Before I created my own company I began to notice some problems with the contract to hire roles that I was being offered. These problems are in my opinion some of the absolute worse parts of the job market at this moment. So let’s just dive into it.

The Problem

Before I dive into some of the smaller problems, I believe that we should start with the biggest of all. This is that company is trying to take advantage of your think and abilities. Being contract they have the ability to hire you at a smaller rate, not pay for any overtime and worse of all have the ability to get rid of you without warning. Some places have higher expectations of their contractor like working off the clock and/or on sick days.

The best example of this was when I worked at my last job. I was hired to be a contractor for a severe pay cut as a junior developer. Which was fine because I didn’t know self-worth as a developer. Next, I was always expected to complete tasks that would have been impossible for a junior developer. Lucky for me I have a quick to adapt mindset and continue to grow my skill up to speed in no time. However, then the cracks of the contractor life started to show and I was expected to meet tighter and tighter deadlines as my job was held over my head. Which made me start to believe that this was just the nature of the career path I had chosen.

After a couple weeks I began to think about the work load and the whole situation. This made me start to really think about my career path. I will not lie I began to doubt my abilities as a developer. I then decided to talk to my family, friends, and others about this problem and they kept saying that I am better than this job. Especially when I mentioned that I was being reminded that I wasn’t being paid my true worth and told that I needed to work harder because my job depends on it. It started to become nightmare fuel.

This prompted me to just get into business for myself. Which is why you are now able to read this post.

The Take-Away

The take away from this post isn’t that all contract jobs aren’t all bad. This post was created to showcase some of the problems I went through with contract jobs and what you should avoid in taking a role. All roles aren’t the same and shouldn’t be judged the same. Maybe the next contract role you take maybe the greatest and will craft your future. So always keep an open mind to any position that coming to your desk.

So now that we have talked about a role that wasn’t so amazing. Why not share a past role or position that wasn’t greatest in the comment section below. This way we can all learn and grow as developers.