I feel as if my career has reached a plateaux. Would contracting give it a new lease of life? What are the advantages and disadvantages Any personal experiences to pass on to me? Edit Power-Coder did you use sites such as Elance to obtain side jobs while still working full time? ...
Do you think using websites like Elance, to obtain side jobs while still working full time, could help my programming career? ...
In regards to programming, what is the difference between being a contractor, and a consultant? ...
I'm curious as to how many of you Flowers work for yourself or for a tiny independent web development shop. Other than the obvious network, network, network and cold calls/emails what other inventive ways are there to get new clients? Anybody ever get clients from attending conferences and handing your card out to everybody? ...
I hear stories about the mythical "Highly Paid Consultant". They are the people who the corporate bigwigs call in to design and implement the huge, mission-critical systems that will make or break the business. Let's assume that I was an expert in some field of computers (I'm not, but let's just assume). How would I become a consultant?...
I need to get out of a bad situation at my current work - I like the work, but they've been jerking me around with contract extensions coming at the last minute. I've been offered a job at a different company that doesn't look as interesting, but it's a chance to learn a few technologies I was interested in learning. It's "6 months con...
I am sure there are lots of people who ask the question, "What have you been asked at interview?". I want to turn this on its head and ask the community what question do you wish you had asked the interviewer before accepting, or not, a role. I am sure there are many circumstances where a sensible question asked at interview would have...
I've recently gotten offers from several clients who are throwing consulting/contract work at me. (this is what we call a high quality problem). The problem is the most interesting ones will take an unknown amount of time and typically clients get upset when stuff doesn't get done FAST. This goes into the fact that consulting/contract ...
Our agency recently had the opportunity to bid on a project where the client's in-house programmers were dead set on using Sharepoint. According to our communications they had already installed it, and wanted to port old PHP code piece-by-piece over to this platform. This was primarily to take advantage of the CMS capabilities, but I am ...
Anyone know how to successfully start your own business as a programmer for hire. Consultant or contractor or whatever you want to call it. ...
Say you're in a contracting developer role at a bank that pays well and will probably be extended. Then you get offered a permanent role at an IT solution provider as a Senior Developer/Technical Lead. Would you stick with the contracting, or go to the permanent role? The contract role: pays well will probably be extended provides f...
There are clients of mine who are content with their VB6 and SQL 2000 applications that I have written them many moons ago. The applications run fine, require some maintenance, some bug fixes from time to time but really run OK for the client. There is no reason in their mind to upgrade (or have my rewrite these in the current version...
Let's say I have a position open, it can either be contract or permanent position. What is a fair amount of money I should pay for the contract position, if I am willing to pay X per month for the permanent role? Contract pays are inevitably higher, because the contractors are not entitled for a lot of benefits, and are not guaranteed ...
I am planning on starting out doing consulting in the bay area. I would like to know how do you guys decide on consulting rates for a project and how do you go about negotiating them with a client? ...
What types of programmers tend to be attracted to full-time positions and what types are drawn to contract positions? Which type are you, and have you swapped between one to another? Does there come a time in a programmer's life when he/she typically switches from one to another? Do you find one more challenging than the other? ...
As a software freelancer (contractor) does it pay out to budget for things such as marketing and advertisement, training, tools (i.e. business related expenditure) or just buy them ad hoc? Obviously you need to set some money aside for holidays, sickness, etc; anything that goes under “social security” expenses category, but advertisemen...
Hello, currently, I am looking deeper into testing techniques, even though I am not sure if I still reside in the unittest-land or left it into the land of integration tests already. Let me elaborate a bit, Given two components A and B and A uses B, then we have a certain "upwards-contract" for B and a certain "downwards-contract" for ...
I am a contractor who lives in UK and does work targeted at an exotic programming platform. It is a niche market with a limited number of available developers; unfortunately there seem to be no specialised recruitment company. There is a list of companies that use this language and tools, some for software products they sell and others i...
Hi All, I am a contractor for a small software firm, and am wondering what sort of documentation other contractors tend to create to make things easier for the guy that comes after them? My current contract is a semi-permanent position, but I'd like to leave everything in good condition for anyone else who has to work on parts of the sys...
I've spent my career in full-time employment in the UK, on an annual salary. I'm interested to know how contracting rates compare to salaries, specificially how to compare the two. Basically if someone would make a certain salary, what would they equivalently charge as a day rate? day rate * X = annual salary What is the X factor? E...