Contract IT Work - Can you make a living?

Quandary

Hey Folks, im a Systems Administrator with 4 years experience and am looking for work. I have been considering doing short term contract work on a long term basis because i like the freedom of it. Has anyone got any experience of this? and if so is it possible to make a decent living out of it? I am fully aware that this type of working lifestyle means i will have to organize my own benefits ie health care , pension etc etc....

Any/All opinions will be greatly appreciated:)

Quandary

Anybody ??:)

Tuvok

Hi there,

I know some friends working in IT who have done this. They are looking at getting a permanent job now due to the economic situation here. They get paid very well but obviously they have their own expenses as you know. If they take holidays or get sick then they don't get paid. One of them hasn't been able to get another job since she left her last contract. Luckily she has some savings so should be okay for a while. There aren't as many contracts out there as there was a year or two ago.

Eoin

In some markets, contracts become more available in tough times because companies don't want to commit to giving someone a full time job and the extra expenses that go with it (health care, pension, PRSI etc). But I can imagine, as things get worse, a lot of non-critical projects are put on hold completely, so the demand goes down again.

I'd love to do it, but as you said, you have to factor in quite a lot - pension, healthcare, holiday pay, sick pay. Of course, you can write off a good few expenses as well.

I know this is all obvious stuff, but I'm putting it down for my benefit!

Take 260 week days per year:

Subtract 20 for annual leave and a day or two sick leave (presuming you will take less leave if you're contracting).
Subtract another 10 for Bank holidays

So, you're looking at 230 days.

Divide your salary by that and you've got the base salary rate per day.

A decent pension plan would be about 10% combined employer and employee contributions, so add that. Monthly healthcare costs as well, if you're already getting a company deal. Administration overheads - do you need to be a limited company to get the contracts?

I think where you really have to increase the rate is to cater for the probable eventuality of not getting a contract for every working day of the year, and this is where I think it gets hard to quantify how much extra to charge.

Quandary

thanks for the opinions - ill have to sit down, have a serious think about & weigh up the pros/cons!

Eoin

What's your current situation like Quandary? By "looking for work" do you mean you're looking to change, or do you mean you're out of work?

ifah

TBH this is not the best environment for someone like yourself to leave a perm job to go contracting (especially as a sysadmin). I've been contracting for the past 4 years, in IT for past 13, am in a good long term contract at the minute but would hate to be looking for work right now. A number of my mates are bricking it at present due to the instability - all of which are in IT at least 10 years or more.

Sysadmins (especially MS ones) are very easy come by so if you were looking to enter the market you would be coming up against people with 10+ years exp who would be willing to take significant rate drops just to get work. Almost every contractor I know have taken between a 10 and 20 % hit in the past six months. Add that to the rising cost of everything else , instability and it ain't pretty.