
Ask HN: Should I go full time in my main job? - simopaa
For the past three years I&#x27;ve been working part time (0 hour contract) as a developer while completing my studies. Now that I&#x27;m graduating, I have a choice between going full-time or continuing with the current style of contract.<p>I&#x27;ve been loving the freedom that the 0-hour gives me - and the boost in productivity compared to the 8-hour day - and the possibilities in improving myself in the spared hours. However, considering our current projects, I would still probably keep putting in about 6h&#x2F;day.<p>There are benefits in full time as well. If I were to take it, I would gain access to paid holidays (meaning Christmas, Easter etc. I do get actual holidays the same as everyone else) and sick-days, as well as maybe improved guarantees and rights. The company argues that it would be easier to manage the bureaucracy as well as estimate the times for each project.<p>If anyone has had any experience in a similar choice, or has any opinions either way, it would be most appreciated.
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brudgers
Random advice from the internet:

Get a full time job and build your professional network and learn from more
experienced people and gain experience within a business. Doing what you are
doing now is not growing. And since you will be doing _less_ than you are
doing now because you will not be in school, it might even be the opposite of
growing.

Keep in mind, zero hour contracts have a low net present value. 6/hrs per day
should be discounted by the probability that the contract is gone in two
months...perhaps without warning and perhaps without final payment.

    
    
      And companies that contract with students often
      replace graduating students with current students
      because their practice is Using Student Contractors.
    

Finally, it makes sense to look at employment opportunities beyond your
partner in the current contract. That may vastly increase your professional
network, opportunities to learn, and your diversity of business experience.

Good luck.

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DamonHD
I think 'full time job' is overrated and I've only had one for about 6 weeks
since university. On the other hand I have worked some sort of freelancing and
startups for 30 years often putting lots of hours and doing what we'd now
called 'networking'! And a lot of 'diversity of business experience' too. And
I've considered myself to be fireable on a days' notice almost all of that
time.

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brudgers
My advice is worth, at best, half what I charged.

Thirty years ago, freelancing probably involved more face to face interaction
than it does today just because how 300 baud shaped the world of 1987...it was
well into the 1990's before the turn-on-your-modem-and-even-or-odd-parity
phone conversation became less necessary.

Thirty years ago working on open source projects (an alternative to full time
employment proposed in the question) probably meant being part of a small
cutting edge community working on something important. Today, the median open
source project is one one person repository on Github.

I've also done a lot of freelancing and consulting over the past 25 years. I'd
be better at it if I was better at networking because that's much of what
consulting is and it suits personalities that are inclined to enjoy networking
or feel its importance more than personalities that are not so inclined. It
might have been useful to me had someone pointed that out when I was
young...though might not have listened.

Anyway, some people consider a zero hour contract with maybe six hours of work
per day to be perfect. After 25 years consulting/freelancing/contracting I
prefer a big retainer check that has cleared the bank. YMMV.

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paktek123
I'd say do whatever you are comfortable with. If you enjoy your current setup,
why change it unless you have to ?

