151–160 of 164 posts
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> For Central London, a developer should be asking for £300-£600/pd depending on seniority and what they're doing. That seems pretty low to me. Here in the Netherlands contract developers get about the same, between £400-£600/pd (actually between 70~90 euro/hour) but cost of living is way lower than in central London.
There's less supply in the Netherlands. I get a lot of offers here in London for contracts in the Netherlands.
> You should have savings to cover at least 4 months of > your usual expenses. You will spend some money > establishing a company. It may take several weeks to > find your first contract. If you wanted to be extra safe, sure. I made the switch when I was heavily in debt, and it helped me get out of debt, so YMMV. > A service like www.formationsfactory.co.uk will make the > incorporation process easy. Actually it's su…
"Actually it's now super easy online using HMRC's site now” - You probably have Companies House in mind. HMRC deals with things like VAT and PAYE registrations. Companies House can be used for company incorporations. Furthermore, you can only use Model Articles on Companies House website. This means that you cannot set up multiple share classes during company incorporation (e.g. voting shares, profit sharing shares).
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On the 4 months savings thing. When I arrived in London (as a foreigner fresh off the boat) I had about 4 weeks worth of money. I couch surfed and worked the recruiters endlessly and landed a job in 10 days. It wasn't the greatest job but it was a start - a 3 month contract building a new system. It's amazing how motivated you can be when you see your bank accounts date with destiny. After the contract was signed I u…
In one of your other comments, you note that was in boom times.
I had a friend who made the decision to do the same thing, but arrived in October 2001. After three months of job searching and finding nothing, he spent all of his cash and then some, and had to return broke and dejected.
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Good list. I would also add: - don't trust agents - don't trust agents One more thing: - don't trust agents If you find a half-honest one work with them as much as you can. They'll still try and screw you over but they might decide to be straight once in a while. I don't blame them in a way - the competition is fierce and matching client and contractor for happy outcomes is hard. But too many of them are willing to t…
I always used agents over 3.5 years and never had any problems. They are sales people though, and obviously there are bad ones. However they are providing a service to you, (and their client), often contractors that go direct are on a worse rate, get paid a lot less frequently (3 months after each month, vs weekly in some cases) and have to deal with tedious internal HR processes. Some times after you get used to the…
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There are such a thing as junior contractors, they tend not to get amazing rates, but they'll still be doing a lot better than what they would on 13k a year, and they can quickly negotiate better rates. I was perm for like 5-6 years, I think building your skills in perm roles is how it should be, but I'd probably have a lot more money if I'd just became a contractor.
Any idea where junior contractors find work?
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Good list, but as a contractor in the US, the one thing that sticks out that I don't agree with (necessarily) is: -Getting 450 a day is always better than siting idle waiting for that 550-600 a day contract. I'm fine with making a tradeoff like that for very short term work, but I don't want to commit myself to long- or medium-term work at any sort of significant discount. If I'm confident I can get that 550 eventual…
yes, do not take a 1-2 year contract on a low rate. But mathematically: Lets say: Desired rate: 150 Available rate: 100 Sit idle for desired rate: 30 days (20 working days in a month) let's say a contract is 2 months long. with 100 day rate yo get: 100 x 40 = 4000 with 150 day rate you get: 150 x 20 = 3000 (well if you get 200 a day, you still make the same amount of money as you would working on 100 for 2 months ins…
> You should have savings to cover at least 4 months of > your usual expenses. You will spend some money > establishing a company. It may take several weeks to > find your first contract. If you wanted to be extra safe, sure. I made the switch when I was heavily in debt, and it helped me get out of debt, so YMMV. > A service like www.formationsfactory.co.uk will make the > incorporation process easy. Actually it's su…
Here is a good guide from a gov.uk site [1]
Once you have a 6m+ contract under your belt, look at recruiters again. As distasteful as they are (and they are), 90%+ of the most valuable contracts go through them. I would love for these parasitic fucks to be disintermediated, but if that was going to happen it would have happened by now, so live with it.
Your problem with recruiters is that you are having 'friendly conversations' with them. This identifies you as a mark whom the recruiter can place into a £400/day contact and pay you £200. This happens ALL THE TIME and is the bread and butter of many recruiters.
The thing to remember about recruiters is that they have no clue about the industry they're recruiting for. If they did, they would be working in it, not recruiting for it. So, the only real clue they have of how good you are is how good you SAY you are.
So do not be friendly to recruiters - treat them was what they are - odious middlemen who need you. As you say, not signing anything with them is good. Another good strategy is to contemptuously dismiss the first contract a recruiter mentions. "This small-time crap? Sorry, I though you guys were top-drawer."
Recruitment is HELLISHLY competitive and the churn is savage. Recruiters are sharks, and they think like sharks. But they NEED you. They will absolutely fight over you if they think you are worth fighting over.
Don't bother until you have a contract under your belt. But once you have, start treating recruiters badly and see what happens. :)