IT Contractors

IT Contractors are a strange breed. Travelling the country in search of highly-paid positions where they can milk a company for a few months before moving onto the next victim. In many ways, they are the IT equivalent of vampire bats. Find a suitable victim and cling on before sucking them dry. However, as with vampires, the cost is potentially high. Yes, you might become a filthy rich scumbag, but you also spend a large proportion of your life staring at the walls of a Travelodge.

Clearly, being a contractor requires a certain mindset. Some people are capable of switching this on or off, but for most of us, it’s genetic. Can you tolerate everyone hating you for earning far more than them? Yes, yes, I know you have to find another job every few months, but every now and then you hit the contractor equivalent of a blood bank and fill to overflowing. You don’t get sick pay. True, but this just results in contractors attending work when suffering from bubonic plague and therefore infecting every other poor sod in the office. You don’t get holiday pay. True, but in a novel use of the English language, the period between contracts (otherwise known as unemployment) simply gets called ‘holiday’.

So, what sort of person becomes a contractor? Well, obviously someone who can tolerate long periods of time away from home. This results in various conditions. Excessive right arm is commonplace, as a result of missing the wife or excessive playing of computer games to compensate for being billy no mates. Not everyone is called a w****r for nothing!! Many contractors develop a definite limp due to the stresses carrying such a heavy wallet causes on their bone structure. A squint normally occurs due to writing such large numbers into such small boxes on their timesheets. Then, of course, comes the most obvious sign of them all. SLi. Everyone knows that only contractors can afford such ludicrous PC setups.

So, is being a contractor all bad? Obviously not, there are major benefits. You don’t need to train the wife in your particular peccadilloes as its actually your hand, not hers. The old headache etc. excuses don’t apply anymore, as when you want it, strangely enough so does your hand. You are rich, but have no mates to spend it with,
so Overclockers.com or other ‘hardware’ sites benefit. Unlike poor employed people, holidays come along regularly and are sometimes long. A stunning opportunity to spend some of the money trying to persuade people you have friends and most surprising of all, a life. Alternatively, you just spend 20 hours a day playing World of Warcraft and getting married online.

So, being a contractor isn’t so bad after all.