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Is the Rise of Contract Workers Killing Upward Mobility?

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Re: Is the Rise of Contract Workers Killing Upward Mobility?

#31

Post by rovek »

Nursie wrote: post #7
jondubois wrote: post #5

I've done a lot of contract work as a software engineer over the past 5 years. It's a good way to experiment with a lot of different companies and industries. It's generally true that contractors can't get promoted within the company. It's not unusual to see 40+ year old contractors still working as engineers. The money is great but you really need to have a low risk investment strategy on the side... I don't think y…

As a contractor in the UK I feel like I have better pay and prospects than 90% of staff members. Not 'promotion', but more respect for my expertise and more choice about my working practices. 'Promotion' is not something I've often observed happening in any of the software departments I've worked with of late. It does scare me when people say things like "40+ contractors still working as engineers", as if 40 is old.…

This is my experience in the UK. After a little under a decade in SWE I've consistently seen contractors grossing about 3x the salary of full time employees, with little prospects of "promotion" for engineers without changing employer.

Re: Is the Rise of Contract Workers Killing Upward Mobility?

#33

Post by walshemj »

Nursie wrote: post #7
jondubois wrote: post #5

I've done a lot of contract work as a software engineer over the past 5 years. It's a good way to experiment with a lot of different companies and industries. It's generally true that contractors can't get promoted within the company. It's not unusual to see 40+ year old contractors still working as engineers. The money is great but you really need to have a low risk investment strategy on the side... I don't think y…

As a contractor in the UK I feel like I have better pay and prospects than 90% of staff members. Not 'promotion', but more respect for my expertise and more choice about my working practices. 'Promotion' is not something I've often observed happening in any of the software departments I've worked with of late. It does scare me when people say things like "40+ contractors still working as engineers", as if 40 is old.…

Yes when I worked for BT full time in my divison (systems Engineering) there might be 20 possible promotions from MPG2 to MPG 4 every 18 months.

As my boss said getting on the short list meant that the company thought you where good enough but with say 600-800 potential candidates for promotion the competition was brutal I knew better developers than me who just gave up

Re: Is the Rise of Contract Workers Killing Upward Mobility?

#34

Post by 201709User »

Swinx43 wrote: post #24
Nursie wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a contractor in the UK I feel like I have better pay and prospects than 90% of staff members. Not 'promotion', but more respect for my expertise and more choice about my working practices. 'Promotion' is not something I've often observed happening in any of the software departments I've worked with of late. It does scare me when people say things like "40+ contractors still working as engineers", as if 40 is old.…

I agree with your assessment of being a contractor in the UK. I work as an IT contractor in the UK as well and have been a permanent employee before that. Permanent members of staff seldom get the same money as skilled contractors and have to put up with a lot more restrictions around holiday and work life balance. I would equate a contractor in the UK to being the equivalent experience of being a consultant without…

Also permanent guys get to support contractors' code, which adds an insult to an injury.

Re: Is the Rise of Contract Workers Killing Upward Mobility?

#35

Post by KGIII »

jonnathanson wrote: post #23
Nursie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea! I get the impression that contracting in the US, at least in tech firms, is a lot less lucrative.

(Warning: this post contains personal opinions and analysis, some of which might be deemed political.) There are really two classes of 'contract work' in the US. The first class is what I'd call skilled specialists. These are your independent marketing consultants, security experts, developers, designers, copywriters, etc. These folks are usually, but not always, fairly experienced. They take up contracting or consul…

It's fun to poke fun at the system we have in the US, but we're doing fairly well from a numbers standpoint. Our GDP is fantastic, our median income is quite good, and we still manufacture a bunch of stuff.

China didn't actually start to manufacture more than us until just a few years ago, and they have something like three times the population.

People say the middle class is shrinking, but seldom mention that the number of people in the upper class is growing. We have pretty good employment numbers and our securities market is booming.

Many of our businesses are the most profitable in the world. We are still sought out as the place to go for education and starting a business. We have more people trying to come here than we can even accommodate.

So, from a numbers view, we are doing okay. We may not be number one in every category, but we're up there on the list and still doing quite well.

Of course, there's more to life than numbers, but hopefully I expressed it well enough.

Re: Is the Rise of Contract Workers Killing Upward Mobility?

#36

Post by jcun4128 »

KGIII wrote: post #30
jcun4128 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: somewhat connected tangent life experience thought I'm still a noob myself but I landed a long term contract developing a web application and I like being able to bill (invoice) and just get paid. It's a surprising thing haha, I haven't been working through UpWork in a while but that's still my primary place to look. I work a more-than-part time job in a restaurant (pays my bills as a restaurant drone). I am tr…

Find and solve a pain point in the industry you currently work in. So, in food service, what can you make more efficient, less expensive, or less of a hassle? How can you reduce/remove pain in the industry you work in? When you figure that out, you can work in selling the idea.

Maybe I'm not an entrpreneur if I don't actively think of that place that way. I mean I don't know the logistics of the supply of restaurants. Closest thing would be POS/menus for cooking those look realtively old or maybe it's one of those "does its job no need to fix".

Haha the restaurant industry for me is like purgatory haha I look forward to the day that I work as a developer full time. Poverty is my never ending nightmare but I live in opportunity up to me to save myself haha.

Re: Is the Rise of Contract Workers Killing Upward Mobility?

#37

Post by bitwize »

KGIII wrote: post #35
jonnathanson wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Warning: this post contains personal opinions and analysis, some of which might be deemed political.) There are really two classes of 'contract work' in the US. The first class is what I'd call skilled specialists. These are your independent marketing consultants, security experts, developers, designers, copywriters, etc. These folks are usually, but not always, fairly experienced. They take up contracting or consul…

It's fun to poke fun at the system we have in the US, but we're doing fairly well from a numbers standpoint. Our GDP is fantastic, our median income is quite good, and we still manufacture a bunch of stuff. China didn't actually start to manufacture more than us until just a few years ago, and they have something like three times the population. People say the middle class is shrinking, but seldom mention that the nu…

> It's fun to poke fun at the system we have in the US, but we're doing fairly well from a numbers standpoint. Our GDP is fantastic, our median income is quite good, and we still manufacture a bunch of stuff.

NONE of that matters because those metrics measure the winners. The key measure is, does our system have a lot of big losers? If the answer is yes, then that system has failed.

Re: Is the Rise of Contract Workers Killing Upward Mobility?

#38

Post by KGIII »

jcun4128 wrote: post #36
KGIII wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find and solve a pain point in the industry you currently work in. So, in food service, what can you make more efficient, less expensive, or less of a hassle? How can you reduce/remove pain in the industry you work in? When you figure that out, you can work in selling the idea.

Maybe I'm not an entrpreneur if I don't actively think of that place that way. I mean I don't know the logistics of the supply of restaurants. Closest thing would be POS/menus for cooking those look realtively old or maybe it's one of those "does its job no need to fix". Haha the restaurant industry for me is like purgatory haha I look forward to the day that I work as a developer full time. Poverty is my never endin…

Just an idea, why have a POS system at all? Why have a waitstaff that take orders? Why not just give the orders to the cooks and eliminate mistakes made by servers? What about in-kitchen optimizations? What about reducing spoilage?

The possible places to improve are limited mostly by your imagination. What complaints do the bossss have? What do the workers complain about most?

Those are rhetorical questions, I don't know enough about the industry to help. The goal is to start with something, it hasn't even got to sell and make a profit. The goal is to learn and improve, to learn new thinking, to see where changes can be made.

Re: Is the Rise of Contract Workers Killing Upward Mobility?

#39

Post by danmaz74 »

walshemj wrote: post #32

Its always struck me as odd that Contractors in IT in the USA don't get the premium you do in the UK. I would expect 3x my FTE rate as a self employed contractor and that's before the better tax treatment even after the reforms to tax on dividends.

From what I read, it looks to me like actually, in the UK, it's permanent workers which have pretty poor salary for the IT market.
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