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Advice on move from permie to contracting?

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    Advice on move from permie to contracting?

    Hey folks,

    I'm a permie, have started thinking about contracting and have been reading this forum for a while now, so I've taken the plunge and signed up here

    I've been working for 15 years at a pretty decent IT company, been a lead developer for the last 6 or 7 years. However, in the past 2-3 years my salary has started to plateau, been turned down for a couple of promotions, etc. so getting a bit fed up, but still enjoying the work mostly.

    I'd also like to do some travelling in the 2nd half of 2021 (assuming covid starts to settle down) - the company offers (unpaid) career break option, or I could just leave.

    Long term, I like the idea of contracting and taking time off between contracts to travel and pursue my own interests. Looking at contracting rates, I reckon I could do this, take a few months off each year, and still come out the same as (or ahead of) where I am now financially.

    Short term, in an ideal world, I could leave my job now and take a 6 month contract which would take me up to the summer, and I'd earn more money than my current job. Of course this isn't an ideal world

    I'd like to get some advice from contractors on here.

    Is the long term plan viable? Lots of (say) 6 month contracts with a few months breaks in between?

    Short term, I have concerns about:
    • IR35 - is it reducing the number of contracting opportunities?
    • Covid/Brexit/visas/the economy generally - is this a bad time to start contracting? Maybe better to stick with my current job, take time off in summer, and then look again at contracting winter 2021
    • I also have a 60 day notice period with my current job, so might be hard to land a contract / require taking a leap of faith if I don't want to burn my bridges with where I work now


    Interested to get some opinions here. There seems to be a lot of negative views of the contracting market on here right now, understandably so. What are your thoughts generally about my options?

    Thanks in advance!

    #2
    60 day notice period is almost certainly unenforceable, and in any case, you should resign - then look for a contract.
    Down with racism. Long live miscegenation!

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by skyhawk172 View Post

      Short term, I have concerns about:
      • IR35 - is it reducing the number of contracting opportunities?
      • Covid/Brexit/visas/the economy generally - is this a bad time to start contracting? Maybe better to stick with my current job, take time off in summer, and then look again at contracting winter 2021
      • I also have a 60 day notice period with my current job, so might be hard to land a contract / require taking a leap of faith if I don't want to burn my bridges with where I work now


      Interested to get some opinions here. There seems to be a lot of negative views of the contracting market on here right now, understandably so. What are your thoughts generally about my options?

      Thanks in advance!
      IR35 - may not decrease opportunities but it will be removing a lot of the real benefits - saving income for lean periods...
      Yes - significantly, worse it as demand is lower and supply is a lot higher with both a lot of contractors looking for work and a lot of unemployed people willing to take anything
      you need to be available tomorrow - 60 days notice isn't going to cut it. I've had contracts shorter than that notice period.
      merely at clientco for the entertainment

      Comment


        #4
        What's your technology area?

        Comment


          #5
          There is a major drawback with the plan.

          If you’re any good there’ll be so much work that you never take your months long break.
          If you aren’t any good you’ll have plenty of breaks, but too filled with poverty and anxiety to go anywhere.

          Not everyone will have this problem, but those people don’t need to ask the question on here.



          Footnote: If your current employer allows yo to take unlimited unpaid leave, then do it with them. Now is an awful time to be a first time contractor.
          See You Next Tuesday

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by BigDataPro View Post
            What's your technology area?
            ^^ this.

            Do some research into your area of expertise. There's several sites that look at demand in different areas and the going rates. Usually I'd say look at job boards for the sorts of roles and rates on offer but I suspect much of it is crud at the moment, with only a few real opportunities in amongst it all.

            Other considerations are also around your expectations. You may be required to supply your own equipment, be treated differently to the rest of the staff, have far less leniency over knowledge gaps and mistakes. 15 years with one company means you're likely to be embedded into a way of thinking that will clash with client expectations of you as a supplier. You will be expected to have most, if not all the answers - why hire an expert if they don't know more than the staff?

            In the before time, you'd have to consider whether you want to stay away from home 4/5 nights a week to get work. If you have a young family, it's a really tough call to make. That's not likely to come back for some time but the new consideration is WFH while the baby is screaming in the background and the wife is having a melt down (I have literally heard this on a call at ClientCo). Sounds like this might not be you, from the info you've given but do think about working arrangements and what you can / can't manage.

            Do you have sufficient funds behind you that if you got a contract and were binned after 3 or 6 months that you could survive if there was no work for months? As has been said before, getting the first contract is usually easy enough - getting the next one is harder (that difficult second album).

            Then comes all the legal and accounting stuff...

            Comment


              #7
              Find a contact that’s

              Good rate
              Outside IR35
              Signed sealed and delivered (passed all vetting and employment checks)

              Tell current company (preferrebly on pay day) you are leaving next week and happy to handover.

              Leave - forget about 60 day notice unless penalties are specified

              Start new contract


              If you have been passed over for promotion a few times your probably no good, so won’t cut it against experienced contractors, stay where you are would be my advice


              Sent from my iPhone using Contractor UK Forum

              Comment


                #8
                Not being a developer, what is the next rung up from a lead developer?

                If it's management, then it's always worth remembering that not everyone is management material and being passed over for such a role may not be the insult you imagine (we don't know the feedback from your attempts at gaining promotion so this is 100% speculation).

                All too often people are promoted beyond their competency because "that's the career path" you do doing - then senior doing - then management and you're supposed to be magically excellent at managing because you're good at doing. They are two very different skill sets. (As they say: those that can, do and those that can't, manage)

                I avoid all roles with 'manager' in the title. I am simply no good at it. I lack the empathy chip required to care (OT - I was once a 'supervisor' in permie land and someone on my team claimed they were offered a job with a £10k pay rise and they got the hump, and complained about me, when I encouraged them to take the job! Who wouldn't jump ship for £10k??)

                Being honest about your career aspirations will help you decide whether what you want is to be contractor or just work for a different company. You won't get career development or promotions as a contractor. You can diversify and offer more services but if you're a lead developer, you'll always be a lead developer.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by ladymuck View Post
                  Not being a developer, what is the next rung up from a lead developer?

                  If it's management, then it's always worth remembering that not everyone is management material and being passed over for such a role may not be the insult you imagine (we don't know the feedback from your attempts at gaining promotion so this is 100% speculation).

                  All too often people are promoted beyond their competency because "that's the career path" you do doing - then senior doing - then management and you're supposed to be magically excellent at managing because you're good at doing. They are two very different skill sets. (As they say: those that can, do and those that can't, manage)

                  I avoid all roles with 'manager' in the title. I am simply no good at it. I lack the empathy chip required to care (OT - I was once a 'supervisor' in permie land and someone on my team claimed they were offered a job with a £10k pay rise and they got the hump, and complained about me, when I encouraged them to take the job! Who wouldn't jump ship for £10k??)

                  Being honest about your career aspirations will help you decide whether what you want is to be contractor or just work for a different company. You won't get career development or promotions as a contractor. You can diversify and offer more services but if you're a lead developer, you'll always be a lead developer.
                  I don't agree with this at all. This is a failure of the organisation more than the individual. An organisation is responsible for developing managerial skills more than an individual is. It is always preferable to have a manager with subject matter knowledge than a career manager.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    This is the worst time to make the transition. You need to wait. You need to wait and see what impact brexit has on contract market for your skill set. You need to wait and see what impact the new visas coming have on contract market for your skill set. You need to wait and see what impact ir35 in april has for your skill set. You probably should wait till this current mess is over with.

                    I think waiting till summer is a good idea. In summer you can take a good look at the market, the market by summertime (depending what happens with coronavirus) might be a more accurate reflection of what opportunities will be out there for the next couple years.

                    Also it seems pretty clear you might just benefit from a new employer rather than a switch from perm to contract.

                    Seek out an employer who needs to develop the function you're in. You need to go into a new employer as the sole subject matter expert. That is when you will get the opportunities you seek. If there is someone there who knows more than you or thinks they know more than you then it isn't the place for you, you wont get any promotions or career growth.

                    Where do you want your career path to go? Are you wanting to get into managing software development teams? project management? want to be a CTO? or do you want to get more into the IT side and manage more of the IT infrastructure? Not sure what your background and aspirations are beyond what you said about being a lead developer.

                    Comment

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