Software Engineer Choices: Permanent Employee vs Contractor vs Micro-ISV, Part 2: Contractor

Suitable for competent software engineers who like new challenges.

The three work choices for a software engineer:

• Permanent Employee
• Contractor
• Micro-ISV (Independent Software Vendor)

2. Contractor

Pros:

• Flexibility
• Higher pay, usually
• Can pursue personal creative projects in own time while retaining intellectual property rights
  This became really important for me. I turned down a couple of good permanent job offers (with a fancy title and a very high salary, even higher than my contract rate), for this reason.
• Suitable for competent engineers but with low EQ
  Just “get stuff done” mindset.
• Quite often, easier to find as the first job, also with higher pay
  Many people don’t know this. Stay tuned for my upcoming article on this.

Cons:

• Less secure, especially when in a bad job market
• Higher Pressure
  Especially works in teams with permanent staff, who think you earn too much and should do a better job.