| Thanks for your detailed reply! First off, looks like you're based in the UK, so I think it's quite a different situation than the US – from what I hear unless you can get into a FAANG, Engineer jobs at other tech companies pay peanuts, so contracting is very lucrative by comparison. In the US you can find plenty of pretty decent-paying tech jobs even outside of FAANG. As far as taxes go, there are some savings, as with an S-Corp you can contribute way more to your retirement than as an employee, but you still have to pay taxes on your entire earnings whether you "take them out" or not, and have to do so quarterly (or at least annually for the portion you didn't pay yourself in "salary"), so sounds like that's another plus for the UK. Taking all these factors into account plus the fact that the client doesn't have to pay your healthcare or provide equity/RSUs, and can easily let you go at any time, I think the average contractor rate in the US is actually low, which I'm not quite sure how to make sense of in terms of why the market's priced it this way. Totally with you on the company culture+getting broad experiences part. Alot of company events etc esp for Engineers are pretty cringe. And politics... kill me now. I've also been trying to fulfill my socialization needs outside from my job, but more and more I'm realizing that in the modern world that's actually pretty difficult esp if you have a spouse, as then you need to spend extra time to get that, whereas she gets it from work, overall a pretty sad state of affairs that our society's evolved to be as such, IMO. (In case it wasn't obvious, I too am working as a contractor now :) But still deciding how I feel about it) |