Is There Still A Contract Market For Programmers?

IjustWannaCode asks: "I've never done a programming contract job. I've done a few networking/Sys Admin jobs, but no programming jobs. How would one go about getting into the programming contract market, preferably telecommuting, while still keeping a hold on a solid job that may not quite fit? I have strong programming skills, a strong work ethic, the ability to work from home effectively, and a lot of programming experience. How does one make the plunge from standard full-time employment to contract work without losing one's shirt?"

Comments

Dice.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the old and trusted www.dice.com. Some tips for using Dice: Never submit your resume to Dice. Instead search for jobs in your area that appeal. Pick a handful of recruiters and send your resume to them alone.

Tell the recruiters in a cover letter exactly what you want: salary, commute limits, hour limits, interests, etc. This will cut down wasted time.

Never wait more than 5 minutes for an appointment/interview. Your time is valuable, don't let people waste it.

Dress well. I hate people that show up for an interview wearing something stupid...like a hat.

Ask for about 15%-50% more then you think you deserve. You can always bargain down. And worst, some stupid companies won't look at your resume unless you ask for stupid salary requirements.

Some tips from an Ex Contractor

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a contractor in the Late 80's and Early 90's (Now I'm a professor) in the U.S. So although my advice may be somewhat dated, some of it may still hold:

• There are several ways of contracting, none of which are any more secure than being employed directly. They are:
  • Work directly for a contract house, some places (e.g. Anderson Consulting) do this. Often people affectionately call the placement people in such organizations pimps (behind their backs of course) and time between jobs is sometimes referred to as being on the beach or down time. You get the least pay from this, but they contract house provides benefits and pays your down time.
  • Be subcontracted via a contract house. This gets you a higher hourly rate, but does not typically offer benefits. The contract house pays employer side taxes for you (usually). The advantage is that a well connected contract house can help you find a job if you are new to an area.
  • Contract directly with the customer. This option has some advantages, since you keep all you make. However, you need to do your own employer side taxes (since you are now self employed) and you need to do your own billing. I'd recommend considering hiring an accountant and perhaps a lawyer to manage your affairs, since these details can be time consuming. Many organizations have a 90 day or more lag in paying their bills (bigger organizations may do more foot dragging).
• Location is important, being in a high tech area is best, being in a major city/financial center is a close second.
• Reputation is very important, I recommend that you do what is best for your customer, even if it means you are inconvenienced. If you can finish a job ahead of time and under budget, you may be out of work, however this can lead to better long term opportunities.
• The quality of the available assignments often depends on the state of the economy. Many places don't hire contractors when times are bad, or only hire when they have a software fire to put out. Often jobs are coming into a situation where all the useful people have quit, and they need someone to prevent financial catastrophe due to missed deadlines.
• You should be very good at reading other people's software, since you often won't have the luxury of coming in at the beginning of a project. Often the software which is "close" to working has serious design flaws which you need to work around.
• Consultants must be able to step in quickly and productively. Most places are very unforgiving of consultants who take several weeks to show progress. On the job training is rare in consulting, the consultant is expected to do this outside work.
• Generally speaking, it is considered good form to renew or extend your contract if the customer requests it. This may not be what you want to do.
• Some jobs are fixed rate, some jobs are hourly. If you take a fixed rate job on, be sure to carefully estimate the amount of effort needed.

Re:a few tips..

[Johann]

I cannot stress how much I agree witht Lordrashmi. I am working on a project for my wife's former employer. I did not make them sign a contract (mistake 1) or fully describe the work to be completed on the project (mistake 2). I was stupid in thinking that the project would stay simple. In addition, my wife (an attorney) worked at this company and I was trying to enable her to stream line the tracking legal agreements in a database (the project).

The problems started when she left the company and the scope of the project increased about 500% -- after the accountants wanted their GAP reports tacked into the database.

I wanted to charge more money and they balked because I had given them a number for the original, simple project. We finally settled the amount of the increased project fee, but I ate a lot of hours and learned a hard lesson.

If you are contracting for someone you know - a friend or a spouse's company, do not let your personal relationship cloud your judgement. When push comes to shove and money has to change hands, friendly relationships can sour, so your best protection is to be honest and professional and do not ever accept contract programming without a contract!

The other piece of advice is to describe in great detail what you will deliver and put it in the contract. Then, when they want to add new stuff to the project (they always will want to do this), you will be forced to renegoitate the contract. This protects you and them because you can not do additional stuff they want because it is not in the contract. Alternatively, if you screw up and do not finish the project, they have a legal means to withhold the payment.

P.S. If you want an example contract, email me and I will send you the one I use now.

"Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life."

If you are good, it pays, if not it still pays...

[Kefaa]

I have been contracting for about 5 years. Before that I was 12 years with a fortune 5 company doing development work.

Here are some of my experiences:

If you cannot sell yourself you are in trouble. An agency will get you an interview, you will get yourself hired

If you depend on an agency to look for positions before you are on the street, you are kidding yourself. You need to know when your contract date is coming up and force the issue with the current contract or start looking for the next.

Most companies expect to pay more for you and will pay any hours you work. Bigger companies resist paying for overtime, even though they expect you to work it. If that is their deal, be prepared with an alternate rate.

Prepare for a 30, 60, or 90 day billing cycle. This means the work you did in January will result in a check sometime in March. Part of what an agency can give you is the regular pay. They absorb the cycle.

You are responsible for your own training and upkeep.

You are a guest. You have given up the right to complain, remark or criticize unless asked.

You are not an employee. Never forget it because employees do not. Many are great to work with. Many are repulsed by your presence. Why are you paid X more than they are for doing the same job? Forget the reasoning, stay out of it. And yes, someone will tell them how much your billable rate (regardless of the portion you get)

Take a task or do not. Do not complain, whine or describe to the world the pain and suffering you went through to complete the task.

Yes, they did hire someone who could not find their desk with a map and GPS, and they are paying them more. Get over it. You said you would work for X/hour, everyone else is not your problem

If you are paid by the hour, for all hours, I HIGHLY recommend taking on anything past to you at any time. Someone calls me at 8:00pm after I have been working all day...bring it on. You do not want to work yourself to death, but you want to be the person people know they can call anytime. You will be the last of the contractors to go.

Never talk money in the office. It like telling your wife how good your last girlfriend was.

You will need insurance. Join the Chamber of Commerce, etc. They offer a discount rate compared to what you can get on your own.

Build a nest egg first. If the economy tanks, contractors are the first to get booted. Know you will need to live for three months without income.

You will get booted. That is why you were hired, so they could let you go at some point. If you take that personally you will not last long

Finance your own retirement. It's a great deduction and you will not have many.

If you use an agency (W-2), expect them to keep 30% or more.

As your own agency, you lose an additional 10% minimum to taxes beyond what you pay as an employee

Finally, if you do not know the difference between a contractor and a consultant you are the former. Heads down coders are paid the least. Pick up your head and see the forest through the trees. Bring solutions to problems and pay attention to your bosses problems.

Being more than a programmer

[gestalt]

I was thrust into the world of independent contract work a couple of years ago when the company I was working for fell apart. All of the other web developers were fired, and I was given the chance to finish everyone's work by myself. I decided to quit instead, and charge my former employer a discounted hourly rate to get their clients off their back. By the time all the existing work was finished, most of their clients had become my clients.

Luck was a factor, to be sure, but it took more than luck to sustain my little one-man operation after the first batch of work was finished. Even if I had gotten started differently, there was more to consider than just the actual tasks clients asked me to do.

The money, at first, seemed like a lot more than I had been getting before. But, what I discovered quickly was that my former boss wasn't lying when he told me where the company's money went. Taxes, payroll, equipment, etc. I needed, and quickly acqired, a lawyer, an accountant, and a new S-corporation. All of a sudden, in addition to being a marginally-talented web developer, I was also an entrepeneur.

My friends, upon seeing the bohemian, independent lifestyle I had made for myself, were jealous and wanted to know my secret. It was no mystery, though, because while I have extreme freedom to choose what I do, I also pay myself about a third of what my friends get on their W-2 jobs.

Why? More important than what your hourly rate is, is what your free time is worth. Working a salary job often means the time the boss wants from you isn't measured. (Hello, 70 hour weeks!) But, when you're hourly, the client expects real work for the time you charge. The 30 minutes you spend talking to your neighbor about Half-Life doesn't usually go on the time sheet. Billing 40 actual work hours isn't as easy as working a 40-hour salary week. For me, this means I rarely bill 40 hours in a week, and when I do, I pay myself so the money that generates covers the whole month's expenses.

My point here is that if you really want to be an independent, be prepared to overhaul your entire lifestyle. You can't be joe salaryman and take the the weekly dole for granted when you're signing both sides of the paycheck. You have to be billing work now and setting up work in the future all the time. You have to make sure if there's a dry spell, there's still money in the account for you and your biz expenses. And, you can't get greedy and spend the next 6 months' payroll you have saved up unless you got the whale-ass retainer check that will keep things going. Learning this discipline is what stops most people I know from doing what I do.

Don't get me wrong, I love working for myself. But now, it's like there's me the developer, and me the entrepeneur. Don't try to do the same unless you're prepared to take on those roles.

Social Networking

[jstone]

Acquiring contract work for programming can be challenging if you just plain on using online resources like elance.com or itmoonlighting.com (neither seem very effective yet imho).

It seems that the best way to get contract work is word of mouth; find a group of *consultants*, people who are already out in the field working on their own and see if you can strike up a cooperation with them; ask them to pass on things that they don't want or can't handle and let them know that you'll do the same.

Also, don't be surprised if all you can get at first is maintenance code. Don't turn your nose at this type of work, it can lead to bigger things especially if you start throughing in enhancements that really save someone time.

Use your social contacts...and find a lawyer

[lwollstadt76]

In my experience, the easiest way to find good programming contacting jobs is to ask around with your group of geek friends and see if any of their companies have short-term programming needs. This only works, of course, if you have a group of geek friends who work for different companies -- but it can be a good deal if that's the case. Even if your friends' companies think they're only interested in hiring full-time employees, you may be able to convince them otherwise.

Participating in the contract programming market, however, means that you'll necessarily be signing at least one contract. Contracts are tricky things, and can range from fairly loose to absurdly restrictive. Since you mention that you already have a job, that means you've probably signed some sort of employment agreement with the company you work for. You might want to take a close look at that agreement, since it may include a clause that says the company owns any intellectual property you produce during the term you work for them, including work completely unrelated to your job that you do on your own time and with your own resources. If your current company owns everything you do, they'll have a problem with you working as a contractor for anyone else.

If you find a contract job and get to the point of having a contract in your hand, I strongly urge you to have a lawyer look it over (at least the first time or two, while you're still getting used to the language). The few hundred bucks you pay the lawyer will be paltry compared to the pain a bad contract could cause you. For example, who's held accountable if a bug in your code is responsible for something bad that happens two years from now? Does the contract state that you indemnify? Because that could really suck for you, and if you don't know contract-speak, you might not even know what you're getting yourself into when you sign the contract.

-laura

finding the job

[neuroslime]

How I did it was to find a company I liked, with a product that I was interested in. I then made myself well known on the mailing list (no, not with spam, but by actually helping. :) When this co. announced a job opening, I let them know that I was interested, but that I'd have to telecommute, and the hired me anyway. I think the key is that you have an interest in their company, and the product that they offer, and in the future of that product. You may not get full time work that way, but if you can get a few job, you'll do just fine.