[ejb999]

I am someone who has 'done my own thing' for more than 35 years at this point - i.e. direct contracting with my own clients, occasionally working on some 'side' project I hope I could sell, and even took a FT position here and there when the right opportunity came along.

My feeling is it has not hurt my career at all, and more likely made it better - having your own company, with your own clients and working on lots of things you learn lots of skills you likely won't learn grinding it out for mega-corp year after year.

Other big bonus is, on my resume - there are no gaps - I was either on someone else's payroll (for me less than 5 years of my 35 years of work) or doing my own thing - I never had a recruiter or hiring manager question 'gaps' - on paper I was 100% employed at all times, which is easy to say if you have your own little corp - even if you were technically idle at times.

IMO if you have some money to get thru thru for a while (i.e. you won't be homeless if you don't get a check every two weeks), this is the perfect economy for doing your own thing.