
Ask HN: Going from full-time to contract? - atarian
Hi HN,<p>Short intro, I&#x27;ve been working full-time at a big company for about three years now. Lately, I&#x27;ve been unhappy with the direction of my department and career and I felt this was a good time for me to explore new options.<p>I remember reading about a contract worker who only worked a few hours every month to pay the bare minimum of expenses in order to focus on his main project. The idea really appeals to me because I&#x27;d like to spend more time on personal projects.<p>Are there any consequences that should make me reconsider? Here are a few I can think of:<p><pre><code>  - Health insurance coverage
  - Could be difficult to get a full-time job afterwards
  - Not being able to save as much money
</code></pre>
Thanks
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brudgers
The key to doing contract work is having contracts. Getting contracts is often
a non-trivial task that requires substantial effort. Ongoing contracts for a
few hours a month are not that common even for people with niche skills and
high expertise (something that can be done in a few hours is often possible to
achieve with in-house talent working longer hours).

One piece of the puzzle is that landing little contracts is not proportionally
less work than landing bigger contracts, there's overhead and sales and
signing and invoicing as fixed costs mostly unrelated to contract size.

My random advice from the internet is not to quit your job until you have a
signed contract and the retainer check has cleared. People often _consider_
using contractors for projects that are uncertain. They bid contractors
against each other. Projects get delayed, canceled, and abandoned.

Good luck.

