Where I work we have a lot of contractors. They do they same work as permanent staff, presumably being paid a lot more, and they stay up to two years, which I suspect is longer than the average tenure for a permie. I have also seen a lot of them that are much worse at their jobs than the average permanent staff (and they don't get fired)
It seems like that in a place full of contractors, being a permie is a shit place to be: more responsibility and less pay. Senior management recognise that contractors are costing them a lot (they mention it during all-hands meetings), but seem to have no plan to increase benefits for permies to try and encourage them to stay. It is very hard to hire good permanent people.
As a result of this, lots of permanent people are leaving to become contractors. I am thinking of joining them.
As a contractor, you have no statutory employment rights. You might be paid more, but you have no entitlement to sick pay or holiday pay and your contract can be terminated with no notice. If your client decides to fuck you over, you have no recourse to an employment tribunal.
Becoming a contractor can be advantageous, but there are risks and downsides.
>>12618 A good part of this is to do with budgets. Permanent staff have to pay for themselves, whereas contractors can be considered a capital expense. The two are handled through different channels by different business functions with differing levels of baggage (HR vs purchasing). One of the reasons I left a previous job was that I was underworked and underpaid, and my employers found excuses instead of doing anything about it, but somehow still managed to hire a contractor at a not-insubstantial day rate to do things I could have been doing.
It depends on your industry. In cheffladding, self-employed is the way to go, as there is ALWAYS work for you, multiple extremely established agencies who you know are dependable, and due to the nature of the job you can pretty much wander into a new workplace or environment every other day and still know what you're doing. It would basically be impossible for a semi-skilled chef near a large urban area to run out of work.
Your industry might be very different. As already said, you're looking after yourself from then on out, and it's hard to quantify just how useful holidays and sick pay can end up being. If the extra money you'd be getting as a contractor isn't much more than, say, six weeks extra pay, then a holiday off work and a bit of illness could see that extra money wiped out anyway.
