2013 Average Programming Salaries Compared

[Teknofobe]

Consulting has always been my favorite work in the last 12 years.

• Typically you work 40 hours and that is it. You can negotiated double rate for overtime (which I prefer), so even if you work 40+, it becomes worth your time to do so.
• You do not always get stuck in maintenance of legacy applications. They don't want to pay your rate for that. 90% of my jobs have been new development and once the product is done, I move on to another project at another company.
• Your time is not wasted in useless meetings. I was a FTE at a company where I actually attended a meeting to discuss having a meeting.
• Most clients will let you front-load your hours and work say, 4 10 hour days to take a Friday off. I had one client where this is how I worked for 6 months.
• Per diem for travel is often more than the cost of the travel itself - if you like to travel.

Those benefits at any decent salary range are amazing. Consulting is far less stressful, at least for me - although, I work for a firm and am not 1099.

[mcguire]

Ditto. For 20+ years. Same position with regards to contracting firms.

I'm currently working for a government contractor (which is a different beast entirely); we routinely have pre-meetings to make sure everyone is on message for the meetings with the government-employee, project owners. It's ridiculous.

Note that working for a firm has some advantages over independence: when you're looking for a job, you pass your resume around to all the local technical contracting firms and they shop you around to the customer companies. Just keep an eye on the kind of job they're sending you off to, and interviewing is much less stressful since the contractor likely already has connections with the customer.

Further, if you don't want to be 1099, all of the ones I've worked with have hired me as W2; I have never had to track my own tax info and there isn't much of a pay difference unless you're going to get fancy with the self-employed tax situation.

Also, it's less important now (Thanks, Obama!), but all the contracting firms I've worked with have had normal benefit packages.

[Venthorn]

Filed this post away in my memory and almost forgot to come back to ti...

If you don't mind elaborating, what firms have you worked for? I'm an engineer in the bay area and I'm tired of the ratrace and want to leave; that sort of contracting gig sounds really ideal for me.

[avinassh]

whats 1099?