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Comment by throwaway55421 | Hacker News Reader

Barely any mention of contracting outside of "the crusty old legacy developer"?

That's pretty much the #1 route for people I know, get out of the full time lackey game and chill.

In my experience (from Europe), contractors are more of a lackeys, because they are worried about their contracts extensions. So, in practice, they try much harder. The only good part about being a contractor (except the usually much larger pay) is the fact that you're invisible to HR and their games. No yearly reviews, no development plans, no promotions - you just negotiate your rate with your hiring manager without all the charades.

Maybe that's an EU thing? In the US it's almost as easy firing an employee as firing a contractor.

Yes, in EUrope its much harder to fire employ than contractor. In some countries you need stuff like 3 written warnings and so on

I do not recognize your parents experience in the EU, but yes, here employees are very protected while contractors are not. Still, outside the certainly of employment, even in the EU, I know only positives when contracting. Things like tax and insurance optimizing you cannot really do as employee and now with WFH, it is possible to optimize even more. And if you have a trackrecord, it is easy to get other projects. Note: I am getting close to 50y/old.

Edit; another thing which you can do as contractor and typically not as employee, is take retainers. When a project is done and the company does not need me anymore, they can retain me for n hours per months that I will spend on that project no matter what else I am doing; and they pay no matter if they use the hours or not. Similar is, and I have done that too, an SLA on the project you helped deliver. But that is far more dangerous as others might have continued working on it, so I don't do that anymore.

I dont (try much harder) :) and as you said, i keep bumping the rates after some time and work is done and customers are happy. No agile meetings (those extras that are not really in agile apirit, but managers think they are :D). I get to work on what i wqnt and when i want. Its fun, but as dev you should be full stack for it or have someone ready to come in when you hit the wall while configuring servers or needing to use some tech that you'd need to learn and its no time/place for learning.

> I dont (try much harder) :)

Perhaps you don't notice how little the full-time people are trying :) It's not hard to try harder than them.

BTW now I'm curious. It sounds to me like you're talking about very different contracting that I am? I have never seen a larger company allow contractors to skip the agile ceremonies. They're always treated exactly as an employee in this regard - they're basically "temporary" augmentation of the staff, because company is not able to hire enough permanent people. (BTW this "permanent" state usually extends into years of staying at that company). Is this the kind of contracting you do, or do you do something else?

This sounds like basically just having an employee but with different legal standing as a loophole or something.

Contracting is completely different, you generally define a set project to complete, do it, and get out.

In the UK there's something valled IR35 which means that in order for you to be considered an independent entity for tax purposes you should have full control over working hours, practices, etc.

Is the IR35 really having the intended effect? I've contracted in the UK pre-IR35, and I was essentially just an employee who paid much lower taxes (and was easier to fire, didn't have paid vacation etc.). I've met lots of people who contracted exactly the same way. Is it really different now?

In the UK, and I think the rest of Europe, things like tax have recently been changing to strongly discourage this. Contractors now have to be hired for specific projects with identified goals and deliverables or the whole thing starts to get unattractive expensive.

Of course, it's all paperwork that can be bullshitted, but it's had at least some effect in my experience.

You’re describing people contracted to be an employee. Basically just hours with no specific deliverables.

GP is describing people contracted to deliver a product/service.

Who hires such contractors? All the major companies have their own tech departments and write software in-house (or outsource it whole-sale to giants like TCS). That mostly leaves smaller non-tech companies. Do they have the money to pay a competitive rate?

Smaller companies that don't specialise in a specific thing.

Do you have the money to pay a locksmith a competitive rate? Same.

Locksmiths make a couple hundred dollars per job at most. Software engineers make tens of thousands for basic jobs, and hundreds of thousands for more ambitious things. It's not really comparable. Even $50k is not an insignificant amount for a small-to-medium company.

Ive done quite a bit of years in agile and full time office jobds so i've seen some terrible things from full time people (i even got some of them fired because they were straight off *ucking their employers) :) so its a matter of choices and what you want to do, if youre a fordism believer then go ahead and sweat it out. Im on permanent contracts with companies/customers in both Europe and US. Is it so hard to believe that someone is "the captain" of their own ship? Or that you dont need tye sillt standup in the morning if people actually know what theyre doing and delivering great results? I do love to fire customers that are cheap or stresfull or require more than what they want to pay for. Im hiring ppl as well and i dont require from them that, and they deliver 100%. Some times giving ppl more freedom to arrange their work time and life as they want gives you their trust and grattitude and you dont need to worry about keeping them on x to x hour leash.

Btw. Your contract will be as you make it and as your customer sign it. Thats it. Theres no point in labelling contract is this or that. Its unique per situation.

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