "I'm in a stable awesome job with great benefits, so of course this is better.".

I have yet to see anyone comparing using the WORST case of EITHER of these scenarios - and I think I would argue that comparing worst cases, contract work fails harder, since the availability of non-contract employment (at least in the tech industry) is certainly easier to find than trying to self-market for high-ish prices as a contract worker with no prior experience to show for it and no current clients, especially since there seem to be SO many pitfalls for new contract workers to fall into that could hopelessly screw them over, at least in the short term.

Edit: To clarify my point: Worst case non-contract: Shitty job, terrible company/management, average to below-average salary, and terrible (if any) benefits and healthcare.

Worst case contract: No clients to speak of, unable to get your business off the ground, still struggling with self marketing, and when you do find work (few and far between), you are underpaid because of a combination of unrealized self-worth and bullying clients who refuse to pay that amount.

In the case of "worst case", at least the non-contract worker is getting PAID.

That's a pretty well thought out argument.

I'd propose that above the very bottom of the barrel, contract work is slightly better because it is like speed dating and the odds of meeting the right client for you are higher than could be experienced in slower paced long term employment.

I think I could agree with that - once the newbie learns how to market a bit, how to be more aggressive getting clients, contracting COULD snowball (we shouldn't be making any sweeping claims!) much faster than a normal 9-5 career.