Re: Contracting

Subject: Re: Contracting
From: "Nina L. Panzica" <panin -at- MINDSPRING -dot- COM>
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 1997 14:37:19 -0500

At 03:53 PM 9/18/97 PDT, Larry wrote:

>How do contractors enjoy their work? How does it compare with corporate
>work?

I wanted to answer you earlier, Larry, but I was too busy looking for
contract work. :)

I think that contracting work appeals more to people who prefer variety
and new challenges in their work over building up a strong level of
expertness in a particular subject. My experience with contracting is
that I rarely learn as much about what I document as the permanent
writers (assuming there are any) know. For some people, this relative
lack of experience or subject-matter expertness makes for insecurity and
unhappiness--these people might be better off as permanent writers, or
at very least in a long-term (two- to three-year) contract.

I really like not having to be involved as much in office politics as
permanent employees are, but your mileage may vary on that one,
depending on how much you like to be in the thick of things. ;)
Contracting environments vary: some contract writers are treated very
well and as full and valued members of the team; others are treated
as second-class citizens or worse. This can be disconcerting at first
to the permanent writer making the transition to contracting: not only
are you, as a contractor, no longer able to sustain the common employment
illusion that you are indispensable (if you are so indispensable, how is
it the client can bear to part with you after the contract ends?), but
you may find yourself surrounded by people who have a very low opinion
of you, simply because you're "just" a contractor or a "mere" writer.
Sometimes you can turn around such a situation; sometimes, no matter how
outstanding your contributions or impressive your personality and
credentials, you
can't. In those latter situations it is good to remind yourself
constantly of one of the prime advantages of contracting: it'll all be
over in a few months.

Contracting can be unpleasant for someone who doesn't yet know all the
details about successfully running this sort of business; someone who is
learning through his own errors how to pay his own (and save for) taxes,
or how essential networking can be, or how to negotiate with agencies,
or what to do about the W2 vs. 1099 dilemma, or whom to go to locally to
look for that vast majority of contract jobs that are not advertised.
When you're just starting out, you can make some painful mistakes. Most
successful writers learn from these mistakes, and that makes
contracting less difficult for them in the long run. It's best, however,
to learn where the pitfalls are and what things not to do from other,
experienced contractors who have made those mistakes for you! ;)
Although I have never searched this mailing list's archives, I imagine
that they will provide any new contractor with everything he could
possibly need to know to succeed at this business, with the possible
exception of detailed information about his local work environment.

Unexpected and unpleasant things happen in contracting that you don't
have to face if you're a permanent writer. I've lost count of the
number of times that a "guaranteed" contract has fallen through after
I've accepted the job because the manager suddenly discovered his or her
budget wasn't adequate to cover the costs or because the client simply
changed his mind. And there you are, having told any other contract
possibilities you had lined up that you had found work and weren't
interested any more in what they had to offer, having to start the
searching over again from scratch. I used to think that this sort of
thing happened only to me, because of some mysterious failing of mine
that I wasn't aware of, but after talking to many other contractors
about this, I've discovered the experience of being offered a lucrative
contract and then summarily dumped is nearly universal. Another very
common situation for writing contractors is to have a client who either
doesn't pay you at all or who pays you so late that your cashflow
situation gets very precarious. To be happy with contracting, you must
learn to recover quickly from situations like this, as they come with the
territory. You also must develop strategies to deal with these
situations: other contractors who've "been there, done that" can help
you with this.

Keep in mind that as a contractor you deal with many more people than
you do as a permanent writer. Instead of just a project team, your
subject matter experts, the other writers, and the managers you come in
contact with in a corporate job, you also have people interviewing you
(sometimes groups of people interviewing you), people calling you to
find out about your availability and skills, people _you're_ calling to
find out if they might work with you, people trying to talk you into
taking jobs you 're overqualified for and which pay terrible rates, and
many other interpersonal situations with strangers to deal with. If you
find this sort of interaction where you are sometimes on the spot and
have to improvise; where you are expected to promote your skills or your
business in such a way that it impresses others; where you, basically,
are selling yourself; to be difficult, you'll find contracting hard
going unless you can get used to this aspect of the business. I think
most people, no matter where they are coming from in terms of
personality, can get used to this. Even a very shy person, like I once
was, can get used to interviewing or talking on the phone if she has to
do it enough. You may never really like it. But you do get used to
answering the same sorts of questions, and presenting, in general, the
same information, over and over and over again. As with memorizing the
names of the most-often-used paragraph tags in your company's Frame
template, talking intelligently to strangers about your background and
experience becomes just another well-known routine after a while.

Ok, let me talk about the worst aspect of contracting. No one enjoys
looking for work, no matter how many times you do it, but to maintain
yourself happily as a contractor, I think that, at the very least, you
have to get used to the fact that in X number of months you'll be looking
for another position. Every contractor's situation vis-a-vis looking
for work is different. Some of us "hook in" with an employment agency or
a consulting firm which can almost always set us up in a new contract a
week or so after the old one ends. Others of us have been contractors for
so long that our network of associates (writers who tell us about
openings they hear about) keeps us afloat. Many of us, for various
reasons, struggle between contracts to find the next position. Sometimes
contractors struggle to find jobs because there isn't a lot of writing
work in their area. Sometimes it's because they lack job qualifications
or experience in looking for contracts. Sometimes they lack familiarity
with the local area they are looking for work in. Sometimes they lack a
networking base. Sometimes it's because their needs are special (for
instance, I'm finding that a high hourly rate combined with a requirement
to work
offsite is making my current search for a contract longer than most of my
others have been). There are many other reasons, as well, why contract
work can be hard to find. In strong economic conditions, as now, many
companies prefer to hire permanent writers rather over contractors. I
actually find contracts much more plentiful during times when permanent
people are getting laid off and the economy seems weak. The fact is,
however, that most contractors encounter some difficulty with finding
work at least some time in their careers. You have to be able to deal
with this fact, psychologically as well as economically. If the idea of
waiting a couple of months between jobs terrifies you or would devastate
you financially, you may not find much satisfaction in contracting work.


>If you work at home, do you go bonkers with "cabin fever?"

I have to work at home as much as possible, because my husband is
partially disabled. Do I ever get cabin fever? Never. I love it. I love
being around my husband all day long--it's been eight years for us, and
I still can't get enough of him; I love not having to get up very early
in the morning and spend all that ridiculous time grooming, dressing,
and commuting; I love working in conditions where the lighting, the
chairs, the temperature, the computer setup (not to mention the people) are
all exactly
how I like them to be. I love the freedom to work my own hours, however
odd; to have a kitchen stocked with good coffee and easy non-junkfood
meals right next to my office; etc. I don't think my satisfaction with
home work is typical, however. I have talked to other writers about
this, and the majority have said that the opposite: that given a choice,
they found they liked getting away from home and coming into an office.
Offsite jobs are much less common than onsite contracts, however, so
unless you actively seek such situations out, you may not have the
opportunity to worry about cabin fever.

If you do get cabin fever, a good remedy is often to rent a cabin in
some rural place outside of town for a few days and to take your work,
on a portable PC, with you.

>How do contractors manage health insurance?

My health insurance was obtained through an old business my husband was
an officer in and is a pretty good deal, but this specific situation
doesn't apply to anyone else. As a writer, you tend to hear about good
insurance deals from other writers, if you network. I got my disability
insurance that way: there's an agent in town who sells disability
insurance specifically for technical writers, and I heard about him
through my local STC chapter. The STC also participates in a group
health-insurance deal.

Insurance is costly, and when you first start out as a contractor, you
may not be able to buy it all at once until you build up some capital.
So you prioritize: what's most important? What lack of insurance will
hurt you the most if you don't have it and run into trouble? During my
first year I had no insurance except auto, but I was young and healthy, and
luckily,
nothing unexpected happened. The first sort of insurance I got was
medical, then a year or so later I got life insurance, and then a little
later I heard about the disability deal and got that. After I had all my
insurance purchased, the next thing I got was an SEP-IRA, and only after
that did I begin to consider other investments.

Another common expense contractors face is training-related. You go out
on the market knowing Word for Windows and you find most of the contracts
in your area use RoboHELP and FrameMaker, two tools you don't have. You
can take classes in these tools, of course, which are themselves expensive
but if you're like me you'll find such classes to be so basic and so
unrelated to technical writing concerns as to not be worth your time. Also,
if you're like me, you're going to be working offsite anyway, and so need
to have this software handy. I spend a considerable amount of money each
time I look for work buying the latest or the most commonly used software
tools. Often, I have to upgrade my hardware at the same time in order to
run the new software.

>After all is said and done, how's the money?

Even after all the taxes and expenses, it's great. Have you seen the
contractor salary surveys that have been done?
I list links to a few of these on my Web site's Technical Writing
Resources page (http://www.mindspring.com/~panin/nplinks.htm). The
higher income, the freedom contracting provides, and the fact that I
enjoy writing and its related tasks, are why I do it. In terms of money,
I prefer to live inexpensively and not buy a lot of high-cost stuff
(well, I try anyway! ;). Instead, I save as much money as I can while I
am on contract and then use those savings to take sabbaticals between
contracts. During those sabbaticals, I pursue projects with my husband,
who is also a writer; I travel; and basically, I just enjoy my life. If
you live this way, contracting can be the best sort of life: it 's like
having your retirement while you work. One of the reasons this style of
life works so well for me, undoubtedly, is the fact that I do not have
children. People with the expenses and responsibilities associated with
children might find this way of living less far doable than I do.

Regards,
Nina P.

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