Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

I spent 10+ years doing contract software work, and several of my friends work for contracting firms, and I have seen this pathology a lot.

Don't stay up until 2AM working on your contracting firm's projects. Don't personalize contract assignments. Don't act for your firm's clients like you're their full-time employee: you aren't. Don't assume clients are OK with you coming in super late because that's what programmers do: many aren't OK with that.

There are some really great things about working for contracting firms: you get a W2 and benefits and mostly all the downside risk protection of an employee while getting exposed to all the random projects a consultancy gets. You get to dip your toes into lots of different projects. And when you get sick of a certain kind of project, often, you can easily no-harm no-foul switch to other projects. Contracting firms can be great.

But if you try to treat a contracting firm the way you would a startup or tech product company, things are going to suck for you. In particular: you must force yourself to deliver a day's worth of work and then put things down. If you're compulsive and need to work late into the night, stop doing client work, and switch to personal projects.

Contracting firms usually can't bill for your 2AM binge coding session. Clients generally want to pay for work done during business hours on a well-defined schedule. It does not matter that you believe that's not how software is delivered; it's how software is bought. If you run yourself ragged refactoring things until late in the evening, your contracting firm isn't going to be impressed with you: they're going to see, from 1000 miles away, that you're burning yourself out pointlessly in a manner that isn't going to make them an extra penny, and they're going to get pissed.

Totally agree - I've contracted as an independent for about 8 years now, often with the same companies over and over, and I can honestly say I went into the office every day totally prepared for it to be my last and leave without a job. I have great, ongoing relationships with their employees and managers, I do well respected work and the projects have been generally very successful, but this is just the nature of the business. I see contractors in the same gig for years who let themselves become "employees who get paid more" and then are incredibly hurt when they don't get renewed. Again - this is the life of a contractor.

It's interesting that the attorney's letter specifically says "termination of your _employment_". Add that to the fact that he was "fired" initially because he didn't show up for work, and it looks like he has a good case of arguing that this was a de-facto employment situation, not a contracting gig. How and if he could benefit from that, I don't know.

You're missing a subtlety. He's a W2 employee of a contracting firm. Most of the work he does is for clients, not his employer directly, and to those clients he is a 1099, not an employee.

He was fired from the contracting firm, for which he was a W2. His status doesn't really factor into this.

Minor correction: I am a partner in the contracting firm. The contract was cancelled by Pillar as a 1099. I'm still a partner in the contracting firm but will be leaving in a couple of weeks when we shut it down for obvious reasons.

Ah, thank you for the correction. I admit I glossed over a few paragraphs, and missed this.

> Add that to the fact that he was "fired" initially because he didn't show up for work

That is his claim.

We don't know what else was going on and due to confidentiality rules, we're unlikely to hear anything from Pillar.

Based on his reaction on Facebook, Medium, and in these comments, I'd wager they had other concerns.

@tptacek Thanks for the helpful advice.

It seems like a lot of new consultants don't understand the differences between working as a 1099 contractor vs. W2 contractor vs. regular employee. I've met plenty of people who mistake a W2 contractor as the same as a regular employee except that the work is temporary.

I would like to point out that W2 contractors should expect their performance to be evaluated by the hour because that's the rate the client is being is charged for solutions. That's why it's important for W2 contractors to work only during normal business hours so that the client can't claim (later when payment is due) that the client didn't have opportunity to approve of said work and evaluate said work when the contractor delivered solutions to them.

Best post about contracting ever! You need to set limits! 8 hours per day and then done!

The article specifically points out that there were no business hours nor well-defined schedule. These musings may be relevant to some contracting firms, but are not applicable to the situation described in this article.

You can't miss random days for no real reason. "I worked until 2am" isn't really a good reason... you're paid to come into work. Not to fuck about at home.

My impression was that this was a project contract. There would be no obligation to make paid appearances in this case.

I didn't see him say that, but that's really not my point. I'm not commenting to criticize him. I'm offering the consulting survival advice, which I'm pretty sure is generally applicable to all contracting gigs: don't work late for clients unless you absolutely have to.

I consider calling someone's behavior a pathology to be criticism.

That's fair, but that's not how I meant it.

They were obviously not impressed that he missed a day of work, one of many. I'm not surprised they let him go.

Consultants are not employees. Consultants are allowed to take off days anytime. They're allowed to start work at anytime and end work at anytime.

If they got this pissed about it, my guess would be that the client called Pillar and complained. Pillar must have felt that the author not going into the office made them look bad.

If you're working for the company, then yes, working until 2am is very much a good reason. Any company that doesn't see this as such is a shit company, plain and simple.

No. Really, really no. Don't work until 2AM for contracting clients. They won't appreciate it; they may the-opposite-of appreciate it.

> Any company that doesn't see this as such is a shit company, plain and simple.

Nothing is ever that simple. There are perfectly valid reasons for some companies to be unhappy with a contractor unilaterally deciding to work until 2am, and then not turning up for work the next day.

Falling asleep after your manager texts you to see why you haven't turned up for work today is unprofessional, whether you were staying up late night to code or to binge watch Netflix.

Please note that I am talking about this specific situation here. If you are working on your own products or in a team where people view this as expected behaviour, staying up late to take advantage of as many 'in the zone hours' as possible seems like an effective use of a programmer's time.

If that's what my client wants then yes I'll be there on time and in my seat coding. But I set my own hours as a contractor. How? Communication. You have to communicate what you are doing to your client and that is the OP's greatest failure here. It's a weakness of a lot of programmers given our general solitude and my own miscommunication in the past has lead to way more problems than any coding problem could.

I do have some sympathy for the author, but it's a good idea to keep in mind that just because nobody ever told you there was a rule against getting sloppy and working outside normal business hours, doesn't mean it's a good idea to do so. Having a passionate argument for why your problem is someone else's fault, is nowhere near as good as not having the problem in the first place.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com