[jankcorn]

Strongly agree. When you feel like the combination of administrative hassle and/or work content no longer fits you, it is trivial to just wrap up the current work cleanly (as mentioned above) and just move onto another, more appealing project.

The nice side effect of being a contractor is that your CV now looks like you have been in the same position for 10 years instead of a series of 2 year stints.

I have done this and always worked hard to help the team succeed. Later, when I decided to try working for a couple of large companies, I was stunned to be treated as "you work in my organization and will follow my every whim".

One example is attending endless pointless meetings waiting for the client to decide what spec they want, just because the manager wants to everyone on the team to be present (and silent). As a contractor, it becomes quite easy to say "it looks like I am not adding much to your project until the project spec gets settled. Please let me know when you are ready to implement (or have more detailed questions that you need to know to flesh out the spec) and I will be happy to help anytime". In my experience, it is quite common that they will have hashed out the requirements and be ready to start work after 12 months or so and were happy to talk then.

[Buttons840]

> The nice side effect of being a contractor is that your CV now looks like you have been in the same position for 10 years instead of a series of 2 year stints.

Can't you do this with W2 work too? "Oh, that was all private consulting work. No sorry, I'm not able to tell you who I was consulting."

[em-bee]

that's effectively what i did, but i listed all stints as if they were jobs, and my CV is rather lengthy as a result. some of them were contracts, some where were actual employment. we used whatever form was more convenient. sometimes employment was necessary for visa purposes. in the end i don't think it matters. consulting is consulting, and i may very well share who i was consulting for, it's still different from having a long term job. as a hiring manager i would still ask: "you have been consulting for the last 10 years, why are you looking for employment now?"

the transition from independent consulting to long term employment is just as questionable as the one from job-hopping to long term employment. you'd have to be working as an employee for the same consulting company for multiple years to give the impression that you are willing to stick with the same employer for a longer period.