Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I've moved into contracting after being a software engineer/developer/team lead.

Essentially since you are contracting, you are outside of the "bubble" where decisions regarding business get made. So while you may have important work on the project, you are not there when they are deciding on business aspects of it, you are usually not invited to any type of sales meetings or meetings with the clients. This is reserved for company people.

Another aspect you can do is that you can outright reject that type of work or slowly move away toward a client that is not requiring that type of work. When you are working in a company, you usually do not have power to do that. Your only option in a company is usually to quit and then hope next company doesn't pull you into that meatgrinder.



This, exactly!

The down side is that you don't have any direct influence on those business decisions. (At one point, I wrote about three different login/single-sign-on clients for a web app infrastructure (including Kerberos/Active Directory) before they finally decided that SAML2 was politically/technically the right choice. Frustrating.) You do have indirect influence if you have a good relationship with your team lead, who will likely be a "real person", a real employee.




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: