Trade a Permanent Position for a Higher Temporary One?

[BunsGettingFirm]

I'm getting a few bites after my CV extreme makeover with a professional career counselor. The positions are mostly in financial management of technology projects, but this one position seems very interesting. It's a lot closer than my current job, it's obviously higher up as I'll be supervising a bunch of IT and financial analysts, and because it's contract work, the pay can be 2 to 3 times what I'm making now as salary. The one catch is that it's 3 months in duration and contract to hire. The work is for a very large defense contractor. From what I have seen of contractors in the tech field, some of them manage to glum on to their positions almost on a semi-permanent basis sometimes working for 6-7 years at the same company which is longer than most permanent employees stay with the same company, and they are taking in at least 2x the pay for the same job.

Please share your thoughts on contract work in general and on this particular job.

As for my present job, I'm not getting the pay for the amount of work and multiple areas that I cover. I know that, but the boss is starting to trust me with bigger and bigger projects. What should I do?

[landonew]

Why not approach your current boss with the proposal and ask if he would like to make a counter-offer. Tell him that you would really like to stay but at the end of the day you will have to make the best decision for you and your family.

Maybe this is a poor approach, but it a least gets the ball rolling.

[HpRyder]

I'm acquainted with contracting in the industry. Yes the duration are often 3 months at a time because companies only fund the POs for 3 man months, then near the end of the 3 month period, refund them for another 3 months. If they want to keep you. Often the contract to hire condition is an enticement to get someone at a dramatically lower rate who hopes to become a captive. The strategy is first lower pay, then a captive conversion offer at lower quartile pay. When refused, they end the contract and look for the next player. Contractors I've seen who stay on, have gotten themselves a nitch where it is too expensive, in time or money, for the company to retrain someone to replace them. These contractors are usually exceptionally good in their technical skills, interpersonal communication and work their as* off to produce on time. A couple things to consider. In the current environment, defense technology is not likely to be outsourced, especially if it involves classified material. Funding, however is very dependent on defense politics and the defense budget. So periodically people get uneasy/scared that jobs will be eliminated and they start job hunting. As a contractor you will be high on the elimination list, hence the need to be much better than average. As a contractor you are paid minute to minute and can be walked out the door within the next minute.

Only you can decide if you can stand the uncertainty and have confidence to believe if it isn't this company, its another company. If it isn't this job, it's another one. If it isn't this rate, it's a different one.

[CuppaJoe]

BunsGettingFirm, what you describe is a little known secret in the employment game. I did it for years, when I had a very high risk tolerance. It worked well for me; I bounced around between two mega-corps. Remember sitting next to a "permanent" employee who complained that I was making more, and then quoted a lower salary than I was really making, saying she would jump at the chance.

The part I would be wary of is "contract to hire." I got vary cagy about turning down job offers. Many times I would be casually sitting at a table with a manager and it was, OMG, this a job interview. It helped to get to know the people in personnel and when I was really honest with them, they kept finding me jobs. One thing to remember is that even as a new hire contract worker, personnel knew more about me than my immediate supervisor did.

BTW, I've seen some people go from contract to supervision to hire and then quickly quit and never work for the same mega-corp again. I felt that my best chance to move around to interesting jobs was not to go permanent. I was living the definition of semi-retired as I chose blocks of time to take off, sometimes sharing that info with personnel.

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

Come over to the dark side!

[socca]

Quote:

Originally Posted by landonew Why not approach your current boss with the proposal and ask if he would like to make a counter-offer. Tell him that you would really like to stay but at the end of the day you will have to make the best decision for you and your family.

I don't recommend this approach. There are better ways to argue for more money than explicitly threatening to leave (although this possibility will always be lurking in the background unspoken).

After 8 years of gargantuan Bush administration defense budgets, you may find working in the American War Machine a bit unpleasant. Most defense contractors are bulging at the seams with excess bodies (although of course they'll never admit this publicly). You'll have to take a look from the inside to see what I mean.

The contract-to-hire aspect makes the position difficult to analyze. Abandoning a steady paycheck for contract work isn't a minor decision, and deciding to move to the public sector from the private also is a biggie (don't be fooled by the fact that war-monger mega-corp is an American corporation - it's actually a branch of the U.S. gov't. Since we Americans detest socialism, we construct these pseudo-private enterprises in order to fool ourselves...)

Good luck!

[CCdaCE]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CuppaJoe <snip> It helped to get to know the people in personnel and when I was really honest with them, they kept finding me jobs. One thing to remember is that even as a new hire contract worker, personnel knew more about me than my immediate supervisor did. <snip>

Can you expand on this? I'm dumbfounded by the concept that HR is actually worthwhile. Sure, they control the marionette strings, but to tell a division who they should hire ... I can't wrap my mind around that.

Maybe I'm too deep into interpretation, so that's why I want more info.

-CC

[BunsGettingFirm]

Thanks everyone for sharing your expertise in this area. I agree that going to my boss to have a raise or leave conversation is not the absolute best approach. I try to have these conversation be as constructive as possible -- show what I have already done and what I can do in the future. After all, they are paying you an increase in pay for work you haven't done yet.

Hm...so the contract to hire clause is actually something to avoid? I suppose so because after all going for contract work is taking the risk of having to look for another job soon, so why reduce the risk premium I receive by agreeing to a largely meaningless contract to hire clause?

I used to write the POs for these contractors, so I have a fair idea what technology and tech management contractors can make. At that rate, I can ER for sure in 6 years even if the stock market just keeps up with inflation. Yes, I know that you don't get any benefits, but as a single guy, I'm actually subsidizing others in a permanent employment setting.

Perhaps not this particular defense gig, but I will keep my eyes open for other possibilities.

[CuppaJoe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CCdaCE Can you expand on this? I'm dumbfounded by the concept that HR is actually worthwhile. Sure, they control the marionette strings, but to tell a division who they should hire ... I can't wrap my mind around that. Maybe I'm too deep into interpretation, so that's why I want more info. -CC

You are soooo right! I once overheard a guy high up in personnel tell someone on the phone, "we are not going to blacklist anyone!" I don't claim any connection here but a few months later my dept. took a lunchtime ferryboat ride, and there he was on the same boat. My boss asked if I knew who he was, I said, "yes, he's the head of personnel." --"He's retiring and not telling anyone why." --"They probably didn't tell him why...." The entire HR dept was replaced at that time, the one who found jobs for me was sent to the company's Timbuktu and I never saw her again.

What I meant was that whenever I wanted to work for say, eight months, personnel would find another opening for me.

[youbet]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BunsGettingFirm What should I do?

I'd suggest immediate retirement!

[BunsGettingFirm]

Quote:

Originally Posted by youbet I'd suggest immediate retirement!

Are you supplying the one way ticket to Mexico?

You know Neal's crew in the movie Heat when they were deciding if they should stay to take down the bank? Yeah, each of them has millions put away and a one-way ticket to Fiji, but they see the big score, so they had to stay and take it down. This is how I feel about my career. I have done OK, and before the crash, I could easily have said F it and disappeared to some third world country, but more than the new reality of the stock market, I just feel that I can still take it up a few notches because I see complete morons in my company who can't do crap in positions that get paid way more. I get a marketing manager who has a complete analysis team at her disposal in India, but she doesn't know what questions she should ask of her analysis team to know if the latest ad campaign has been successful, so she asks me who randomly got pulled into the same project as her to ask the questions. What the heck is her value add? From these and other interactions on the business side of the computer business, I know I can completely kick butt.

[Free To Canoe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ed_The_Gypsy Come over to the dark side!

Hard to leave the dark side once you move over.
In more ways than one.

Free

[BunsGettingFirm]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Free To Canoe Hard to leave the dark side once you move over. In more ways than one. Free

Can you elaborate?

BTW, I'm contemplating asking for a transfer within mega corp because my current position offers neither project management nor interesting finance problem to solve. OK, OK, I was running several projects up to a few weeks ago, but since then, politics have intervened to make sure that my projects went away. The official reason is that they didn't fit the group's mandate, but I suspect that the other two program managers didn't appreciate the fact that the other people in the group appreciate my project management skills more and made it a point to point out the difference between their style and mine. Their style is that you never know what the hell is going on until they dump something in your lap literally 40 minutes before it is due. I didn't foment any of this. I just did my job the best I knew how. Of course the latter is just speculation on my part, but the reality is that I'm bored out of my mind.

The other part is that the group current working on our big project knows that if it's not successful, a lot of us are cooked, so I'm starting to feel a lot of tension and back biting from some of the co-workers whom I previously thought were OK people. I can see this part getting worse.

The other possible position involves valuation of big partnership deals, so I'll at least get to run some interesting capital budgeting problems and maybe work on some accounting of various lease options. The position will report to a West Coast manager, but I don't care because I may even get to take a shorter drive by using a closer mega corp office.

Opinions?

[DFrancis]

I would only take the higher paid temp job if I can afford to get laid off.

[dex]

Quote:

Originally Posted by landonew Why not approach your current boss with the proposal and ask if he would like to make a counter-offer. Tell him that you would really like to stay but at the end of the day you will have to make the best decision for you and your family. Maybe this is a poor approach, but it a least gets the ball rolling.

I agree.
Definately ask you boss for what you want before going to another job.
You must balance how and what you ask for with what you know about your boss and the company.

[eridanus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BunsGettingFirm Can you elaborate?

1) The pay is higher.
2) The vacation time is more.
3) Less politics.

v.

1) If you ever want to return to a salaried position, it counts against you. Why would you want less pay? Given your jumping around (if you do), would you stay here for more then a year?


Health insurance may be the biggest reason to return to W2 status.

[Milton]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dex Definately ask you boss for what you want before going to another job. You must balance how and what you ask for with what you know about your boss and the company.

Yes, fair enough. But I would not disclose the other offer ... too much like an ultimatum.