Our Contractor Doctor has just posted a response to a question from a first-time contractor who has got himself into a state over the treatment he’s received at the hands of his client and agent.
You have to feel sorry for the poor bloke, but not because he basically got screwed by both the agent and client. You have to feel sorry for him because he has so obviously missed the whole point of the differences between working as a contractor or as an employee. He’s not the first, and he won’t be the last. I, too, got a really terrible rate on my first contract; yet, at the time, I felt I was doing really well.
Once upon a time, every contractor got robbed by their agent, and sometimes the client, on their first contract. Why? Because they knew no better and a few years back that vital information about how contracting works was still stuck in the heads of a few contracting veterans.
But today first-timers have no excuse for making really basic mistakes. There is this website, www.contractorcalculator.co.uk (just in case you weren’t sure where you were), which has literally hundreds of how-to articles and guides. Plus there’s the new Contractors’ Handbook, 500 pages neatly packaged into ageing but still viable paper-based technology. Then there are bodies out there that exist almost exclusively to make sure you don’t get screwed, including the Professional Contractors Group.
Yet, despite all this, our Contractor Doctor gets weekly (sometimes daily) complaints from contractors about how badly they have been shafted by their agent or client.
Well, it’s time for them to wake up and smell the proverbial, which in many cases is not coffee but a more earthy odour. We contractors live and work in a free market economy, which is why even when the economic times are tough, as now, there are still good, high-paying contract opportunities to be had.
Yes, agents and clients try it on, but then so do contractors. I’ve been working on tough contracts where my fellow contractors dropped like flies because they couldn’t take the pace, letting the client down, and claiming all sorts of spurious reasons.
You’ve been robbed? Grow up and take it on the chin, learn from it and don’t let it happen next time.