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Any one here a contractor developer who gets short term contacts? 3-6 months. Less even. If so what is your speciality / niche etc. I could do we a more short term work that another perm or long term contact but everything in my field is perm or 1-2 year contacts (understandable due to ramp up time). So if you work in something that has lots of short term contacts I would like to hear about them and your skills.
Lots of gigs like that in the Dynamics 365 / SFDC world
plenty of work in web / mobile / data engineering / data science / devops
£400-£600 easily achievable, as much as 900-1200 if you are a known expert in a very in demand field. Contract length typically 3-6 months, often rolling. IR-35 making things more awkward, but not the distaster it was feared to be.
Higher rates more likely to be londony and financy.
plenty of work in web / mobile / data engineering / data science / devops
Hmmm might be able to move side ways into something like that what are go to stuff to learn?
I don't need big money / want the responsibility required by big money its being able to get short terms job then off for a couple of months then back working for a few months that is important.
yeah thats what I did for a few years, worked a few contracts over the winter and then spent the summer riding my bike, you'd meet people doing the opposite seasons for snowboarding / skiiing.
It's not all roses tho, many of the contracts can a bit soul destroying, often the reason an outfit is hiring contractors is beacuse they are too organisationally dysfunctional to hire / retain permies. I'd find myself often being asked to do profoundly stupid stuff. It could get pretty draining having to just agree to it all, even if only for a few months.
You'll meet lots of other contractors. Some of them are lifstyle coders nailing the work/life balance, others genuine world class talents who're getting an awesome return on their labour.....but unfortunately you'll also encounter a lot of deeply medicore folks (even earning high rates). These people are good enough to blag their way through an interview, but then leave a few months later either before they are found out or because they are found out. The problem is that hiring managers looking at a CV with lots of short term contracts won't know which you are. There's a danger of getting typecast as one of the 'those' contractors.
One final thing, many of the permis you'll be working along side will know how much you are getting paid, and will resent you for it. Expect snide remarks about being a mercenary, getting cut out of social events and getting treated as a 2nd class citizen.
Overall, I do recommend to engineers that I mentor that they do a contracting stint. Because so many of the gigs are a bit daft, it's a great way to learn about what doesnt work and how it happened - often smart people making decisions that made sense at the time can end up in some spectacular pickles. Learning from their errors will make you a stronger engineer. It's also well paid. It's a great way for someone with ~5 years experience to learn alot but also put together a bit of cash for a house deposit. Do 18months - 2 years of it and then move back into permanent work.
There's a lot of techs out there - check the availability of work near you. One I'd suggest would be full stack javascript. Often derided by some software folks, its actually extremeely useful for making things. Mobile app - react native / flutter. Back end server stuff - nodejs. Rich web app (like google docs or something) - reactjs / angular / vue. All the same language and tools. Another would be python, great for full stack apps with something like djgano, but also the primary language of data science and engineering (at least in industry, academia different!). Finally theres the venerable .NET. c# is a cracking language thats robust and mature. It's not trendy, but enterprise orgs love it and there will always be work. In general, stick with the crowd, there'll be more work that way and less time on the bench.
Hope that helps!
It’s not all roses tho, many of the contracts can a bit soul destroying though, often the reason an outfit is hiring contractors is beacuse they are too organisationally dysfunctional to hire / retain permies.
I was the only perm at a place full of contractors so I know that one 🙂
but unfortunately you’ll also encounter a lot of deeply medicore folks (even earning high rates)
Met one of those as well.
One I’d suggest would be full stack javascript. Often derided by some software folks, its actually extremeely useful for making things. Mobile app – react native / flutter. Back end server stuff – nodejs. Rich web app (like google docs or something) – reactjs / angular / vue. All the same language and tools.
Thanks interesting. Its the side developing I have stayed away from until recently (just coming to the end of two years back end C++), I've always done the odd stuff like simulation, machine control a little embedded but it all required loads of travel which I can't do anymore so tried the back end development but two years of the same shit in the same place has killed my interest and I am performing terribly due to boredom.