11–20 of 77 posts
You will not be lured into massive fixed costs and start with the absolute minimum and required, which you can scale up when your business start flying.
As long as you start tight, you will stand a good change.
> we are being put at 80% pay / 80% time. Uhm, you want to check the fine prints. If you've been furloughed , which is typically what people on "80%" are, then the Treasury is paying your salary, but you're NOT supposed to work AT ALL. If you are actually working, you and your company are effectively committing benefit fraud. > Do you think in the current climate it would be doable to start freelancing Everything is…
It's highly unlikely he's been furloughed. I don't think a big tech company would make the mistake of having staff on that scheme working anyway, they would be in a lot of trouble if they did, but as the limit is £2500 per month I'm sure the OP would be on noticeable less than 80% of his previous pay as a London tech lead if he had been. The 80% rate of the furlough scheme does seem to have prompted a lot of companie…
It seems to be a figure that a lot of companies settle on as a significant cost savings in the aggregate while not being such a big cut that (most) people can no longer afford to pay their bills or otherwise feel forced to just walk out the door.
As a 'buyer' of these services myself, full-stack JS dev contractors are in one of the most oversaturated parts of the market and many in my network are attempting to find full-time work at the moment. Those that aren't are having to compete on rates in a way they never have before, definitely a buyers market.
The other side of this is how much more volatile contractor work is than before, many companies with a mixed full-time/contractor team see their contractor pool as the most 'expendable' when cuts need to be made. Many people in my network have had existing long-term contracts ended with little to no notice.
I've also seen limited evidence the pushing back of IR35 to next year is changing the policies towards contractors at large corporates, where (by volume) most contractors get their contracts.
In short, I don't think it's the best time, but: if you do make the jump, make sure you have contracts SIGNED before you make any big decisions. Not a hand-shake or an email, a written contract. If you can get that, then you'll be in a good place.
From my experience in the last 2 months, companies are scaling back their IT projects now. Got several contracts that were supposed to start later this year and they were canceled. So there will be more competition for less bread. But you can try.
Counter to that, a lot of companies are scaling up their web/mobile presence and offerings because they can't let their customers into the building. I'm a contract programmer and business is arguably booming.
My two current clients in Germany are heavily invested in the automotive industry. They have everything on stop for the manufacturing and their software department is not working their full 100% capacity. On the other side, I hear lots of good news from people who are bringing physical services to the web. The digital revolution is just starting here and people have to keep up with more and more demand.
So yeah, I think there is lots of opportunity. It really depends on who you are aiming for as clients.
> we are being put at 80% pay / 80% time. Uhm, you want to check the fine prints. If you've been furloughed , which is typically what people on "80%" are, then the Treasury is paying your salary, but you're NOT supposed to work AT ALL. If you are actually working, you and your company are effectively committing benefit fraud. > Do you think in the current climate it would be doable to start freelancing Everything is…
I say (from experience) during hard times is the best time to start. You will not be lured into massive fixed costs and start with the absolute minimum and required, which you can scale up when your business start flying. As long as you start tight, you will stand a good change.
Contract work has been under attack by IR35, fortunately this has been postponed by a year. These are uncertain times. A lot of contractors have moved back to permie and competition is high. You can try to obtain a 6 or 12 month contract if you have a decent stack of emergency cash (e.g. £25k) lying around. I wouldn't overanalyze it. Try to see your options out there. If you can get 3 contract offers in 1 month, then…
This seems pretty sensible advice to me. I've seen it go both ways for contracts at the moment, some are really struggling and others are doing really well. As ever, with contracting you're always taking on some risk when you come to the end of a contract. Much of your ability to get a contract will depend on your network (as well as skills and experience). A lot of it depends on whether OP is looking to do full time…
The picture seems to be mixed, not just in the contract market. That might mean those out of contract are swarming around what's available, but you only need to land one contract to get started.
Personally, I don't know anyone who's not moved to a new contract for the same client over the financial year boundary, but that's obviously just anecdotal and most of the contractors I know are in the same sector.