Software Engineer Choices: Permanent Employee vs Contractor vs Micro-ISV, Part 1: Employee

For engineers who prefer stability.

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This article is one of the “IT Job Interview” series.

Here is a quick explanation of three work choices for a software engineer:

• Permanent Employee: a full-time job.
  Employees work in and are part of the business.
• Contractor: offer IT services to a company for a short period.
  Contractors are running their own business.
• Micro-ISV: is an independent software vendor with fewer than 10 or even just one software developer, i.e. Work for yourself.
  In the context of this article, Mirco-ISV is a one-person software business.

The first two choices are available for most IT roles, including testers (auto or manual, business analysts and managers). For a one-person Micro-ISV, the person must possess high-level coding skills.

I worked in all the above three types, in order. In this article, I will share my thoughts.

1. Permanent Employee

Pros:

• Job Stability
• Career ladder via promotions
  suitable for people with high EQ.
• The sense of belonging
• Training
  but rarely nowadays. If your company does care about employee growth and sponsors in-demand training, ask for “End-to-End Test Automation” like mine. I was so fortunate to access one in 2005, which totally transformed me for much better.
• More flexible in terms of taking holidays
  Contractors, if concerned about money, will mostly have to take holidays during Christmas break.

Cons:

• Less flexible
  you might be stuck with a boring job or a bad boss
• Lower Pay
  but the gap between the contractor rates, based on my observation, has been narrowing.
• The creative work (IP) you did might belong to the company
  While it still arguably takes the ownership but …, watch the excellent “Silicon Valley” TV show.

Personal Story: