[millak]

I'd be interested to hear how you made the jump to contracting? I find myself wanting to make the jump from my permanent job (in London) but being anxious about whether or not it's the right time to do so, if my skill set (sysadmin/devops) as it stands will provide value to clients, if I have the right mix of personal qualities to make a success out of it, etc.

[Nursie]

Bloody-mindedness mostly.

I worked permanently for various companies in and around London for about 10 years, then got sick of London, moved to Australia, did a couple more years permanent work there, then decided to move back to the UK. At that point I was sick of being an employee and had a vague offer from a friend to help bootstrap a startup, which fell through. So in lieu of having an idea to start up a company myself I decided I was going to be a contractor, set myself up a limited company and started throwing my CV at anyone that asked. I have got most of my contracts through agencies that called me, not through contacts.

Making the leap can be tricky - if you have a notice period longer than one month you may have to quit your current job and then look for contracts afterwards. A lot of people want contractors to start now. You may not find one for a month or more, I've had dry patches lasting a couple of months before, and it might be another month after you start before you can invoice, and it could be another month again before you get paid, so you need a financial cushion.

As soon as you get your first contract you'll need an accountant. These come in at about £100 per month. I use Nixon Williams, this is not necessarily a recommendation, they deal with hundreds of contractors, the service is streamlined but pretty basic and if you need anything out of the ordinary they probably won't do it.

Errr.... time of year may have an effect, like a lot of things it seems to be easier to find work in the first few months of the year, though I have had two start in November/December.

Anything else you want to know?

[chrishn]

What's the work like? Is it mostly legacy code or are you creating new projects from scratch? What's the usual contract length? I'm really interested in contracting this year and I see a lot of 3 month contracts for my stack, I'd prefer to do a 1 month contract to test the water first. Do you feel you have enough time to connect with the employees, etc?

[Nursie]

I'm a bit of a dinosaur in some ways, my main saleable skill is C, with some C++11 thrown in and various other bits and pieces.

The work varies. I've been brought in as a 'resource' little different to an employee by a few places, tinkering at the edges of long-established products and having to take technical direction from senior staff, with little to no input to designs myself.

OTOH in other places I have been brought in during the very early phases of product development, and even more or less taken ownership of direction for entire products. These companies also tended to treat me more like the consultant I'm trying to portray myself as. You can probably guess I prefer these ones :)

Contracts have varied from 1 year (with no exit clause, regretting signing that one but it's over next week!) down to 2-months, but then that was renewed on a monthly basis several times. Mostly due to hysterically over-optimistic delivery estimates by the guy running the project...

I've made some connection with the employees pretty much everywhere, and have been in contact with a few since the end of contract, sometimes they've even been enquiring whether I'm free for a stint at some new place they've moved on to.