The difference is, as a contractor you can afford to take a few months off and become good at something else - then you'll get a job doing that instead.
You can also pick and choose your projects more freely and there's usually nothing stopping you having long term projects as well as short term gigs, often working for multiple clients at once.
In the US or elsewhere where health insurance is a thing I would probably go perm.
> Companies invest in training and take a chance on you doing something new inside in the company.
I literally LOL'd at this... If you're great at what you're doing, they're keeping you where you are - and "invest in training" could easily mean a 3 day workshop where you find you already know more than the instructor. No thanks.
In answer to the original question, offer more money than you think you can offer and set it up as a 3 month contract-to-perm situation (don't write that down anywhere if you're in the UK - they'll immediately be inside IR35) so you know it's a good match. Alternatively, skin in the game in the form of shares or whatever - but they'd have to be confident in the business, I've rejected that offer in the past.
I don't understand this. How can someone trust you that you picked up some new skill if you have no experience in it. Do you put it on your resume anyways? How can somone even pickup software sales ( for example) on their own free time.
> I literally LOL'd at this... If you're great at what you're doing, they're keeping you where they are - and "invest in training" could easily mean a 3 day workshop where you find you already know more than the instructor. No thanks.
No didn't mean that kind of investment lol. I meant more like taking a chance on you. I was able to convince my manager to let me work on product marketing and sales even though i was regular backend dev. It was one of the best career moments for me. This would've never happened if i was contractor.
Well, for anything which produces tangible output you can show off (I'm obviously thinking of programming) it's fairly straightforward to prove you can do it. Software sales? Yeah, no, I couldn't learn that in my spare time - good point.
Personally a jump to marketing and sales sounds roughly as enticing as the time I was offered either redundancy or a new role as a Lotus Notes dev, but I'm happy it floats your boat.
How? What do you put on your resume ? I am genuinely curious. Forget about sales, how do you prove that you can now implement their machine learning projects.
When I was contracting, companies would generally contract me for a week or 2 based on nothing but me telling them I could do something. If I delivered on that initial result, they'd come back for more.
The difference in compensation more than offsets the cost for insurance, in most cases.
> Companies invest in training
Literally never happened for me in 12 years of perm work, for large and small companies. Discounting trivial/patronising things like security training. I've self trained or picked things up as I go along a few times as a contractor, just as I did when perm.
Then contracting has been no different to perm work in that respect, for me. :shrug:
Why would i hire a self trained machine learning engineer with no experience on high day rates when I can hire someone with experience. Ppl hiring contractors don't have time or patience for you to experiment with self training on their dime, I would hire a fulltimer if i have all the time and money for ppl to learn on the job.
I think ML is probably different, in that it's not something that can be just 'picked up' that easily (AFAICT).
But it's honestly surprised me over the years how often my clients have said "Hey, I know it's not your main area of competence, but do you reckon you could have a go at this?"
If you're already working in their systems and domain, you probably have a decent idea of how you can address it, even if it's outside your main area of expertise. This happens to me, and... if I'm completely unqualified, I just say "I can't do that, here's someone else who can" and make a referral/connection to someone in my network. That's often the harder part - finding someone in my network who is both competent and available.
I know a few very experienced people who have looked into contracting or freelancing over the past year either for the first time or for the first round in many years. They have good skills and the aptitude to pick up whatever else they need, but without the broad network that comes with years of doing short term gigs, they've found the market very tough to break into. I doubt they would recognise the talk of a seller's market and ever-increasing rates that we see on sites like HN!
If you don't have that network and people actively seeking you out, you get stuck with looking via agencies (= ghosted often if you don't already have exactly the right buzzwords) or the online marketplaces (= low rates, poor quality clients and high risk of problems with the marketplace itself). And even if you do, I've seen more than one person whose whole network basically all fell apart around the same time because whole industries were hit by COVID.
Today even more than usual, it is about who you know as much as what you know.
Be it pushing for certification, mooc, internal training credit.
All of that was part of my review for instance. It does work.
That stuff re: training was not something that was part of my life as a perm worker, in the UK or Australia. The companies certainly liked to pay lip-service to employee development, but I didn't see much evidence of it actually happening.
I guess the exception was one quiz about bribery I had to take at IBM. It asked me what I would do if I were offered a cook to go with my lodgings where I was staying during an engagement. This woke me up to the possibilities of bribery I didn't know people were getting. I'm not exactly looking for bribes, but my the hypotheticals had me thinking way too small.
The “Active Shooter” one at JPMC was somewhat sobering.
I was not referring to conplicance trainings. Those, of course you won’t learn a thing.
That's not been the case with our best contractors. Yes, in some cases, they were hired for skillsets they already had. But a couple of them we work with, we were happy to let them learn elixir on company time because they demonstrated solid polyglot skills. And that's paid off in spades.
I've had the same experience with my personal consulting agreements. People sometimes hire you for your experience, and know you'll still bring your judgement, experience, and problem solving mindset to the technology du jour and not start from scratch.
Yes thats what i am saying. Hiring rails devs and letting them learn elixir is no big deal and kind of makes sense. But that not really exciting stuff for senior engineers.
Senior engineers want to learn new domains like sales, learn leadership skills, have a say in product direction ect. That to me is exciting stuff, not learning another web framework.
Not all senior folks are interested in that stuff though. Some are more interested in picking up new tech and delivering good quality technical work than they are in going outside of tech to other parts of a business, or getting into management.
> That to me is exciting stuff
Sounds to me like you're less interested in the software creation aspects these days, which is also fine :)
One of the contractors was a rails dev, the other one was actually just a polyglot, although we had hired him for Ember.js help.
But the project is also a high impact, high stress, and challenging project (COVID vaccination software) so yes the domain, level of challenge, and impact helps tremendously to stand out.
As a tech exec and senior engineer myself, I find it highly appealing to do contract work mainly because there are many options/opportunities, and the ability to take a gap wherever you want. That's why I've had my own company for roughly 12 years.
I do think it'll remain that way for the foreseeable future. Many of the smartest people I know are happy to remain contractors because of the flexibility.
I will say though, that I would never do this without Obamacare (in the US). If not for that, I would be "stuck" in a W-2 job just so I could insure my family. (honestly not trying to pass judgment on people who have 9-5 jobs, I'm just not wired for climbing the corporate ladder, etc)
Which is why I always say, supporting Medicare for All is (ironically) one of the most pro-business moves we could make. It will unleash entrepreneurial spirit unlike anything we've ever seen in the US. The number of 1-2 person businesses will explode. All the talent that's stuck at large employers so they can get those health benefits for their families (even though, thanks to Obamacare, you really don't need to anymore) will get liberated.
But contractors are usually hired for their existing skilsets where they can jump in and start contributing immediately. So you end up doing similar projects.
eg: If you are a backend programmer, no one will hire you to work on as a machine learning engineer on day rates.
This is a big myth that contractors are working on something new and exciting every few months. Most of contracting work is short term grunt work.
> rather than stagnating at the same desk for years on end.
No its the opposite. Companies invest in training and take a chance on you doing something new inside in the company.