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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?

#71

Post by eropple »

jcun4128 wrote: post #20
wvh wrote: post #11

I've done mostly contract work because I liked the freedom when I was younger. Now I notice a lot of people my age have moved on to management or jobs "higher on the ladder" while I stress about the uncertainty of income when contracts end. I assume the lifestyle might suit people who are extraordinarily good networkers, but I feel mostly tired these days. My younger self didn't know about the fatigue the responsibil…

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…

I can empathize with your goals and your current situation, so please take this in that light: I don't come away from your post thinking that you really understand how the proper nouns in your post really fit together. My initial reaction was "this is pretty word salad-y." If you're going to write a longer thing about tech, it's probably worth investing a little bit of stylistic and structural effort into not dismissing something as rigorous and well-tested as PostgreSQL with three words or investigating MongoDB deeply enough that you can totally use it with languages and runtimes you already know (which you can).

And don't get me wrong, you totally might have a handle on it! But conveying that you do is a very large part of being successful both in contracting and in landing high-value permanent positions. You gotta talk the talk as well as walk the walk. It really does matter. I wouldn't hire even a junior developer if I thought their mental process was as all-over-the-place as this post suggests.

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

#72

Post by hectorlorenzo »

otakucode wrote: post #70

Upward mobility? Research came out 3-4 years ago I believe that showed that social mobility no longer existed in the US. It is normally measured by how many people die in a different tax bracket from their parents. As of a few years ago, that simply wasn't happening. If you were born to poor parents, you die poor. If you were born to rich parents, you die rich. On the overall statistical scale, there is no mobility.

Trying to find references for this, I've found a New York Times article(1) that claims that upwards social mobility has not changed in 50 years. The article points to the research site(2), where they say:

> Our work shows that children's prospects of earning more than their parents have fallen from 90% to 50% over the past half century.

Is the second source referring to absolute mobility?

(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/business/upward-mobility-... (2) http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/

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

#73

Post by notfromhere »

briandear wrote: post #12
godzillabrennus wrote: post #2

Yes. The problem is that automation will be taking even more jobs away in the near future. It’s going to be a hard transition for people.

We’ve heard the same argument throughout industrialization. And everything was fine. Nothing is uniquely different now. Starving blacksmith, out of work horse trainers; yet an entire new industry, the automobile essentially created from nothing that employed more, created more wealth than all horse related commerce in the history of the world. It’s arrogant to think that this time it’s different, that somehow our tec…

Industrialization replaced skilled physical work, automation is replacing unskilled physical work and increasingly attacking skilled 'brain' work. Might other jobs appear from that at some point in the future? Sure, but that doesn't give any comfort to the unemployed textile worker or laid off office admin whose prospects for retraining are low and won't ever find a job that offered the same pay/benefits they enjoyed 15 years ago.

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

#74

Post by arca_vorago »

I am taking a break from being a senior sysadmin because I got burnt out for the third time and am happily pursuing a data science degree. I've been the contractor and the employee.

My two cents is that companies have become so focused on killing upward mobility on purpose as a cost saving measure due to what I feel is increasingly more short term thinking. I can't tell you how many times during my contracting days I heard a story about how $company used to have one or more full time employees who setup, managed, and knew all their systems, but they decided they would rather save the salaries and just use the contractor "when needed". Of course half the time it was some halfassed MSP type shop that didn't know their ass from their elbow, didn't really care about being proactive, and milked billing enough the companies ended up spending just as much money as the salaries but with 1/8 the effectiveness. Throw in outsourcing to foreign countries (Goldman Sachs) and abuse of H1Bs and yeah, I'd say the rise of contract workers is killing upward mobility.

That said, its not the contractors fault, its managements. My view is this is largely because the CTO and CIO positions are failing to properly brief the Cs/board of directors on why they shouldn't be doing this, and that is largely because the CTO/CIO is too much a management and not enough tech. Often I would even see companies without a CTO/CIO, and some poor greybeard would be haphazardly trying to run an IT department and speak board speak at the same time, in the end doing neither well because they had little backing from higher up.

This is why so many companies are literally drowning in their own technical debt due to greediness and short term thinking!

I think its time for more technical people to go get an MBA and shake up the stagnant CTO/CIO positions.

For a long time I just wanted to be in a cold data center all day with my head in a terminal doing good work. As a senior sysadmin though I have learned that I should have been playing the politics game in the meeting room to protect my department and the company. I wish I had learned this sooner.

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

#75

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

hectorlorenzo wrote: post #72
otakucode wrote: post #70

Upward mobility? Research came out 3-4 years ago I believe that showed that social mobility no longer existed in the US. It is normally measured by how many people die in a different tax bracket from their parents. As of a few years ago, that simply wasn't happening. If you were born to poor parents, you die poor. If you were born to rich parents, you die rich. On the overall statistical scale, there is no mobility.

Trying to find references for this, I've found a New York Times article(1) that claims that upwards social mobility has not changed in 50 years. The article points to the research site(2), where they say: > Our work shows that children's prospects of earning more than their parents have fallen from 90% to 50% over the past half century. Is the second source referring to absolute mobility? (1) https://www.nytimes.com/…

I think perhaps he overstated the effect but this article will give you a bunch of information on social mobility in the US.

http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2014/nov/06/jeb...

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

#76

Post by sandworm101 »

wvh wrote: post #11

I've done mostly contract work because I liked the freedom when I was younger. Now I notice a lot of people my age have moved on to management or jobs "higher on the ladder" while I stress about the uncertainty of income when contracts end. I assume the lifestyle might suit people who are extraordinarily good networkers, but I feel mostly tired these days. My younger self didn't know about the fatigue the responsibil…

That's exactly why i dropped out of the legal/privacy consulting game and enlisted. I now have one client and actually more control over my hours than when i was "independant". Today is a "pt" day, which means we start a few hours late. My employer is actually paying me for time spent at the gym. Even the most exclusive law firms I worked for didnt have such perks.

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

#77

Post by jamesmp98 »

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.

Nothing that I can afford to solve

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

#78

Post by acty1 »

Upward mobility to what?

As a software contract worker, the last thing I want is "upward mobility".

That means more bullshit and less actualy hands on development.

Being a contract worker let's you control your taxes better and you can find another gig without feeling like you killed the family cat when you 'leave for another opportunity'.

If your thing is upward mobility, then incorporate yourself. Slap on CEO and Director title on your LinkedIn profile and call it a day.

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

#79

Post by usrusr »

mtberatwork wrote: post #61
pm24601 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contracting as a sw engineer is one thing.. contracting as a warehouse worker is the real problem

Is it though? Upward mobility is a long-term trajectory. Sustaining a profitable career for 10, 20, 30+ years even as an independent software contractor is extremely difficult (especially as the market floods with competition). I think most devs who jump into the freelance world only see the short term hourly wage and miss the risks/opportunity costs involved with running a business. Those risks and opportunity costs…

Stagnation on a higher level is much less of a problem than stagnation on a lower level. But the much bigger difference is that software contractors usually decide to contract, whereas warehouse contractors and the like do contracting work because they would not be hired as permanents, the decision happens mostly on the hiring side.

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

#80

Post by mathattack »

wvh wrote: post #11

I've done mostly contract work because I liked the freedom when I was younger. Now I notice a lot of people my age have moved on to management or jobs "higher on the ladder" while I stress about the uncertainty of income when contracts end. I assume the lifestyle might suit people who are extraordinarily good networkers, but I feel mostly tired these days. My younger self didn't know about the fatigue the responsibil…

There is no security in larger companies either. It seems easy to look and say, "All my friends in senior spots stayed at the same place for 12 years" but you miss everyone caught by layoffs. (Survivorship bias)
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