What do you do?

Rule of thumb for contract work: whatever number you want to take home, triple it. Negotiate from there, and remember you'll be covering all the taxes.

Depends on your field I imagine, but in ours contract/1099 are the first to get the squeeze in lean times. Then if it gets really bad they'll lay off and go back to more contract workers. But initially it's easier to just stop contracting.

As intuitive as it seems it feels like (remote workers are actually cheaper) the remote workers are always the first to be let go come cut time. I know anecdotally at my company we purged all our remote staff over the past few years.

Where I am currently, a large % of people telework because we're so distributed. Even the employees who are fairly close to the main campuses often end up working from home. Our direct supervisor isn't anywhere near any of us, but it all tends to work out. I think the fact that we use Hangouts over conference calls goes a long way towards making people feel connected.

I have some concerns about visibility, but so far it hasn't been a problem. People aggregate around east coast and mountain time, so it isn't too difficult to schedule meetings. I guess we'll see how I like it in six months, but so far I'm loving being at home all the time. That'll change if I suddenly have work being attributed to other people, but that's a risk in any office.

Tenks_sl said:

As intuitive as it seems it feels like (remote workers are actually cheaper) the remote workers are always the first to be let go come cut time. I know anecdotally at my company we purged all our remote staff over the past few years.

Click to expand...

Remote Workers suck. I have honestly have VERY few good experiences with them on a team.
They need to be S level developers to make it worthwhile for a company.

And fuck if you will ever get promoted LOLZ.

Guys what should I do? I'm a white and have a degree in economics some one help

Go back to school for a STEM degree, or pick up programming for the financial sector.

Go back to school for behavioral economics and do interesting shit.

I've done contract and company and I've learned(maybe getting old?) that I actually prefer working for a company. Now granted, I have/will only work for companies that allow 100% telecommute. For instance my current company is based in PA and I pretty much just travel where ever I want so long as I have some type of internet connection. It's basically contract work, but with a bit more paperwork.

As others have said I def. made more with contract work, at least on a yearly perspective. It may have even continued like that long term as well. However I find working for a company is.....I guess I'll word it, "more simple" and fits my lifestyle better. Some of the reasons I choose it over contract:

1.) When you get established enough the pay difference is not that huge. I'd make maybe 1.5x my current pay if I did it all on my own. I feel like contract has a hard ceiling for a given industry that I'm teetering on.
2.) Unless you have ONE company you contract with "forever" I don't like the hassle of looking for new work or even worse, picking a project you think is a winner and some personality or other random thing makes the entire project suck ass. I like having a company with other people to support and help me and lots of different things I can work on at once.
3.) Obviously this wouldn't matter if you are just a low level programmer, but I also own shares in the(private) company. So if it ever goes public/I retire/etc I can make some decent cash. This also motivates me directly to ensure the success and profitability of the organization.
4.) I absolutely cannot stand the billing/accounting side of contracting. Maybe you people contract for the most friendly people in the world but it was always such a fucking hassle to actually get paid(and I don't mean a project that went bad and we are in a lawsuit, I just mean normal shit). I suppose it's just something you get used to but it did not mesh with my personality. I like regular work, brainstorming, design, org stuff, but I cannot stand the day-to-day hassle bullshit like support or chasing someone for the 30 hours I put in that week.
5.) Every other year the entire company and all family members(lol I'm 1 of 2 people that go solo) gather in Puerto Rico for a company meeting and it's a fucking blast.
6.) Diversity, and no, not with people. I can pretty much work on whatever I want....ohh I find sales interesting or think I can improve it, fine do it. Ohh I have a new product idea that I believe could make us money? Design it and prototype it. I'm not just pigeon-held into one thing. I believe it was harder for me to take those types of risks when I contracted.


Also I think I just have a personality flaw. When I contracted I found myself starting to develop this attitude, correctly so, that every hour worked was $$$$. So I worked more, I worked weekends, I became a work-a-holic. No vacation, sorry. I'm literally giving up $$$. Now I understand there are those who contract and can still balance life and money, but it just wasn't right for me.



EDIT: On the remote thing my entire company is remote. Every single employee. And we still succeed quite well and have a very large, diverse, and satisfied customer base. For industry reference we are a combination of Software/Consulting Services for the SAP world.

In my Federal Government Agency we are given very liberal telework leeway. In my branch if you want to work from home you're allowed up to 4 days a week. It's branch and department dependent though. Obviously a call center isn't going to be able to telework but my area can and does. So with that said it shouldn't be surprising that a lot of people abuse the shit out of it. Government employees already have a bad reputation for being lazy and not doing anything. And a lot of them live up to that stereotype admirably. Then take those same people (or people on the edge) and let them telework 4 days a week and, sure as shit, people abuse the hell out of the system. You'll see people disappear for hours at time from IM. And supervisors really can't call them on it. Government Supervisors: All the responsibility and none of the power.

Anyway my last boss from the private sector was VERY old school. If you weren't in the office than you weren't really working. So telework was basically only acceptable on days when weather was terrible. It's funny because I'd go days without talking to my boss since we were just in our own little zones but on a day that I'd telework she'd be IMing me every couple of hours over the stupidest shit. I'm not dumb. I know she's checking up on the team making sure we're actually there and not napping... But that attitude stuck with me in my Government job and I much prefer to be in the office to get work done. The commute isn't fun but I get so much more accomplished when I'm in the office as opposed to teleworking.

On a final note I am a firm believer that all Government employees should have to come from the private sector first. There's a massive difference in attitude among those of us who did come from the private sector and those who have been Government drones all of their lives. Those like me realize how good we've got it now and don't want to fuck it up. Those drones who never worked outside abuse the shit out of the system and makes all Government works look bad. We have bad reputations as it is and they are actively working to reinforce that reputation.

Call centers aren't going to be able to telework? Why does it matter if they drive into the office in Banglapur when I'm calling from fucking Connecticut?

Let's just think about the absurdity in the statement that call centers can't do telework for a moment.

Oh you aren't telepathic yet? My condolences.

I always forget how aggressive this board is. People will jump on anything to flex those old Everquest Epeens and try to show off their superiority. I've come to learn that I have a VERY different world view than most people on this board.

The call centers at my branch of the government are low paying jobs where they are not trusted to be left alone for 5 minutes let alone telework for the entire day. I think you guys are confusing "call center" with IT and technical support. The call centers I'm referring to are my like customer service. They handle customer complaints and customer problems. Can you do these jobs from a VPN line? Sure. But the people that they hire to do them are very low Grade Scale and I'm betting a lot of them don't even have the capability to set that up at their home. And again it's a trust issue because a lot of these employees, literally, cannot have any sort of independence at all.

Since a lot of you have problems with how my work handles the lack of Customer Service Telework you can contact my boss right here and express your complaints:

Submit Your Comments and Questions Online | whitehouse.gov

And here's the contact information for my 2017 boss:

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/contact