I do this, but it's not all roses. Getting and keeping those contracts continually takes effort and time. It's stressful when you don't have much line of sight into the future. And even though you can charge a high hourly rate, it's difficult to work lots of billable hours. I need time for context switching, administrivia, marketing. And the one problem I don't see discussed much: on-demand motivation.

If you work a salary job and don't feel up to it for at the moment, you can coast for half a day and get your shit together. On your own, that's a half a day of lost money. My brain needs breaks, and I just can't do code 40 hours a week and not burn out. I've tried. It just hasn't worked. So that downtime is a requirement, and you lose money for it.

The best part is that a decent programmer can make a moderate income working relatively little. Or you can make a lot of money if you work very hard. It's your choice at any given moment. But don't underestimate the drain of having to work for one to three people at a time, managing your time, and making sure the pipeline doesn't run dry all at the same time. It's pretty annoying/stressful when two important clients have deadlines on the same day. It's not like you can just pull in more help. Or if you can, you then have two problems - you have to go out and find the help, manage it, etc.

I don't think I could bill more than 25 hours a week and keep my sanity. But I'm not exactly a workaholic, and 25 hours a week is a pretty good living.

Milage may vary.

One more thing. Getting a mortgage is a pain in the ass. You will be held to a higher standard than someone with W2 income, so you might not be able to borrow what you can actually afford, and won't get anything at all until you've got a few years of track record on your tax returns.

So, in a way, you are actually running a software consulting/development firm, however, in this case, you just have to manage yourself. Scouting for clients, deadlines are similar to a firm/agency running multiple contracts. I get that it requires pretty good networking and communication skills. Thank you for sharing your experience.

Basically, yes. Don't let it discourage you. It's a great way to earn a living, but it has downsides - so go in with open eyes. It's not a life for "I just want to code" types. They're better off with full time jobs.

Well said. After consulting for a few years, the only way I'd ever do it again is if I had at least a year's wages in the bank as a "cushion."

Also: I found it extremely difficult to date or maintain a relationship while consulting.

Working lots of short-term contracts are fine when the economy is good. But when the economy goes bad, you'll see those contracts dry up very quickly. Then you're looking for a full time job along with everyone else who was doing short term contracts at a time when companies are scaling back hiring. Most of you are going to have a bad time.

A full-time job offers some protection from volatility. I'm not going to pretend that nobody has ever been laid off from a full-time job, but if you work contracts you have ZERO job security. And contractors are the first thing to go in cost cutting mode.

If you go the independent contractor route, make sure your emergency fund can cover 18-24 months of expenses. Also, recognize that while the pay may be higher, if you're in the US you also are on the hook for 8% payroll tax that your employer would normally pay on your behalf.

If you go this route, you need to adjust your definition of "well off". If you are looking to keep pace with your friends working at Google and making $150k, that's pretty unlikely. But you can probably pull $60k and still meet your savings goals, and $60k/yr is more than enough to live comfortably on. And that number won't be static; some years you might make $100k and some years you might make $20k. You need your savings to be able to survive the lean years.

All that said, based on your comment I assume you have no work experience. Why would you hire yourself for a short-term contract over someone else? Go work somewhere full-time for at least a few years until you have a good answer for that question. You almost certainly have a whole lot of tradecraft to learn as well. Once you've built up some experience (and some contacts) you can think about contracting.

> Also, recognize that while the pay may be higher, if you're in the US you also are on the hook for 8% payroll tax that your employer would normally pay on your behalf.

You are on the hook for more than just that. Federal, state and often county taxes (gross receipts, business licenses) will need to be paid. Plus you will need to acquire health insurance, fund your retirement, pay for needed business expenses, etc. Not to mention, most contracts you sign, will require that you also carry some form of business insurance (errors and omissions for example). All these things will slice and dice your hourly rate down severely.

I am not even sure now that this will work in good economic times, since there is saturation in contract-based assignments, with agencies hiring programmers on very low rate in developing countries. All I can take away from this is that, one needs to have experience and a great network (potential clients) before thinking about contract work. Thank you for your input.

Yes, a great network is essential. But there is plenty of room for independent developers; just target some of the less prevalent tech like Ruby, Erlang, node.js, etc. Most of the big shops go after Java, Oracle, SAP, etc. and don't bother with some of the smaller technologies because there's not consistent enough demand to support their scale.

A 40 hour a week job works out to ~1/3 of your time while awake which is fine. ~(40 * 48)/(16 * 365)

The problem is it's easy to get worse than that add a 1h each way commute and 10 hour days, and skip vacations that's half your waking life. ~(60 * 50)/(16 * 365) And of course you need a few hours a day just for prep time and meals etc so quickly you only get free time to relax on the weekends.

Right; its important to realize that the marginal cost of work hours goes up geometrically. There are only so many in the day, and each remaining one becomes more desperately important.

> Isn't there people with experience on working on short-term contracts and still living well-off?

This is just my opinion and I can only speak from a US perspective, but yes and no. The ones who are able to do this have already gotten a 10+ year head start and have built up a deep network from which to source work from. The ones who are starting out today are more than likely having a very tough go at it. Competition for contracts is much more intense compared to 10, 15 years ago and you really need to bring more to the table than just "javascript developer" or "wordpress consultant".

I know there exists this love-affair on HN with running off to become independent contractor, live on a beach writing code and making your own hours. I'm not saying it's impossible, but the reality though is that in the end you are building a business (even if it's just you). All the energy, time, risk and money that it takes to run a regular businesses will be just the same with running your own consultancy. The downtime you think you will have to yourself in-between contracts will be eaten up by having to find the next contract. If you happen to unfortunately live in or near a city with a high cost of living, the pressure will be even more intense.

You could be very right here, since most of the people I come across working on contracts are already in the market for at least 10 years. In today's market, for someone new starting out, I guess there will be cut-throat competition to get programming contracts, with people ready to work at a very low rate (e.g. on Freelancer, oDesk).

That was the case 10 years ago as well. Most of my contracting friends started out with $15/hour webmonkey work.

The thing you have to understand about contracting (and really any paid work, I've noticed the same effect as a big-company employee) is that people will pay a large premium for a track record of delivering working solutions. When you first start out, your asset is "I know this programming language", your clients just want someone who knows that programming language, and you're competing with all of these people on oDesk and eLance who also know that programming language. After you've delivered successfully on your first couple projects, your asset is "I delivered on these projects and it made my clients $X", your clients want someone with a track record of delivering on projects with minimal handholding, and you're competing only with other people who have had wins of similar magnitude. The supply of these is much lower and the demand is much higher, and so you can charge much higher rates.

It gets easier over time. The first contracts are the hardest to get. Then, if you're any good, you start to get referrals. You just have to make sure every single client is happy. If you go out and network, you will eventually get to a point where you can stop trying so hard, but it's never what I would call "easy". The hardest part is making a living while you're getting started.

I would avoid oDesk type rates at all costs. You're better off going to small business networking groups and making simple brochure sites and wordpress installs for $1000-$2000 a pop.

Full-time work can be worth it. Financial stability goes a long way towards contributing to happiness. You ultimately have to ask yourself what your goals are, and why you're working. A job should be a tool to help you get what you really want out of life.

I think many of us end up working fulltime because we are trained throughout schooling that fulltime employment is the norm. Also, we start working fulltime on low income (we are young, after all) so need to work fulltime to afford to live / buy the things we want etc.

When we reach a threshold of income and financial stability, some of us forget to evaluate why we're working.

As it turns out, I haven't reached this threshold yet so have to carry on working, but it is probably a good idea to look around and ask "why am I working?" if there's no real need for fulltime work.

Yeah, as obvious as it is, one always tends to forget what are the ultimate goals one is working for? As long as there is motivation, maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

The difficulty is guaranteeing a steady stream of short-term contracts. If you can get them and line them up I am sure it is great but I would not like the "unknown" factor of that.

I would do it once you have a steady foundation and some savings to fall back on should these contracts not materialise for a while.

Working fulltime is alright (it means you can be stable for a while) but not all of us are paid huge sums :-(

I wish there was more part-time employment gigs out there for programmers. I know I would jump on something like that, but I've never seen anyone advertise a position as part-time.

That leaves the contracting route. The issue there is you now end up a salesman. The people I know who are good contractors are businessmen first, software engineers second. They know how to close deals, attract clients,and have excellent "soft skills." They are mediocre developers. Not because they couldn't be excellent developers or were excellent developers before becoming contractors, but simply because their work day is no longer centred around engineering. This is fine if what you want is to run a business and be a businessman. Not so much if you're trying to escape the trappings of business to find more time to devote to focusing on just developing.

This is all anecdotal of course, I'm sure there are contractors who see a wide range of experiences that differ from mine.

I'm working as a contractor right now. I have a few different clients. I set my own pace and schedule. If I want to take a day off I do it. In 2013 I took an entire month off and still made a very decent amount of money. Contracting is great you get exposed to a lot and you can walk away without too much trouble. If you have a lot of debt and overhead, it's not so easy, though.