Any contractors going perm yet?

[anonymous-user]

chip* said:

keirik said:

I retired instead.

Best plan so far

Likewise.
Tried contracting for my last 5 years just to load up my SIPP, then left the Investment Banking industry completely.

Yep I came out of banking/insurance/finance and also spent the last 4 years loading my pensions and taking no/tiny salary

[anonymous-user]

SOL111 said:

Greenmantle said:

22 years and counting
current client asked me to go permie
had to say no

As mentioned before this has been in my wallet over 20 years

Lol.

I know a few contractors that have recently gone permie and they hate it already.

Personally I'm not considering it yet as I have a few clients and am still trying to expand.

For me it's not just the money but the freedom it brings to choose my clients.

I went from contract to permie at Royal Sun Alliance.

In the space of a day they went from listening to me because I was the expensive external consultant to ignoring me because I was a lower grade than they were.

Stuck it for 12 months then fell out with the CIO so he paid me off (so worth going permie just for that)

Favourite part of the job? When I heard they did the same to him 3 months later.

[silent ninja]

The grade thing is a valid point. Organisations seem to thrive on having gradings and treating people accordingly in a hierarchical manner. It's the old 'hiring people then telling them what to do' and placing them in a box. Modern organisations are much flatter - I'm thankful to work at a fairly flat organisation. It's not perfect, important decision making can be slow when you have too many chiefs and no central accountability, but the upside is obvious. Everyone contributes more, everyone listens more and everyone is much better engaged in their role and responsibilities.

[wombleh]

Nope, have been careful to operate outside ir35 for years so don't see much change. The money is nice but it's more about being in control of my own career.

I've also had issues with HR in the past, fairly farcical when I handed in notice. Tried to sack me to make an example for their new policies, pointless appraisals that just got in the way of work, childish waste of time.

Edited by wombleh on Thursday 11th April 07:01

[rustyuk]

vindaloo79 said:

The current gig I am on, had 4 weeks left to run of UAT test support and defect fixing. They did negligible smoke tests or dev test and jumped into UAT.

Then the project froze and I am on gardening leave for 2nd week running, I suspect despite promises the end client will ask for yet another deferment for a further week. I've been trying to jump ship but its still quiet so I will make most of time off and just see this through. I am not used to work being approved the week before on a rolling basis.

So, I am a step closer to going perm you could say. At least this consultancy could pay me to be on bench...

I have been looking at JAVA, JS or Python to crosstrain. Struggling to decide which this week, but I know there's more jobs closer to home in each of those. Tempted to take the summer off and xtrain rather than go perm...

Can you have gardening leave as a contractor???

[aeropilot]

rustyuk said:

vindaloo79 said:

The current gig I am on, had 4 weeks left to run of UAT test support and defect fixing. They did negligible smoke tests or dev test and jumped into UAT.

Then the project froze and I am on gardening leave for 2nd week running, I suspect despite promises the end client will ask for yet another deferment for a further week. I've been trying to jump ship but its still quiet so I will make most of time off and just see this through. I am not used to work being approved the week before on a rolling basis.

So, I am a step closer to going perm you could say. At least this consultancy could pay me to be on bench...

I have been looking at JAVA, JS or Python to crosstrain. Struggling to decide which this week, but I know there's more jobs closer to home in each of those. Tempted to take the summer off and xtrain rather than go perm...

Can you have gardening leave as a contractor???

Not really, as you'd never have a notice period long enough to warrant it?
You'd just get shown where the door is, and told to shut it behind you on your way out of it

[anonymous-user]

I tried it for a year, but chuff me the politics, I joined the same day as an ex-army guy and it was a massive culture shock for him.

"One minute I have a team literally watching my back, now I have them stabbing me in the back, I thought we were on the same team?"

I had been fending off the RCs, until I got offered a contract working for ......................

HMRC which didn't fall under IR35. For the first time ever it felt great paying my tax bill that year.

[aeropilot]

Vandenberg said:

I tried it for a year, but chuff me the politics, I joined the same day as an ex-army guy and it was a massive culture shock for him.

"One minute I have a team literally watching my back, now I have them stabbing me in the back, I thought we were on the same team?"

Sums it up indeed.

Its not anything like the same working environment as when I started work 40 years ago and was permo all through the eighties and into the nineties.

But then, pretty much everything in everyday life has changed dramatically in the past 40 years.

[vindaloo79]

rustyuk said:

Can you have gardening leave as a contractor???

Sorry just saw that, by gardening leave, I meant not getting paid. Looking for new roles! Market is pretty tight at moment. The good news is I'm back into being paid from Wednesday onwards. The weather is so nice at moment - at least I've been lucky with that.

[spikeyhead]

One of the great advantages of contracting is distributing retirement, having a few months off doing whatever you fancy until the next interesting piece of work turns up.

[Never you mind]

rustyuk said:

Can you have gardening leave as a contractor???

I have had 2 weeks gardening leave. Basically, a company I worked for kicked out all but a few contractors. I was one of the few they wanted to keep. However IBM said they found me, I was their staff so I couldn't stay even though the client wanted me too. IBM then said they would keep me on for a few weeks (paid) till they found me something. 2 weeks later they came up with a role at their Preston office which I declined.

[Olivera]

Never you mind said:

<stuff>

An IT contractor with a Lamborghini - Kudos!

[98elise]

vindaloo79 said:

rustyuk said:

Can you have gardening leave as a contractor???

Sorry just saw that, by gardening leave, I meant not getting paid. Looking for new roles! Market is pretty tight at moment. The good news is I'm back into being paid from Wednesday onwards. The weather is so nice at moment - at least I've been lucky with that.

Seems to be role dependant. On my current contract 3 people have finished and none have picked up another contract. Thats 9 months, 6 months, and 2 months on the bench.

Another person (PM) started looking around at renewal time a month ago and found a job straight away.

Based on those odds I'm building a cash buffer ready for a few months without work.

[hyphen]

spikeyhead said:

One of the great advantages of contracting is distributing retirement, having a few months off doing whatever you fancy until the next interesting piece of work turns up.

+1

Many contractors I have found have the same mentality as employees - just want to work 9-5 every day they can till retirement, and are contractors solely for the extra money.

[Gad-Westy]

BIG MOLE said:

In my field (mechanical engineering design) the difference between net earnings as a contractor compared to a staff role is pretty big. Not because contractors are on massive rates, but because perm role generally pay so poorly. At worst I am usually netting double what I would in the equivalent perm role.

If I can’t do at least 50% more than a permie net income then I may well completely jack-in engineering. I have a lot of collateral in my house, to the point where I could down size and be mortgage free. I’d rather go and work in a low stress, low responsibility job to keep some money coming in than keep working in engineering for what I think is poor pay, given the level of knowledge and skill required.

You might remember you and others giving me plenty of advice in making a jump myself into Design contracting. Been doing it for 9 months now and the thought of going back into a permanent role now horrifies me! Though I do find it annoying that now that I'm contracting I seem to be constantly given opportunities for permanent roles that I would have jumped at a few years ago. Where were the offers when I needed them?!

My mindset and way of life has changed so much in the last few months that I'd actually probably still contract now even if meant taking a pay cut vs. permanent. It would have to start causing some real pain before I'd consider going back.

[BIG MOLE]

Gad-Westy said:

BIG MOLE said:

In my field (mechanical engineering design) the difference between net earnings as a contractor compared to a staff role is pretty big. Not because contractors are on massive rates, but because perm role generally pay so poorly. At worst I am usually netting double what I would in the equivalent perm role.

If I can’t do at least 50% more than a permie net income then I may well completely jack-in engineering. I have a lot of collateral in my house, to the point where I could down size and be mortgage free. I’d rather go and work in a low stress, low responsibility job to keep some money coming in than keep working in engineering for what I think is poor pay, given the level of knowledge and skill required.

You might remember you and others giving me plenty of advice in making a jump myself into Design contracting. Been doing it for 9 months now and the thought of going back into a permanent role now horrifies me! Though I do find it annoying that now that I'm contracting I seem to be constantly given opportunities for permanent roles that I would have jumped at a few years ago. Where were the offers when I needed them?!

My mindset and way of life has changed so much in the last few months that I'd actually probably still contract now even if meant taking a pay cut vs. permanent. It would have to start causing some real pain before I'd consider going back.

Glad to hear you are enjoying contracting after making the jump.

As I said earlier in this thread, I can't see us getting to a point where companies don't need to use people with specialist skills for short periods of time, so I think that there will be a need for contractors going forward. There may be some financial pain in the short term, but I think that in the medium to long term rates will rise as the need will be there will be fewer people doing it as it will seem less attractive than it has been in the past.

Keep the faith

[RedRose123]

98elise said:

Seems to be role dependant. On my current contract 3 people have finished and none have picked up another contract. Thats 9 months, 6 months, and 2 months on the bench.

Another person (PM) started looking around at renewal time a month ago and found a job straight away.

Based on those odds I'm building a cash buffer ready for a few months without work.

I'm an IT contractor, looking for 9 months and no contract. Seems to be trend in recent years. Takes longer to find a contract but contracts last a lot longer. When I started 13 years ago contracts were easier to find but a lot shorter.

[SpeedBash]

RedRose123 said:

I'm an IT contractor, looking for 9 months and no contract. Seems to be trend in recent years. Takes longer to find a contract but contracts last a lot longer. When I started 13 years ago contracts were easier to find but a lot shorter.

What's your skillset?

[RedRose123]

SpeedBash said:

What's your skillset?

Twenty years in software testing, 13 as a contractor. Recently specialising in Salesforce CRM. Have had gaps before when the markets been quiet. I'm with all the Salesforce specialist agencies and have de-skilled my CV for Jobserve and other job sites.

I just have to wait, could be days, weeks, months ?

[Dog Star]

RedRose123 said:

I'm an IT contractor, looking for 9 months and no contract. Seems to be trend in recent years. Takes longer to find a contract but contracts last a lot longer. When I started 13 years ago contracts were easier to find but a lot shorter.

I once had one for six weeks at P&O in Dover. The problem was that the permie IT staff were really weird - blocked us from using the car park, tried to stop us from using the staff restaurant (they failed) and even got me stopped from getting a ferry discount. When asked if I wanted to extend I (and my friend who was there too) declined and left. Back in those days the payment terms were a bit rubbish too - I seem to recall that I'd actually finished the contract before my invoice payments started to drip through (by cheque!).

I remember back when I started all of the contracts were in a physical magazine that came every few weeks (I forget now) - "Freelance Informer" and the agencies actually advertised the contracts. Back then if you saw a contract you would fax off your CV (I was VAX COBOL/DECFORMS stuff back then) and almost invariably get the contract. It was better than 50/50 odds by some margin.

Up until I got a mobile phone (1993 I think?) I had to either get my mum to take phone messages or had an actual answerphone machine.

Rates were not that much lower than they are today and there was none of this IR35 nonsense (that I never took heed of anyway, never had any bother at all) you just bunged everything through the books and paid yourself about 50p a month salary. It's rubbish now in comparison.