One of the joys of working as a contractor is that I never
have to be concerned about losing my job. If my contract ends, I didn’t “lose
my job;” my contract ended, and now I have to find another one. That’s a part
of the model, not some life-changing disaster. This perspective comes in handy
when I start feeling, as I have recently, that my current employment is very
tenuous and might be ending soon. Because if that happens, it’s OK, because
contracts end. No big deal.
(I have to note, even more
recently it seems that I might be safely in place for a while longer, but that
does not change the point.)
Of course leaving a permanent job is also temporary, so what
really is the difference? For me, there is a big one: people always ask why you left (or want to leave) a job.
If I was contracting, I can just say that the contract
ended, the client did not want to pay me anymore, and that works, and that’s
generally true. For permanent jobs though, I have trouble answering. Because I
have to lie. Because “my manager sucked” is a bad answer, even if that’s the most honest answer (and, to a greater or lesser degree, it usually is.) Because “I came to hate my job by the end” doesn’t work
either. You are not supposed to give any negative answer, because they don’t
want to hear that you actually evaluated your last employer and found them
lacking, because they know you will also evaluate your next employer too, and they
probably aren’t all that great either. You are supposed to say something positive about opportunities and moving forward.
Since I started my accounting career at KPMG in 1987, I have held six “permanent”
positions in accounting and finance. I never left even one of them for a
positive reason.
In a similar vein -- I guess -- I have begun to think that
any position I get now is temporary. My best approximation of how much longer I
will work is four to five years. If a “permanent” position helps me fill that
gap while earning a decent wage without long periods of unemployment, great. I
would actually prefer to work as a contractor, because I like being paid extra
when I work extra, but a permanent job might be a better way to fill the time
and stay employed, without a lot of gaps. But at the most, my next job will only last a few years.
I liked contracting much better than "full time". It took 16 years of full time employment for my salary to catch up to what I was making as a contractor. The major perks of full time: Stock, medical insurance, and paid time off. Drop one of these and I'd probably go back to contracting. It might have been easier for me to contract in computers than for you in accounting though. I could hold down several contracts at a time. I always insisted on keeping my own hours and NOT having a desk to work on at the clients.
ReplyDeleteHow many Pins were there?
The key is to have a spouse who provides all the benefits. And no, I don't get to set my own hours or work from home. It's still an 8 to 5 desk job.
ReplyDeleteThere are five pins. I did not mention the blue one, because it's OK. There is a white one that is almost, but not quite, straight above the red one, and that's a problem, but I found out recently that they hired a new person who will sit at this desk starting in three weeks, so I will leave the slightly misaligned pin situation to her.