…….Nothing is ever all rainbows and unicorns.  Sorry!

Contractors are more likely to overwork. When working for yourself it is a never-ending cycle of project work, searching for the next project and then back to delivering again. It can be quite exhausting.

There is always something to be solved and when you have an office routine, it’s easier to leave what you do at the workplace. When you work from home, your office is where you live.  – Conrado Lamas

What exactly is contracting anyway?

IT contracting is where an IT specialist works as an individual or under their own umbrella company. Their time is contracted out to clients at a fixed daily rate for a short to medium duration. Clients pay them for their time, based on projects delivered. While the definition is simple, switching to a contracting set up can seem a little intimidating.

So why would anyone go into contracting?

Well, it is made easier when you partner with a team of resourcing consultants who are busy securing your next role while you focus on the task in hand.  More on that here. (That’s the last of the hard sell. Promise!).

Contracting is becoming the new norm – just talk to anyone furiously typing on a laptop in a coffee shop. It’s a great way to give you the flexibility to choose when and where you work. Organisations of all shapes and sizes are embracing remote workers. Zapier (we mentioned them previously here), commissioned research proving that the trend towards flexible working is ever increasing. While the sample is US-based, we can take this as a ‘yardstick’ of things to come.  According to their research:

Three-quarters of knowledge working would be willing to quit a job that didn’t allow remote working for one that did.

Giving up office politics

For roles that involve deep concentration, the open office is not a happy place to be.  What was once hailed as the harbinger of better communication and lower costs, is now turning out to be a bit of a false solution. Everyone has a certain limit of exposure to people and noise before they need time out or away from it all. Furthermore, when you are knee-deep in work-related anxieties, an open plan office is not the safest of places to retreat to.  Furthermore, the Zapier research found that 52% of workers said that home is the most productive space with co-working spaces coming in second at 11%.

The end is nigh?

Two-thirds of knowledge workers think the office will disappear by 2030.  Contracting is already a huge part of the economy and growing at an exponential rate. An experienced IT contractor will have worked for numerous clients during their tenure, exposing them to a wider range of technologies compared to their employed counterparts – something to consider before settling into a full time role.   We believe that the time to move to contracting is now! (Yes, we’re biased a little!).

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