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Becoming a contractor programmer in the UK

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Re: Becoming a contractor programmer in the UK

#4

Post by CharlesFinley »

The old discussion is now closed.

You should be aware that there is no obligation for limited companies to have a business bank account. However, it is usually a good idea to have one.

Furthermore, you don't need to be a UK resident to open a business bank account but most banks will not deal with you due to higher costs and fraud concerns.

P.S. your company does not require a UK-based bank account. You can open a business bank account in your country in the name of your LTD company in the UK. You will need to have your company documents (Certificate of Incorporation and Memorandum & Articles of Association) apostilled.

Re: Becoming a contractor programmer in the UK

#6

Post by batou »

CharlesFinley wrote: post #4

The old discussion is now closed. You should be aware that there is no obligation for limited companies to have a business bank account. However, it is usually a good idea to have one. Furthermore, you don't need to be a UK resident to open a business bank account but most banks will not deal with you due to higher costs and fraud concerns. P.S. your company does not require a UK-based bank account. You can open a bu…

Very true.

Also the advice about marketing yourself is crap. Recruiters are the #1 way of landing contracts. They're finders and you're paying a finders fee for that service. They have the big guys with oodles of cash to get hold of.

If you can't get a gig through a recruiter then you either don't have skills that are in demand or don't come across as someone who they'd want to sell.

If you don't go through the recruiters, you end up being left with the cheap arse companies that won't pay up anyway. If you're sneaky about it, you and the recruiter can get the client to pay the finder's fee.

Once you're in the system, build up a network of contacts and then move through that rather than using the recruiters. I'm doing that at the moment and ended up taking a perm position that was better paid than the contract rates were (without all the hassle of IR35, rolling a Ltd etc)

Re: Becoming a contractor programmer in the UK

#8

Post by peteretep » 

    > 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 super easy online using the UK government sites now. I set up a company (again) about ~14 months ago, and it took about an hour of filling in .gov.uk forms online. I would recommend just doing it yourself.

Setting up a bank account is pretty easy too, and I'm not sure why you'd use a third party for it. 15 minutes of filling out HSBC forms did it for me.

    > Finding your first client might be hard.
Sure. Most permanent jobs have a 4 week notice period, and you can find contractor roles happy for you to start in 4 weeks. Line one up before you quit, and there's no 2-3 week mad rushing around trying to find a contract.

If you're just getting in to it, start with a recruiter. They'll eat in to your contract rate, for sure, but they'll also have a far better visibility of the market than you, they'll get better feedback from clients than you, and they'll help chase your invoices and so on. I worked as a contractor for a long time and never had a bad experience with a recruiter, where the OP seems to have had a dreadful time...

    > rates
Go look on jobsite. For Central London, a developer should be asking for £300-£600/pd depending on seniority and what they're doing.

    > IR35
In addition to IR35, they're about to massively change how dividend tax works. You might be better off looking at an umbrella company like Giant, who'll save you a lot of accounting hassles...

Re: Becoming a contractor programmer in the UK

#9

Post by jacquesm »

batou wrote: post #6
CharlesFinley wrote: post #4

The old discussion is now closed. You should be aware that there is no obligation for limited companies to have a business bank account. However, it is usually a good idea to have one. Furthermore, you don't need to be a UK resident to open a business bank account but most banks will not deal with you due to higher costs and fraud concerns. P.S. your company does not require a UK-based bank account. You can open a bu…

Very true. Also the advice about marketing yourself is crap. Recruiters are the #1 way of landing contracts. They're finders and you're paying a finders fee for that service. They have the big guys with oodles of cash to get hold of. If you can't get a gig through a recruiter then you either don't have skills that are in demand or don't come across as someone who they'd want to sell. If you don't go through the recru…

> If you don't go through the recruiters, you end up being left with the cheap arse companies that won't pay up anyway.

I've never used a recruiter, the companies I work for paid pretty good and I had one unpaid bill in a couple of decades.

Building your own network and getting rid of recruiters as your main source of income is very important to new contract programmers.

For one they take a cut and for another they will sell those parties where they can take the largest cut first.

I'm not saying they don't have a function but recruiters goals and the recruited goals are not 100% aligned and you should be very much aware of that when using one.

One way to side-step recruiters is to build up (large) number of contacts with people in the industry who may get to know someone that needs your particular skillset.

The more peculiar your skills the harder it will be for recruiters to place you and so more of the acquisition part will have to be done by yourself.

Think of using recruiters as 'outsourcing acquisition', it has all the upsides and the downsides associated with all other forms of outsourcing.

Another danger with outsourcing your acquisition to recruiters is that you are handing the keys to one of the most important parts of your business to another party, who can then either cut you off at will, replace you and retain their contact with the company you were placed in and so on.

The sales department (which you've essentially outsourced) is a very important (if not the most important) element in any company, even a small one.

You may be able to make your life a little easier by not doing that work, especially if you're an introvert but in the longer term you're setting yourself up in a very dangerous position.

So, use recruiters if you have to but be wary and make sure you have alternative channels to being hired under your own control. Never let a single recruiter get you all of your jobs or even a majority of your jobs.

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