[DoingIsLearning]

From the description, it would probably be a better fit to work as a contractor via an agency. You get the hit of the agency comission but at least most of the talking will be through some Project manager assigned to the client.

[carlmr]

That hit in commission can be very efficient, since you save a lot of time you can bill at a high rate.

[giobox]

I have literally never seen this, in my experience the agency is usually not much more than a body shop - every agency I've worked with charges a significant hourly rate which is not reflective of what the agency employee will receive. It is almost always significantly more than a few percentage points.

[bragr]

We hire out to various agencies, and I'm not sure any of them disclose to us what their cut is, but from talking to the people, it sounds like most only take a low single digit percentage on the hourly rate (1~5%). e.g. engineers on $150/h contracts saying their paystub says $140-145/h. YMMV

[hallway_monitor]

My feeling is in line with the sibling, The feeling I've gotten from working with contractors is that it's common for agencies to take about 40%. Seems pretty brutal for everyone except the agency.

[SoftTalker]

Important to know if the "contractors" were employees of the agency, or subcontractors.

Early in my career I worked for a consulting firm as an employee, and I never found out exactly what I was billed at but I'm guessing it was around double what I was paid. We worked on site at our client's office, and people there called us "contractors," but we were employees of the consuting firm. We had benefits, training, overtime pay, etc. and we got paid our salary between jobs when we were not on a client project.

If I were an indepenedent contractor using an agency to find work, I'd expect them to take a much lower cut, as they have much lower overhead and risk.

[0xEFF]

The risk is greater with independent contractors subcontracting through an agency. The agency has less control for the same reputation risk with respect to the subcontractor.

[ptero]

What region is this, if I may ask. I have (as a full time engineer; large engineering org; Boston area) worked alongside a few folks on contract and my impression was that almost all of the contract folks were scalped. A few exceptions were engineers initially from the organization who switched to the contract for more flexibility. Just a single data point, would love for it to be refuted.

[dhsnjqj]

Those are agencies.

You can find recruiters that will clip a small fee and dump you through a contractor management platform. It's all automated. You're effectively a freelancer, still need to sell yourself a bit to get hired but the recruiter vets leads on both ends to streamline things.

Contracts are short and sweet so it's not like interviews are multiround or anything, 15 minute coffee with the client to check if you're aligned on stack / interest and off you go.