Waldemar Pross started his career as a Microsoft Dynamics AX professional in 2006 by working for a Microsoft Gold partner in Germany as a Developer and Technical Consultant. After moving to the UK in 2012, working for an AX end user and taking their AX system live in 2013, he decided to start working as a freelancer in 2014. In this blog article we invited him to share his experience of contracting in Microsoft Dynamics AX.
Working as a contractor is more a mindset than a legal form of work. In this article I will try to talk less about obvious “hard” factors like deciding whether to register a Limited company, how to choose an accountant or what insurances to get, and more about the “soft” aspects of being a contractor. When I think back, I realize that already in 2011 I knew that I wanted to become a freelancer at some point in my career. It was not a conscious decision back then and I didn’t really have a concrete plan of how to become one. It was more an idea, a desire to work independently and be entirely responsible for my work someday. Below you can read how I did it and I am sure that there are many professionals out there for whom it was different, but I hope my experience will help you to understand whether you should become a contractor or work in a permanent role.
Learning
I have started to notice that most of the new knowledge I have acquired came through self-study and simply “digging deeper” than the actual task at hand required. The companies I worked for did provide training, but often it was far removed from what the daily project reality demanded and most of the time you have only put a small portion of it into practice by the end of the project. I figured out that the best way to develop your expertise is actually just to take more time to learn about the (new) technologies involved in a real life project. And unfortunately most companies do not have this working model yet: it is either “customer time”, where as much of your time as possible has to be billed, or it is the scheduled “learning time” where you have to learn for several days in a row about a new product because it might be used in some of the future projects.
Benefits, costs and risks
Why do permanent employees earn less than contractors? When working in a company, you are a part of an organisation which shares the benefits but also the risks and costs of a business. A company provides its employees with many benefits and a couple of them are not obvious to most of us. Things like sick days, equipment, corporate rates with gyms and insurances, liabilities to customers, training costs and administration effort (like taking care of your NI or taxes) are calculated into the salaries. You have to ask yourself if you need these benefits or you want (and are able) to take care of them on your own. Basically, all you get when you work as a contractor is money. You have to buy or do everything else yourself.
Flexibility
Here I have to be careful not to sound too extreme and scare you with suggestions which might appear quite radical to you. I was already called by my friends a “minimalism extremist” and “modern day digital gypsy”. What I mean is, that as a contractor you need to be very flexible and be able to adapt very quickly, especially at the beginning. Even today with all the nice things like broadband internet, Skype and screen sharing tools, it is still very common that the customer wants you to work on site. You have to be prepared to travel a lot. So I have started to get rid of things which were tightening me to a physical location: internet and gym contracts, a flat with my own furniture and a lot of other stuff “normal” people have in their homes. Obviously, such simple things should not stop you from making a big step in your career. However, it will be much easier to say “yes” to an opportunity in another city or even country which requires you to start working in one week, if you don’t have all these obligations.
Responsibility
When working through a company (especially through a Microsoft partner) often you are “shielded” from the actual users and their problems. There may be a consultant who wrote an unclear Functional Specification, a guy in the IT department who didn’t manage to install a new server so you can start developing a customization on time, or a client who didn’t manage to deploy the new delivery before the training tomorrow. As a contractor, clients expect you to be a professional individual who turns up, does his job and makes sure it works. This is the main reason they hire you: they want a proactive, self-sufficient, low maintenance and well-rounded person. It is your responsibility to understand the business process and make sure the customization works as the business actually needs it. It is your responsibility to make sure you have all the prerequisites to finish your work. Of course, you will still work with other people in a team and you can’t control all aspects of the project. But it is in your power to at least realize the dependencies early enough and communicate them to your customer.
Soft skills
Let’s admit, we, the developers and IT geeks are not the most communicative people and often it scares us more to present something in front of a group of people or talk directly to the users, than reading a 117-page manual or digging through 941 lines of code at 9pm. But as an independent contractor you should be able to communicate your ideas clearly, provide training or simply document your work. Sometimes it also requires you to be able say “no” to unrealistic deadlines and requirements if you know it won’t allow you to deliver your work in high quality.
Personally I would recommend that every person, especially if you are young and haven’t settled down yet, at least thinks about the possibility of working as a contractor. All the things described above (learning more than necessary outside your working times, developing your soft skills, taking more responsibility or simplifying your life) will not do any harm to you even if you later work in a permanent role. But they will allow you to be ready to accept an opportunity to become a contractor.
What do you think are the best and worst parts of contracting?
The post The Highs and Lows of Contracting, by Waldemar Pross appeared first on The Sharepoint, Dynamics AX & Dynamics CRM blog | Cognitive Group.