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by zxcvb 5189 days ago
Speaking from experience, most of what you say is wrong.

Most of the contracting positions available in London (where I live) are only available to experienced professionals. There's no way anyone is going to hire a nobody for £500 per day. Good luck finding much work available below this level, I used to contract myself at £200 per day but this only because I personally knew the manager on the project and I had worked with him as an engineer as an intern one year previously.

Showing you have good ideas and that you get things done means NOTHING. The other guy applying for the same job who has 6 years of experience will beat you every time. Maybe things are different where ever you are from but where I am from you don't get to work on anything that anyone cares about unless you have solid experience.

If you want to land a role at some small web dev shop where you will be stuck working on crappy rails or other nonsense things then go make your portfolio out of $60 a day "contracts" and have a great life. This does not exist in the UK and when people say 'contracting' they mean real work earning real money.

The best thing you can do is get an awesome internship then leverage that to get a good perm role somewhere else. This is exactly what I did. I didn't return to the place where I did my internship as I landed a better package elsewhere.

If you can afford to work for $60 a day and you are lucky to live in the Valley or somewhere where these roles are available, then lucky you. I prefer something a little more rigorous where I'm not a slave working on crap.

1 comments

You're coming across as a really arrogant and unpleasant person. Frankly, you sound like someone who couldn't hack it on your own and is now bitter. I'm sorry it didn't work out, but you shouldn't generalize your own weaknesses onto everyone else. If someone isn't much of a developer or is afraid to talk to others and look for clients, then yeah he should take whatever he can get, but someone who has brains will be selling himself short and possibly destroying his longterm creativity and drive by accepting the corporate coding drone role.
Take a look at the london contracting market. There is no room for anyone who isn't experienced. London doesn't have little cheap contracts were front end devs can come and work for no money. All the contracts are for serious companies paying serious money. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. You're typical HN. Contracting is seen as something that you enter after years in industry. Not everyone lives in the valley where companies come and go quicker than the local bus. Your attitude towards our industry is that of an inexperienced child.