Prompted by some recent chats with current and former colleagues, I thought I'd share some musings on life as an IT Contractor* after nearly 11 years in the business. It's something of a stream-of-consciousness but I've tried to summarise it into three main points:
Knowing what to charge is probably the hardest part of being a freelancer or contractor, particularly when starting out. So how much should you charge? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer is 'it depends', which I can best illustrate by an early example from my own career:
In 2007 I left my last full-time job paying a modest 'developer' salary (~£20k/annum at the time). The lure of contracting is often seen as chasing the 'big bucks', but my first contract was with my former boss who had moved on to found a (now very successful) startup and offered me a contractor role at roughly the same money I was on. This was actually a mutually beneficial