The whole idea of a salary is relatively new, since the industrial revolution. There were examples from earlier, but for the most part, everyone was what would now be a contractor. You'd negotiate to do a project for a set fee, or you'd negotiate to do whatever the boss needs at an hourly or daily wage for however long the boss needed you.
The tradeoff was stability for flexibility. People at the low end of the wage spectrum accepted lower daily wages for the stability of employment, and then the trend moved upwards.
It looks like the trend is now reversing at the highest salary levels. Most people now realize that having a salaried job isn't all that much more stable than being a contractor (in the US) with at-will employment in 49 states.
I can definitely see a future where more software engineers are paid per project instead of a salary. And maybe some companies will continually hire certain people that they like over and over again.
That's an incredibly broad generalization to draw over several thousand years of human history. I'd argue since at least ancient Rome the predominant model for societies has been the clientela patronage model [1] and its feudal derivatives. The employment model is a formalization of that relationship that sets up basic "serf rights" that were otherwise open to horrendous abuse before. The contractors of yore were mercenaries - they were usually paid more than the soldiers in standing armies (sound familiar?).
Like I said, there are examples that predate the Industrial Revolution, but the idea of an average worker having pay stability is pretty new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salary
I agree that pay stability is new, but that doesn’t mean they were in a contracting relationship. For most of recorded history, most people were engaged in some form of subsistence food production. Many were enslaved. Generally speaking, neither of those economic models are that close to “contracting.”
Tenant farming gets closer (although not really). Itinerant labor probably the closest, but I don’t think they made up much of the population in societies I know about. Skilled craftsman could also count, although they look more like a generalized small business than a “contractor” as at least I think about it.
This doesn’t really aid your argument. The client patron relationship is a lot more like a master servant relationship than an employer employee one. You are not equals in any sense in a client patron relationship. And it’s a personal relationship, not a contractual one.
If you're a consultant you have to be comfortable with "selling" yourself, building your brand / networking to bid and win new projects. All this stuff is a hassle if you're not a social person. Its not a scientific result, but most of the engineers I know just want to work long-term on something cool and stick with a known company.
Yeah, that's the downside, but there are lots of headhunters even today that will find and negotiate contracts and then take a piece of it.
As more people move towards that model, I can see a race to the bottom in fees that those companies take. It'll be similar to the way actors get hired -- you get into a relationship with an agency but they're just negotiating contracts for you.
Basic pay for a member of a Roman legion was 225 denarii per year, later increased to 300, and then again increased to 500 to adjust for inflation. Higher ranked officers received higher salaries.
But for example, I pay for my own insurance. There are programs now where you can pay for your own insurance with pretax dollars, so my contracting rate just accounts for this. Since it's likely that high pay software engineers will be the first to go, they are also the most likely to be able to absorb that cost and risk, even without a public option.
The tradeoff was stability for flexibility. People at the low end of the wage spectrum accepted lower daily wages for the stability of employment, and then the trend moved upwards.
It looks like the trend is now reversing at the highest salary levels. Most people now realize that having a salaried job isn't all that much more stable than being a contractor (in the US) with at-will employment in 49 states.
I can definitely see a future where more software engineers are paid per project instead of a salary. And maybe some companies will continually hire certain people that they like over and over again.