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Comment by devsatish | Hacker News Reader

1) Tail end of the year - its hard to get full time roles , The hiring definitely picks up after Jan 2nd week or so. 2) Try consulting/contracting - That space is still brimming w hiring. Much faster on-boarding /hiring.

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Contracting is not really an option that way in the U.S. market that I've seen, though I'd be interested if you've had a different experience. Either you're contracting through an agency in which case you're applying just like for any FTE job, or you're operating at the high end with an established network. Random gigs at places like Upwork don't pay enough for a major U.S. metro area unless you're willing to hustle full-time to live a student.

Not to mention being your own full-time benefits manager isn't free and should be reflected in your contracting/hourly/non-W2-with-immediate-salary-and-employer-benefits wage.

Yes. They say that as a contractor you should ask for your desired FTE yearly salary divided by 1000, per hour. So the equivalent for a $120k/year FTE position would be contracting full time at $120/hour. As far as I know it's not any easier to find 40 hours/week at $120/hour contracting than it is to find a $120k FTE position.

It may be easier to find 2 or 3 projects/engagements that are 10-15/hrs/week.

There is definitely an opportunity to contract this way, but you have to think outside of the largest companies. You want to start by looking through your network and finding the folks who are at smaller start-ups or even have experience working with venture capital firms. Start there and inquire if they have any need for contract work or looking for an engineer for one of their smaller portfolio companies who might want to take on a contract-to-hire or even just contract.

Smaller companies generally have less red tape to getting contractors, more need (as they are either scaling quickly OR just need something done and don't want to incur high cost of a perm eng). You will need to figure out the appropriate rate (keeping in mind this doesn't come with benefits), but that exercise is left to the reader.

Sounds like a great strategy if you have a big network of people at startups or connected to VC. Not everyone is in that boat, though.

> Try consulting/contracting - That space is still brimming w hiring. Much faster on-boarding /hiring.

Hiring is faster, yes, but onboarding is often still a dreadful mess. At least if it's at a company that expects you to use their equipment and their closed system.

Still getting paid for it. Had a client that made me stare at the walls because of their “security policies” messing things up now and then. Got paid for sitting around.

Any suggestions on how to look for good contracting roles? LinkedIn only seems to have FTE roles.

Put your resume on Indeed and Dice, and keep a google voice number, you will get a lot of calls from "offshore recruiters" working for primary and secondary vendors.

How legitimate are those? Do they have real jobs?

I've just been ignoring anything from an Indian sounding name as they seemed to me to be scams.

Yes, they are real jobs. But you have to make sure that it is from primary vendors. Often times, many secondary vendors source for the same job listed by primary vendor. One way to cut down secondary vendors, ask for decent rates. If someone asks you to work for $60 per hr, just say NO.

Even primary vendors have outsourced their recruiting to India.

$60 per hour isn't a decent rate?

For contract position in the U. S.? Where total comp is going to be...$60/hour, and you pay your own health insurance? For an IC role better than junior, I'd laugh as I hung up the phone...ten years ago. And I'm nothing special, just a grunt with a decent resume.

(Seattle-area, if it matters, and it does.)

Try double or triple that at minimum.

$60/hr as a contractor is the equivalent of $30/hr or less salaried. At $60/hr, it's probably even less than $30/hr because you are not eligible for ACA tax breaks and must pay full price for health insurance. The health insurance plans available on the individual market have large premiums and deductibles compared to plans that employers subsidize. You also have a larger tax burden, including the need to file quarterly.

The rule of thumb for contracting is to take your salaried rate and double it at minimum.

Do the math.

If you can bill 40 hours/week for 50 weeks per year, that's about 2K hours so $120K/year. But you can't. You'll probably do well to bill half that because contracts probably don't fill basically the entire year neatly like that. You probably also want to budget time anyway for vacations/illness/etc., selling, billing, learning, and all the other off-the-clock things you need to do.

So now you're closer to $60K per year and that's with self-employment tax and no benefits including health (unless you're on a partner's plan).

So at $60/hr, even with a fairly full calendar, you're pretty much scraping by in the US.

Which tech skills? Full stack? Backend? any speciality skills?

Backend. Can't think of any speciality skills unfortunately. Generally building, testing, shipping and maintaining services. Familiar with C#/.NET and Python/Django.

Start with your network (assuming you have at least a few senior engineers and your career is 4+ years in tech, you should have this via LinkedIn). You are looking for folks you worked with that are now at their 2nd+ job in their career with mostly smaller companies (generally start-ups, 5-100 full-time, 1-50 eng teams) or are now involved with venture capital/investing/anything that suggests they have exposure to smaller teams. These are the companies with high chance of having a contract role open either because they are growing too fast or they just have lots of stuff to build but don't necessarily want to/can spend time on hiring.

From there reach out and ask them for help and provide your skillset, goals (X length contract work with mobile focus), and see if they will help connect you further. Hopefully your resume and past experience with that connection help you get your foot in the door more easily.

I find that very hard to believe.

All I see is full time jobs, no remote, and certainly no contract jobs. Germany.

2) Consulting makes sense, companies are less likely to hire in a downturn (because they want to avoid increasing ongoing cost). However,is still work to be done, and timelines to be made. A "one time" expense is easier to justify.

Yes. Hiring processes slow greatly this time of year. It's always been that way.

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