[decafninja]

Seems very different to the story in the legacy financial tech world (i.e. tech in old school investment banks and hedge funds) - often times contracting is preferred to being a full time employee. As a contractor you can get paid 1.5-2x+ what a FTE might get, albeit without insurance or vacation days. For insurance, many who are young and healthy (knock on wood) just shrug it off, while those who are married often times rely on their spouse's employer's plan.

I've seen contractors at IBs and hedge funds decline the offer to be converted to employees because it would mean a big paycut for them.

The 18 month period limit could be seen as a downside, but in this day and age when spending too much time at one company is ironically seen as a bad thing (unless maybe you're at a FAANG tier org), maybe it's not really a big downside either.

Other than that, at least in the legacy financial world, you don't get to put on a fancy but utterly meaningless (and quite frankly, stupid) "Vice President" or "Director" title the employees have.