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Comment by beebs93 | Hacker News Reader

> Be reliable (never, ever go dark)

+1 to this point. At a previous agency job I found this to be the biggest pain when hiring/dealing with contractors.

As long as they gave decent notice on days off I never complained about their availability.

Dumb question .. so you aren't asking for a job at the agency? a Rather asking to be a subcontractor when they get a gig? A bit confused here.

I've done this professionally for the last 18 months or so and basically how it works is the agency will get in a project, perhaps it's short or long. My contracts range from 3 weeks to 6 months. The agency doesn't want to hire someone on just for this project because maybe they only get a project like this once every 2 years. You get a desk, sometimes a computer, credentials and are basically an employee. You rock up 9-5 like everyone else. At the end of the contract you'll either get extended if they have more work or you'll be onto the next thing. You should be getting paid a bit more for this than if you were an employee because you're often foregoing benefits like sick/annual leave and general job security.

What's your specialty? I can't imagine an agency passing along generic web dev work. It would have to be something they don't have the expertise on hand to deal with, right?

Personally I've done work like this for agencies who focused on design and front-end that needed some complicated back-end functionality implemented for a client and didn't want to hire their own person internally to handle it.

I focus mostly on front-end work with the ability to work on iOS, PHP, Rails and Phoenix projects. A lot of the places I work at get a lot of front-end work in and need an extra developer for a month or two then they like me and keep me around for a bit longer.

This would really depend on the sort of agency and the type of work they're comfortable doing. Many agencies specialise more in "strategic" work, and have in-house resources for that, but when it comes to actual digital "production" work, this is something they might well farm out to contractors.

You'd be surprised. Many agencies don't have any web developers in-house, or have mostly front-end people and are understaffed for significant application-like work.

Interestingly, this has some legal complications where I am from (South Australia). If you tick all the boxes of being an employee then you must be hired as one. To be a contractor you have to prove autonomy separate from the business, eg your own equipment, set your own hours, and not rely solely on the one client.

It is an attempt to stop employers dodging benefits entitlements by hiring their employees as contractors.

This is true in the United States as well, exactly as you describe it.

Similar thing in Victoria too. Larger companies will be a bit more careful and hire you as a casual employee in case they get audited. Some of the smaller companies and agencies don't really care. Sometimes they'll require me to bring in my own tools, which is fine it's all tax deductible. There's probably not a ton of work like this in SA. Maybe some people at Majoran and Hub would need someone short term but I think having so many head offices and dev centres on the east coast a lot of the work would be centered over there.

Definitely, from my experience companies here are more interested in full timers. Also I didn't expect to see Majoran mentioned in a HN comment!

This is also true in the United States. In particular, there was a major class action suit brought against Microsoft in 1996 on behalf of thousands of workers who were classified as contractors for years at a time. [0] As a result, almost all companies now have strict limits on the max contract term, which is often one or two years.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp#Vizcaino_v._Microsof...

in that case you probably also get even more money as a contractor, and you can deduct the cost of your equipment as a business expense.

We have almost the exact same legislation here in the UK, by the name of IR35.

In essence it means that you can't take paid leave or sick days, otherwise it counts as "disguised employment". Another interesting requirement is that you must have at lest one other person in your company who can reasonably stand in for you and perform your work, if needs be.

If caught on the wrong side of the law then you must return the tax you've saved along with paying a fine. Not nice.

Just want to clarify a point - you don't have to employ the person who stands in for you, you just need to be contractually allowed to do so. Otherwise, your client is paying for _you_, not the service you're providing (e.g. [technology] developer).

Generally it's just a matter of how the contract is worded. You need to reserve the sort of rights a business would reserve.

Ah, I didn't realise this. Thank you!

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