Yes - 20 years of tech experience at major players and not able to find a single full time role in over a year- looking remote anywhere or in person in Seattle
Have been doing contract work - currently doing AI engineering
The FTE slot has become a really bad deal. I have worked alongside people who were making less than half what I was. The company treated us slightly different in that employees time was sucked down with meetings, performance reviews, mandatory certification and team building. Lump on some more hours and demands and you have a complete shit show. Companies also have to do a song and dance about how great it is to be an employee (elitism) and to thank the gods they arent one of the lowly contractors that they "manage."
- Easier to get a job as a contractor (college degrees and certification standards are relaxed)
- Pays a lot more
- Skips all the happy horseshit
- Treated like an adult
Sometimes FTE can be good but by default it is a bad deal for most.
Contract work is much harder to come by and requires a significant network. Most of the time I interacted with people doing contract work, it was because they used to be FTE at the boss’s previous company.
As far as pay goes, I don’t find many are making much more than faang pay. Most are making okay money but spending a lot of unpaid time on networking. I feel like the people I know who speak the most about contract work are those who are actually running contracting firms (not doing any work themselves), were underpaid and are now getting at market rate comparable to other FTE, and people not in the US where contract work is more typical.
I have known several people who would get contracts from those random Indian recruiter emails. If you get them coming in (like who does this on purpose,right?) and automatically filter them you can start getting good leads.
One guy I know runs two contracts at once. One of them ends...no big deal.
I've never heard of contractors getting paid in stock, which is arguably one of the best parts of being in tech, you can ride the price up, and if the price crashes, you can switch jobs.
I believe you that the contractor rate can pay substantially more than salaries but does it make up for the 100k, 200k, or more in stock each year a FTE might get at a really good tech company?
Getting paid in stock might be a benefit at big tech, but in the startup world the median value of granted stock has to be zero or close to it. Most startups fail before going public or being acquired.
Have been doing contract work - currently doing AI engineering