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Is anyone here an IT contractor?
- Thread starter gullshark
- Start date
Cian
Well-known member
(Irish experience but it should be quite similar)
Formerly. Its a dangerous business, income wise. You really need your own Ltd company to get the best benefits from it, and you can spend quite some time not working regularly or on a 1 or 2 day a week contract. When you're working you can be having your Ltd paid 150-200 a day (at my level of experience, 5 MCPs) up to 600-800 (if you're a CCIE or SAP qualified or similar) or far far higher if you're extremely specialist. But then there's tax to pay, and the hassle of accounts, etc; and you'll need to provide your own health insurance, pension, income continuance, and so on.
I think bhaexpress knows a lot more about this than me, though; and is UK based.
Formerly. Its a dangerous business, income wise. You really need your own Ltd company to get the best benefits from it, and you can spend quite some time not working regularly or on a 1 or 2 day a week contract. When you're working you can be having your Ltd paid 150-200 a day (at my level of experience, 5 MCPs) up to 600-800 (if you're a CCIE or SAP qualified or similar) or far far higher if you're extremely specialist. But then there's tax to pay, and the hassle of accounts, etc; and you'll need to provide your own health insurance, pension, income continuance, and so on.
I think bhaexpress knows a lot more about this than me, though; and is UK based.
glos seagull
New member
- Sep 2, 2005
- 24
i am an IT freelancer.... what is it you want to know....
Horsham Gull
H Block Offender
im trying to get in to IT
Cian
Well-known member
I'm trying to get the hell out of it!
Horsham Gull
H Block Offender
encouraging for someone fresh from education :S
Cian
Well-known member
Haha. Some people do enjoy it, I just found it was less stressful when I was a satellite installer and far better paid when I DJed (although there was mental travel there). If you want a 9-5 that pays well, something IT related is a good route to go, but you could easily end up on a 9-9, weekends, etc, etc.
ITs main advantage over satellite work is not sitting on roofs in the rain, in the dark, trying to read a Promax meter screen; and its main advantage over DJing is no hearing damage....
Scoffers
Well-known member
I've made my living in IT, and done pretty well by all accounts. I started out in a helpdesk where my enthusiasm and affinity with IT took hold, and gained some confidence after a couple of years, then went contracting, doing general Server/Workstation/Hardware work. Did that for nearly 4 years, then joined a small American software company, 9 years later, I'm running that company in the UK.
Go for it!
Billy the Fish
Technocrat
What's you're experience? IT is a very vague word.
Horsham Gull
H Block Offender
interesting to hear from people in the industry and find out how they built up there careers definantly can learn something from talking to you. My personal it experiance is more Programming (Java and VB), Oracle and MySQL development and starting to get into web technologies such as PHP.
- Thread starter
- #11
I'm just getting information now, really
I can code in java (uni + 3 years commercial), speak mysql, used to be a system builder, network engineer and general servicing dogsbody. Can administer windows / mac / linux / bsd machines. am industry certified in a couple of web design things.
I can code in java (uni + 3 years commercial), speak mysql, used to be a system builder, network engineer and general servicing dogsbody. Can administer windows / mac / linux / bsd machines. am industry certified in a couple of web design things.
Billy the Fish
Technocrat
I'm more telecoms and networking than proper IT. I've worked with a few contractors, some were worth their wages and some definately weren't. A bloke I used to work with got made redundant from our place then got a contract on £300 a day installing cisco call manager, and when I worked with him doing that he was f***ing useless. If you know what you're doing there's definately work to be had, and even quite a bit if you don't it seems
Cian
Well-known member
I've done Debian Linux and Windows 2K3 implementation and rollout work on contract, really quite crap at the networking side of things which is what held back getting more work I'd presume. Background was just personal experience and some work with my dad, now have MCPs and an MCTS - one more exam to get off my arse and do until I'm an MCSE, not that its worth jack shit to me in my current, VBA/SQL programming job.
bhaexpress
New member
I've been in IT for nearly thirty four years. I am very bored with it but at my age it's not very easy to get into something else. I don't care that we now have age discrimination legislation because this is easily circumnavigated by the being told you 'have too much experience' (something that is by no means unique to the IT industry). As it goes contracting in most areas of IT is not as lucrative as it was ten years ago mainly because unlike when I left school the were not many people who were computer literate although that long ago IT bears scant resemblance to what it does now.
Contracting generally tends to make you no better off that have a permanent role especially when you consider you don't get paid when sick or on holiday. You get few if any benefits either. It may seem like a good idea to younger people in IT and it's a good way of broadening your experience both professionally and personally but after a while the novelty of that wears off.
IT professionals with be less and less important because as computers get more and more sophisticated and more reliable not to mention cheaper they'll be more reliable and simpler to use. Bearing in mind the first computer I worked on had 240k (yes K!) of what would now be known as RAM and took up the size of a basketball court not to mention the massive amount of fire control kit and heavy duty air conditioning. It was too stupid to do a simple sort so I think you my see where I am going with this. Oh, in those days if you had any form of telecommunication attached to your computer it would receive data as the rate of 150 BITS PER SECOND and transmit them at the rate of 75 BITS PER SECOND.
If you want to make money in IT sell it.
Contracting generally tends to make you no better off that have a permanent role especially when you consider you don't get paid when sick or on holiday. You get few if any benefits either. It may seem like a good idea to younger people in IT and it's a good way of broadening your experience both professionally and personally but after a while the novelty of that wears off.
IT professionals with be less and less important because as computers get more and more sophisticated and more reliable not to mention cheaper they'll be more reliable and simpler to use. Bearing in mind the first computer I worked on had 240k (yes K!) of what would now be known as RAM and took up the size of a basketball court not to mention the massive amount of fire control kit and heavy duty air conditioning. It was too stupid to do a simple sort so I think you my see where I am going with this. Oh, in those days if you had any form of telecommunication attached to your computer it would receive data as the rate of 150 BITS PER SECOND and transmit them at the rate of 75 BITS PER SECOND.
If you want to make money in IT sell it.
tinx
Well-known member
Thats the truest part, I have 10 years UNIX experience and am certified in various operating systems and get paid fairly good money, but at the end of the day the sales guys who rely on me to make the sales get paid about 3 or 4 times as much and drive around in top of the range sports cars.
bhaexpress
New member
You know the most annoying thing about that ? Most salespersons make promises that others have to keep ! Having worked for a number of outsourced projects I reckon that anybody else who has will know this to be FACT !
Scoffers
Well-known member
VERY true.
This statement...
...does not take account of this one...
...since there is an implication in your post that all IT professionals do is make sure machines work and communicate. I guess I am an IT professional yet, when it comes down to it, I don't have much of a clue when it comes to things like building a PC and the finer nuances of operating systems. Beyond that my comms colleagues a few desks away who make sure that when I plug my laptop in it work and make it possible for our Hong Kong office to work on our Bristol based servers are working a black magic as far as I'm concerned.
I think the greatest 'threat' to my area - the software development lifecycle - is the highly educated, highly skilled yet stupidly cheap workforce developing in India. Why pay UK prices if you don't have to? That said, in my role of project management, I'm probably less at threat than pure developers, but I'm not kidding myself that I'm not bloody expensive in comparison.
...does not take account of this one...
...since there is an implication in your post that all IT professionals do is make sure machines work and communicate. I guess I am an IT professional yet, when it comes down to it, I don't have much of a clue when it comes to things like building a PC and the finer nuances of operating systems. Beyond that my comms colleagues a few desks away who make sure that when I plug my laptop in it work and make it possible for our Hong Kong office to work on our Bristol based servers are working a black magic as far as I'm concerned.
I think the greatest 'threat' to my area - the software development lifecycle - is the highly educated, highly skilled yet stupidly cheap workforce developing in India. Why pay UK prices if you don't have to? That said, in my role of project management, I'm probably less at threat than pure developers, but I'm not kidding myself that I'm not bloody expensive in comparison.
Publius Ovidius
Well-known member
I was originally an Accountant ( FD for a £35million company ) and fell into IT when our IT Director put new systems into the factory and then announced he was leaving some 3 months later, therefore I learned Lotus Notes, Windows NT and Server, AS400 and Unix server on the fly.
By accident and good fortune I moved into Disaster Recovery in 2001 and although it is reasonably well paid and I enjoy recovering and testing people's systems( IBM iSeries machines), the problem with DR is that to a certain degree it is a dead end job. You are working all the time on other people's systems and although if in LAN/SERVERS you have up to date machines, more than likely you are working on older machines that the customer has.
I am in a very odd position that if I leave, I have been out of Accounts for 10 odd years and my IT support level is more on the hardware side than anything, so its a bit worrying.( especially as I am 50 next year)
By accident and good fortune I moved into Disaster Recovery in 2001 and although it is reasonably well paid and I enjoy recovering and testing people's systems( IBM iSeries machines), the problem with DR is that to a certain degree it is a dead end job. You are working all the time on other people's systems and although if in LAN/SERVERS you have up to date machines, more than likely you are working on older machines that the customer has.
I am in a very odd position that if I leave, I have been out of Accounts for 10 odd years and my IT support level is more on the hardware side than anything, so its a bit worrying.( especially as I am 50 next year)
Scoffers
Well-known member
Web Design is a good area to get into for beginners's I'd have thought