I mean, if I were a time traveller, I wouldn't be spending my limited output on this sort of stuff ;)
More seriously - to me this guy seems a bit.. I dunno, try hard? Like they want to prove something about how aggressive they are.
You don't need to be all "gogogo" to do contracting.
The last bit is kind of illustrative. I think they've had bad experiences in the past and are perhaps recovering from burnout in some way. This post doesn't look like a good sign to me in that context.
The development scope is feature X with A,B,C. Customer asks for D and E. Technically D and E will add maybe 3 hours and Y cost to the total.
Your choices:
a) Bring it up which almost always leads to some haggling. Emails turn into calls, calls turn into meetings. Meetings turn into negotiations, negotiations lead to some compromise, in the end you have spent 3 hours just reaching an agreement, which nobody will reimburse you for. If you don't reach an agreement you stand your ground in numerous ways, most of which result in getting stiffed or losing business.
b) Spend the extra 3 hours.
A lot of times it's just simpler to choose (b), and like the author says, give in to tyranny. It's a genuine problem.
If you follow the authors other advice of not charging to little (which is strongly connected to how much your client values you), that's rarely a problem in my experience. My client knows my hourly rate, so when I tell them that the extra features take 3 additional hours they know exactly how much that would cost them. No haggling, no negotiations, no meeting.
Of course that only works with time-based billing, and a lot of people would advise against it, but it's one of the reasons why I love it.
Then you don't want those others. I know it is hard to turn down work when you are getting a consulting business going, but there are "good" clients, and "bad" clients. You are not doing your future self any favors by rewarding bad clients with free work.
It’s a “I have been doing this for six months and I have the world figured out” type article, best I can tell. Next up “The Seven Telltale Signs of a 10x Developer (which just happen to describe me)”
Same - I cannot tell if this is meant to be satire.
I am an hourly contractor, and I prefer it to 'full time' employment. As with everything, there are pros and cons, but overall it is a net-positive for me and the way I wish to spend my time.
I sort of follow the point about respecting productive time. I do try to cut the bullshit. I do spend a lot of time thinking about the emails I'm going to send my clients (that I don't bill them for) so that my information is as efficient as possible. I've found an hourly rate that works for me and if I'm offered below that I just say 'no'. I don't consider that working for free. I don't find myself competing against 'full-time' employees in the way the article suggests. My experience is the opposite. I still think it might be satire...maybe?
80% of my clothes are sportwears for a long time. It gives the feeling that you are a pro. A professional athlete, and a professional at your career, your performance totally relies on you.
Nothing looks more professional than someone sitting at a desk in yoga pants or a tracksuit. Yes indeed.
You know what else looks professional? A military or public services uniform. This guy should get a firefighter outfit to wear while sitting at a desk typing code. Then he'll feel really professional.
I prefer the professionalism of black leather, myself. Sure, it creaks a little when I move and gets a lil sweaty in hot weather but at least it doesn't smell as much as latex.
> A quick litmus test: if you’re getting paid by the hour. You’re not a full time employee. You’re a contractor.
That's utterly ridiculous. There are so many jobs where this is not true from flipping burgers to civil engineering. Clearly the author hasn't thought this out at all.
It never feels like the contractor is an "expert" in a field, is any more efficient than another employee and is nothing more than another person that has been hired to do programming with less HR/employment overhead.
So not sure which audience this article is aimed at.
Maybe my experience in London doesn't reflect other places but as a contract and as someone who has looked for contractors it never felt like we got anyone special. They were another person and they took just as long to on board and become efficient.
Your not paying for the best you are probably paying a similiar amount for your fulltime employees. What you get is all of the people who couldn't find a fulltime role who have to take this without any benefits so the quality is lower.
Now if you remote sourced the role gems will be found.
You have completely misunderstood the UK market - note that the OP talked about London. Perhaps as a way to get past the recruiting problem, UK corporates pay a premium for exerienced programmers on the basis that if they cannot do the job, they are let go immediately without severance. Most contractors are 30+, don't want to be 'in charge' (at meetings, giving interviews, being trained in the latest corporate 'values') and are happy to be given a product to build or maintain.
Every contractor I know resigned from a permanent position in their early thirties to go contracting and make 1.5x-2x as much money as a contractor. Businesses regularly offer contractors full-time positions and are regularly turned down.
Contractors may not be particularly special technically, but they will focus on doing what they're told in the team and not attending training, seminars, workshops or HR meetings. I'd much rather build a product with a team of suitably incentivised and managed contractors than a team of permies.
True, when I was contracting I did attend less meetings although it always felt like too many and the pay was good (not so much now).
But I always found it a little bit of a lie when the idea of a contractor coming in and working on a problem from day 2 or 3.
Granted this usually was because the problem was poorly defined and/or limited but even when I joined teams that had really good project managers it still was not as simple as "work on this in isolation".
I have since ditched contracting in UK, too much of a mess with the taxman.
Well, there are very few projects where someone can make a real difference from day 2 or 3. But given that there are numerous permie developers who want either to be a) Product Owners, b) Software Architects or c)professional Youtube viewers, getting a contractor in means you can cut your losses at the end of a 4 week period if you want to and firms do. While it's possible, I've never seen a permie cut during the probation period.
What did you do instead? There is a wave of people looking to get out of contracting in the UK right now exactly because of the messes HMRC keep making.
I find the term 'full time' unnecessarily ambiguous.
Certainly 'employee' suggests something contra to 'contractor', but there's no reason someone working 40 hours a week can't or shouldn't be considered full-time regardless of their permanent / contractor status.
I can't tell if this is irony, in the context of being 'precise in your communications' and advice to 'edit ruthlessly':
Maybe it's not the best term, but it's pretty widely used. Either you're a "full-time employee" or you're a temp or contractor. Certain perks or systems are described as "FTE-only".
I believe it is just an unimportant mistake from someone that might not be a native English speaker. I do those all the time, something like a "phonetic typo"; I write things as they sound in my native language and don't realize it.
> It helps to actually take time 6 hours, 12 hours before a reply. Meditate on the email. Write the email by hand on your notebook. Edit ruthlessly. Type it up on your computer. Only then, send it.
So, a) they knew how to type ruthlessly at least once, and/or b) had spell-check pick them up on that one.
But the gist of the particularly prescriptive advice was to word your missives carefully lest they be misunderstood.
In good faith, let's assume it's an unimportant mistake.
So let's consider:
> Fuck “working for Free”
> If you work for free. You are contributing to tyranny. You are facilitating the spread of tyranny. Nobody in their right mind and right intentions work for free.
I'm typing my considered and reasoned response on a computer that's running almost exclusively free software, the authors of which I'm eternally grateful to.
Because I'm currently employed (full time, contractor) for an agency that's doing good work (by my assessment) I'm quite happy to perform occasional non-billable work.
Certainly, in my time I've worked in places that made me feel something approaching TFA's emotional response, but it's not a set of rules that I feel can or should be casually applied to all contractual engagements.
>If you’re a full-time employee who must go to the office, you have to dress the part. If you look different than your peers, you look ridiculous and out of place.
I have been full time employee in my whole career, no one had really told me what to wear. I have been to office in sportswear and no one seems to mind that. I don't think this point is necessarily true at least in tech.
It depends on the firm. At some non-tech firms, being an independent is the only way to get higher cash. (Not universal) In this case an expert developer who doesn’t want to manage people escapes junior level salary bands.
In the US, it's a cash vs benefits trade-off. I am happy to sacrifice a lot of salary to get the Cadillac healthcare my company offers to me and my family at no cost.
It's like buying an insurance where number of years it covers depends on how many years you want to work for a company. Yes, that means getting little sicks is not that worth it. Having serious condition? It's a fucked up anyway.
Why not just buying the healthcare package yourself and paying for it from more cash you make as a contractor? Honest question since I live in a country with a very different healthcare system...
Well, he must be a very experienced senior software engineer with centuries of experience then. Therefore, this confirms the 10x programmer / contractor legend. /s
I mean, if I were a time traveller, I wouldn't be spending my limited output on this sort of stuff ;)
More seriously - to me this guy seems a bit.. I dunno, try hard? Like they want to prove something about how aggressive they are.
You don't need to be all "gogogo" to do contracting.
The last bit is kind of illustrative. I think they've had bad experiences in the past and are perhaps recovering from burnout in some way. This post doesn't look like a good sign to me in that context.