[ctide]

Do you doubt your skills? Why are you interviewing if you're employed at a good company?

I hear this position often when people talking about contract-to-perm, and I just don't see it. If you're good at what you do, and people enjoy working with you, why wouldn't you take a contract to perm position? The only reasons I can see are that you are afraid you don't get the job (well, then you wouldn't have been a good fit if they hired you) or you end up not liking the team/company as much (same as if they had hired you.)

So, why wouldn't you? And I don't buy the 'I have a good job' line, because you wouldn't even be entertaining offers if you weren't interested in leaving your current role.

[vonmoltke]

> you are afraid you don't get the job (well, then you wouldn't have been a good fit if they hired you)

Or, you rubbed the wrong, politically-connected person the wrong way. Yes, this is always a danger, but a contract employee is more expendable and easier to get rid of.

Or, they weren't really looking for a permanent hire and this was just a means of tricking someone into a contract who wouldn't otherwise take one.

Or, the company hits a rough patch and decides to freeze hiring to avoid layoffs.

There are a whole host of things that could go wrong in a contract situation that are either tempered or nonexistent when you are permanent.

[throwaway859876]

And ... you don't get stock. And ... when you go perm, your vesting schedule starts after your contract. And ... if you get hurt/sick while you're a contractor, you're fired. And ... you often don't have full facilities access as a contractor. And ... after you go perm, half your co-workers still think you're a contractor, and blow off your email requests.

[llimllib]

> Do you doubt your skills?

Not in my field, but perhaps the CtH position doesn't actually want quite what I am good at, and we didn't figure that out beforehand.

> Why are you interviewing if you're employed at a good company?

Because I've been there a long time and I'm bored, or because my boss isn't bad but isn't the best, or because opportunities for advancement seem slim, or because I want a shorter commute, or because the prospective company has a great reputation, or because I think I could work with better engineers somewhere else, or because...

I wouldn't take the chance at a CtH job because there's a significant probability that I end up totally out of a job, rather than employed in an OK (but not great) job.

Of course it's possible that I would accept a FT position and it would turn out just as poorly as a CtH that didn't work out; I would just expect that the probability of it not working out is much higher in a CtH scenario because the company I'm working for has invested far less in me than one that has hired me full time.

[pekk]

It isn't a foregone conclusion that if you have good skills, you will be permanently hired out of a contract position. If it were a foregone conclusion, they would just hire perm.