[jacquesm]

That's nonsense. I know plenty of 20K / month consultants that work as contractors, one project for one customer, a couple of months later for another. The shortage of qualified people at that level is such that they have the jobs for the picking. They are self employed in every way that matters, to the tax office, their customers and their bookkeepers.

[allannienhuis]

But in those cases they do have multiple customers, serially. That is still regular market dipped into where pricing can be tweaked.

Working as a contractor for a single company for very long periods of time (say 1+ years), is a very different type of relationship, even if the mechanics are similar. I suspect that's the type of relationship that was being referred to.

[jacquesm]

It's a different relationship, but it is still not the same as being employed. The people here equating the two are either clueless or disingenuous, I'd hope for the former but I fear the latter.

It's easy to piss on those that manage their one person business over multiple years from the comfort of an actual employed situation, and it is equally easy to piss on them from the position of the manager or early hire of a business with a lot of employees and a lot of customers.

But the amount of responsibility that typically lands on the shoulders of these one man operations tends to be disproportional and they deal with those responsibilities in a much better way than many of those large companies. The main reason that they stay in business in the first place is because they tend to be good at what they do, and reputation damage being what it is in that world the first job you fuck up may well be your last.