Thoughts on Being a Contractor
At Motorola I was a contractor. I was hired by Manpower Staffing; they paid my salary, took care of my benefits, issued my vacation days. Motorola does this because they can have people working for them without adding to the headcount and surpassing the staffing budget. A contractor’s salary is considered an expense for Motorola, not a salary.
This doesn’t sound like a big deal, and for the most part it’s not. Once you’re working, you’re working on the same stuff as everyone else on the team. You make friends and it almost doesn’t feel like you’re a contractor at all.
Then comes training — you don’t go ’cause you’re a contractor. You don’t go to certain meetings. You don’t get to buy phones or stock at the employee discount (I wouldn’t anyway 
well maybe the stock, it’s REAL cheap right now). These things aren’t much but they’re always there to remind you, just like your green (as opposed to perm-staff-blue) ID badge, that you don’t totally belong.
This is no big deal, I was grateful to be working… at first. It wasn’t until I resigned (not due to contractor reasons) that I really felt like just a contractor. Manpower was always really good with responding to questions, they always surprised me with how quickly they handled my inquiries into how many vacation days I had available during a certain month. This service was shattered with the phone call from my — who, broker? I’m not sure — on the day I resigned. Her polite manner was replaced by a nasty, disappointed, almost insulting tone. “So, you decided to knock off work, huh?” It took me all week and emails to three separate people to figure out how many vacation days I had left.
It’s as if once you leave, you’re no longer worth any of their effort. Who cares if we keep the contractor happy? He’ll be gone in a month anyway. We won’t be making any more money off him. Why should we provide any more service?
I realize there are many contractors out there who are absolutely happy with it! I myself wouldn’t mind working for myself as a contractor/consultant in the future. But never again like this.
So kids, think twice before you agree to a similar contractor arrangement.
Not like this. Never like this.
Being a contractor does have its perks but, like you said, you will always feel like your excluded to a certain degree.
The exclusion for me was also magnified by the cultural differences. And the nerd-factor… last weekend my wife accompanied me to a “team-building BBQ” and met the crew — she was pretty impressed I lasted this long with those people!
So yeah, I definitely see benefits of being a contractor, you’re not completely owned by the man, especially if you have the experience and expertise to wrangle a kick-ass deal for yourself