Road to serfdom

[Ignis Fatuus]

Remember the feeling of freedom, and of taking responsibility for your own life, that came with leaving full-time employment and going contracting?

Does anybody else get the feeling that it has changed, that contracting now feels much the same as employment did?

For example, when it has become a worry to have "gaps" in your CV, does that not give you this old feeling that the company wants to buy you, not just your work?

[Mich the Tester]

Remember the feeling of freedom, and of taking responsibility for your own life, that came with leaving full-time employment and going contracting?

Does anybody else get the feeling that it has changed, that contracting now feels much the same as employment did?

For example, when it has become a worry to have "gaps" in your CV, does that not give you this old feeling that the company wants to buy you, not just your work?

Yes it's changed, but permiedoom hasn't. Given the choice between crap contracting and sticking with permiedoom, I expect I'll be shortly announcing my return to contracting.

However, I'm going to do it differently by working with other testers that I know and respect, and who are also freelancers. I'm a member of a community of people in Testing that is somewhat rebellious (in NL at least); the Context Driven School of testing has long kicked against the traditional ´wisdom´ of the factory school of testing, with their documents and plans and scripts, and is now kicking against the new ideology of Agile/Devops 100% Automated Testing. Yep, I do use test automation, but actually I see it as automating 'checks'; checking and testing are two different things; checking is a part of testing, but testing is much much bigger. So I'm planning to work in cooperation with like-minded testers to get our message across to clientcos directly, and possibly to cultivate one or two agents who will understand our approach and then help to sell it.

Right now I'm working in an Agile company, and while I agree wholeheartedly with the Agile manifesto, I'm becoming increasingly depressed by people who've taken the ideals and turned them into an ideology, and who want me to buy into their ideology. I won't, because I don't trust ideologies.

[sasguru]

Remember the feeling of freedom, and of taking responsibility for your own life, that came with leaving full-time employment and going contracting?

Does anybody else get the feeling that it has changed, that contracting now feels much the same as employment did?

For example, when it has become a worry to have "gaps" in your CV, does that not give you this old feeling that the company wants to buy you, not just your work?

None of this applies if your skills are in demand.

[KentPhilip]

None of this applies if your skills are in demand.

+1 that is a major factor.

I think the OP is right in terms of the client now tends to see us as a temp employee more than in years gone past. But as a contractor you can still choose to regard yourself as a free agent. Particularly if you have a big warchest.

This does result in a little friction, in my case where the client tried to drop the rate on renewal expecting me to agree it as normal (and then being genuinely surprised when I walked).