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Many technical communicators yearn to 'go contract'. Here are a
few reasons to reconsider that goal:
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Perception:
Reality:
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I'll
earn more
Some contractors are in constant
demand (usually because of their outstanding technical skills),
and earn substantially more than they could on staff, but most net
less than they would in a comparable salaried position because they
can't bill as many hours as they anticipate, have to provide their
own benefits, vacation/holiday pay, training, and tools of the trade,
as well as pay higher taxes. Their financial situations become substantially
more complex and confusing. Most contractors actually work harder,
worry more, and keep less.
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Perception:
Reality:
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I'll have more control of my time
If clients could plan better, they wouldn't need contractors.
Contractors must therefore routinely decide whose schedule (theirs
or their clients') is more important, and resolve the conflict between
whether to sacrifice a promising business relationship or their
own leisure time. In our experience, it is a very rare contractor
who can confidently decline a project without having something better
on offer. Is that control of one's time, or simple fear-based pragmatism?
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Perception:
Reality:
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I'll
get more variety
Contractors, much more than staff employees, are hired because of
what they know and can prove that they've done. Clients won't pay
contractors to learn their technology or train them on how to meet
their audience's needs. Hiring managers often tell us that they'd
prefer to assign their fun, leading-edge projects to in-house, staff
employees - and hire contractors for emergencies and maintenance-mode
work.
Moreover, we see many contractors being pigeon-holed because they've
not taken the initiative to expand their skills, perhaps because
they're too busy working or trying to find work. By contrast, staff
employees routinely receive training that helps them develop new
and marketable skills, and the expense of the instruction as well
as the missed work time is borne by the employer. Most forward-looking
employees avail themselves of this benefit frequently.
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Perception:
Reality:
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I won't have to commute as much
As a contractor, you're no less accountable for
the timely completion of accurate, high-quality deliverables, and
if creating them requires facetime with engineers or hands-on use
of the product that only runs on a sophisticated network or behind
an impregnable firewall, you must still visit the client's site.
Clients routinely tell us that they've been 'burned' by offsite
contractors who overbilled, lied about their progress, produced
sub-par work, or were ineffective at gathering information from
busy SMEs. As a result, many clients refuse to hire contractors
who insist on working mostly offsite, saying that compensating for
a remote worker's absence creates more problems than it solves.
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In Summary
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Most contractors never consistently achieve the rewards that motivated
them to go solo. Their goals of increased income, independence,
variety, and telecommuting elude them for the reasons mentioned.
This is not to say that you shouldn't try contracting or that staff
jobs are a panacea for all the problems of modern life.
As one technical communications manager we know characterized the
choice between contracting and captivity (staff employment), "on
one hand you have the illusion of prosperity, on the other the illusion
of stability."
For more information, you
will find us on the web at http://www.synergistech.com,
you can email me at andrew@synergistech.com,
or you can telephone us at 1-866-591-2968 or 1-707-554-9365
Editor's note: We would love to hear your
comments about this article in general or your experiences as an
independent contractor. Go to our East
Bay STC Network and email your comments. Not yet signed up?
Please do so or Contact Us
directly and we will post it. 
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