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Comment by gavinmckenzie | Hacker News Reader

In the first couple of years I would worry about this, but I haven’t in a very long time. The only occasions when I’ve had a gap between contracts is when I’ve chosen to take a break. I manage my finances to ensure I have several months of equivalent income saved.

My process is that 60 days before the end of my current contract, whether my current client has said they intend to renew or not, I start seeking other contract opportunities. If my client finalizes the renewal, I halt my job search. If they don’t, the 60 day window has consistently been long enough to ensure I have my next client lined up before my current contract ends.

Most of my contracts are 12 months long. I don’t take contracts any shorter than 6 months.

I should note that I’m in Canada and so I don’t have to worry about healthcare coverage.

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contacted for many years as well. All my contracts always ran a year or longer. In the end, it felt very similar to full time employment - it was 9 - 5, regular meetings, coworkers, etc.. At the same time, I didn’t get any benefits, health insurance or paid holidays.

I am not sure I want to contract like that again. It has most of the downsides of regular employment but none of the benefits. I think in the USA it would make more sense to just switch full time jobs every two years and take breaks between.

Id love to try contracting again but more like true “consulting” - higher rate and fewer hours. I am not sure though that pure dev work could be high leverage like that - it just takes too damn long

It’s definitely not for everyone, and certainly living in a locale without social safety nets like healthcare would add to the stress.

This is the funny stuff - contracting in countries with public healthcare has very little downsides.

Same feeling here. This is called “staff augmentation” contracting and is the easiest to find but the closest to FT employment. It can make sense if you get to a high rate or you can convince clients to do 3/4 days a week kindof arrangements

I too would like to find true consulting opportunities but feel that it’s gonna be tough unless you become well known. Another in between approach is to have a more fixed, productized offering… the only one I can think of for someone with a typical full stack skill set is to build MVPs… you could also teach courses…

Or if you can get together with some friends you enjoy working with and form your own mini agency this can be an enjoyable approach

EDIT: One more idea which I know is done is to develop your own framework or set of processes for your client base, but still charge somewhere in between what you have and building it from scratch. But again this isn’t possible in a staff aug situation as you’ll be beholden to the existing team’s tools and processes.

When I worked at Boeing in 1980 or so, there were a lot of contract engineers there. We did the same work. The difference was:

1. full time employees got benefits, contractors did not

2. full time employees got notice before layoffs, contractors could get dismissed at a moment's notice

3. contractors got paid double what full time employees did

The pay is an unequal comparison though. A W2 job gives you:

* 5 - 10 paid holidays like Labor Day, 4th of July, etc...

* another 10 - 20 paid days off for PTO

* 7% less taxes for social security, medicare

* 401k match

* health insurance

So actually, getting paid twice as much hourly might not be too much extra at the end of the day.

At the time, the value of the benefits package was about 45% of the salary (this calculation includes the things you mentioned). The other 55% was for the extra risk the contractor took on.

> I should note that I’m in Canada and so I don’t have to worry about healthcare coverage.

Basically anywhere with a robust social safety net (not the USA)

Do you find that you get less comp for your contracts working in Canada?

Historically, yes. Post-pandemic, not as much. When the pandemic caused a migration to work-from-home and companies increased their remote-hiring efforts, I expected that the move to “work from anywhere, hire from anywhere” would push contracting rates down.

Oddly in my experience in the mobile (iOS) development space the opposite happened, and rates increased significantly. Those higher rates have held steady for two years now and appear to be permanent. Plus I’m increasingly taking contracts with U.S. clients.

Of course a full-time FAANG employee with stock options etc. will have a higher total compensation compared to me, but overall I’m making more than I ever have and I’m much happier compared to when I was a full-time employee.

> I should note that I’m in Canada and so I don’t have to worry about healthcare coverage.

This is a BFD. I know that I had colleagues in France when I was also doing contract work (amusingly as a US ex-pat) who a) didn't make as much as me but b) felt more secure in their future

Similar kind of situation if you're in the US but your spouse/partner has medical coverage through FT employment.

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