[shoo]

when i worked for an australian bank, one co-worker in a nearby team had been working on the the banks systems as a sysadmin for over a decade.

the bank would go through cycles of "we need to reduce our headcount and outsource everything" and then 4 years later "we need to reduce spend on contractors and retain more knowledge and expertise in house". he'd survived multiple waves of it, switching back and forth between being an employee or a contractor through some external agency, as management trends changed, while essentially doing the same job.

[sekh60]

I hope he was able to get a paybump each switch!

[jfengel]

Managers love the idea that contractors can be fired more easily than employees. Except that this flexibility comes at a cost; people insist on being paid more to have an insecure job.

The uncertainty never goes away. You can pay someone else to suffer it, but it will always cost more than dealing with it yourself.

And that can be ok. Just don't fool yourself into thinking you're getting a bargain.