I'm interested in chatting with someone who has made the transition from full-time W2 employment, to either independent consulting, or contracting work.

After 15 years as a sysadmin, I'm finding myself becoming easily bored and burnt out, usually after the honeymoon period and initial project load expire at a new job. I still enjoy sysadmin work, I'm just not the type to sit around and pretend to be busy. I want to stay technical, and am not interested in moving into management.

Consulting or contracting seems like the next logical step. I'd love to hear from those who have been in similar situations.

Thanks

As someone with decades of pragmatic experience at this, I suggest that you "bloom right where you are planted" at your present full-time job.

Talk to your present supervisor about your feelings ... and your new ambitions. I will absolutely assure you that your feelings will not be difficult for anyone whom you may talk to, to fully understand. And there will probably be a lot that those people can do to help you.

Start by thinking about this: within the context of right-where-you-are, do you see anyone else doing a job that you'd like to have a piece of? Do you see a hole that needs filling, that you'd like to grow-into being able to fill? Do you have a constructive suggestion for your supervisor, for something that would be beneficial to the business that you're now working for and also for you?

I consider myself (32+ years in ...) to genuinely be "a consultant," and I have put-together and managed quite a few contracts. Therefore I am of the rather frank opinion that the word "consultant" usually means "temporary employee" ... and that "contractor" usually means throw-away employee. Neither of these too-common uses of these terms are actually what those terms were meant to be. And, most likely, the situations represented by these "too-common uses of these terms" are not where you want to find yourself.

Generally, "consultants" are either "extreme specialists" or, as in my case, "extreme generalists."

"Contractors," meanwhile, are usually corporations ... who in my opinion are the only ones with the human-resources to contractually define, undertake, then execute a project. (They hire those resources as their employees, and they retain them.) But, far too many of these corporations are "merely job-shops" ... other, less flattering words swirl in my mind.

No, you really don't want to go there. What you really want to do right now is to bloom right where you are planted. Talk, without fear, to your supervisor.

Now think about this: "Say, here's a person who is asking for a New Challenge." This is unusual. This is valuable. This is someone who wants to step-up. I want to make this happen ... here.

Ahh, yes. What you seek now is very familiar – and, "those who seek for it, are to be sought after."

3 members found this post helpful.

I appreciate your reply and advice. Blooming where I'm currently planted really isn't an option, but moving onto another full-time gig to bloom at is an option.

I'm currently in what I would consider a "standard" sysadmin job. In my opinion the typical sysadmin gig is rapidly becoming obsolete in favor of DevOps, cloud infrastructure, automation type gigs. I think most sysadmins that don't keep up with this curve will be left behind. DevOps is of interest to me, unfortunately it will require a job change for me to get exposed to.

That being said, I'm not sure I won't end up in the same situation I've ended up in previous jobs. I could take a job with a startup, building out their cloud infrastructure from the ground up. Sounds awesome and rewarding right? Inevitably you'll hit the point where you've built out your rock solid solid infrastructure, automated everything you can automate, and the infrastructure basically runs itself. Then you're left sitting around watching metrics and pushing out code updates from development, which isn't very exciting or rewarding.

I don't mean to sound doom and gloom, and I could be way off base. But it just seems unrealistic to have continually interesting project-based work at a full time gig, and has been the case in my career.

As for talking to your manager, I think it depends on your manager. A good manager will see an opportunity, a bad manager will just pile on whatever mundane tasks they can find to keep you busy. More times than not it's the latter - not the fault of the manager, they're just trying to do whatever they can to keep you "happy".

Reading this, and considering that I acted on such impulses, I have cliches running through my mind like "The grass is always greener.." and "Be careful what you wish for...". It's not that I'm not better off in some ways, but rather that it is a tradeoff and hard to qualify looking back which is truly better. As for challenging, it is commonly so difficult to get and keep an income level you require, that at least I found I had to take "pickup jobs" of the most mundane sort - not interesting nor challenging at all. I suspect one's experience in this may vary a lot according to area, but the more fruitful ones tend to have more fierce competition while the less competitive ones have fewer opportunities

For my part I did contracting - designing, setting up and maintaining systems for small businesses (20-100 workstations). The design and setup are the most challenging and fun, but maintenance, even with much of it automated, is just boring by nature most of the time and soon becomes the greater if not the only job I do. Plus, it comes in spurts. I have days of relative freedom and then a flurry of intense activity and most often at non-business hours which just decimates a social life (and probably one's health). Nobody is on my "schedule" or lack thereof.

Consulting is probably a better choice but I suspect that is fairly fierce competition. All I can say is prepare as much as possible, lest you "leap from the frying pan into the fire". (It's a jungle out there, Jane).

Been through this as a developer. The questions are multiple and they cover the business situation as well as your personal situation. Based on the statement of W2, this means to me that you're in the US. If you have a family, then you will have to pay for healthcare costs; very expensive for an individual, much more so for a family; however you may have options for that which you need not cover.

1099: Difficult, temporary, great if you are between jobs, not IMHO a long term situation. Why? You probably can get one job, one contract via a known association. In fact a ton of agencies will tend towards wanting you to be W2 through them because they'll get into trouble if your 1099 business is not properly reported. Association with a corporation may be difficult, they may want liability insurance. It's not impossible it just screams to me that you are a temp.

S-corporation. Requires filing an annual report, requires unemployment insurance, may also require liability insurance depending on the client.

Taxes are pretty similar between the two; just the "names" of the taxes are different, 1099 has "self-employment" taxes; whereas in a corporation you will have to pay yourself as a W2 employee to yourself, and then pay the employer's share of your taxes for FICA, and Medicare.

I don't know if say eventually work dries up and you end up looking for a classical job if you can declare unemployment coming away from 1099, but you can do that coming away from a corporation. Either case, the main intentions are that you desire to make more, to save more as an independent.

Accounts payable from clients to you could be lengthy. For instance they may desire that you bill them monthly, and they'll then pay you within 30-45 days; great when the check comes, just the timespan between when you first start and when you get money is potentially long.

As others have said, there's also "the market" for your talents. It's either there or not; there's either a niche or not. You should evaluate that prior to taking a leap. Many do just leap because they meet one or two individuals who are consulting and happy with it; not exploring whether or not it's something which will work for them specifically.

tbone, it is always possible to "bloom where you are planted."

You might look at your co-workers or your manager(!) and think that all of these people are kloo-less, when in fact they are merely "wise." Instead of trying to change your situation, try to change yourself. Resolve to make the changes that you need to make in order to be successful right where you are now.

Surf to find the lyrics to Billy Joel's Angry Young Man and take it to heart.

I'm not being condescending. I'm not making fun of you in public at your expense.

It sounds more like you feel that the exact line of work responsibilities you get given your experience and role are what you consider to be long-term inadequate. You can do it, but feel that there's eventual obsolescence or stagnation; which seems to be where you're at now.

I think there are a few different ways to try to handle that. For instance if you work at a company which does have work which you consider to be a direction you wish to go towards and they are large enough that they could move persons from department to department; then it may be a matter of discussing with the correct people your desire to change your career direction. This isn't always acceptable even though everyone acts professionally; I get that you can burn a bridge as well as the road surface you're current standing on and end up with no job.

Seeking positions where the job focus is more what you want to do is a second option. The issues for each are whether or not you can find or attain the right mix of situation, and aptitude. Situation is something to seek either internally or with other companies. Aptitude is the obvious capability to be able to do that different job, and one would need to be able to convince others that you have the aptitude or have the capabilities to be successful even though you may not have extensive experience at this other job role.

Obviously training is helpful to illustrate your intentions as well as give you insight into the job roles you're seeking.

As a contractor, in the short term; they want you for what your expertise is "now". Therefore if you're great at setting establishing an entire network infrastructure for a company, and there's demand; they'll take you and pay you consulting rates but they're not going to want you to do anything else except what they brought you in for. In fact they'll be 100% uncaring about any professional development concerns of yours.

In the long term, as a contractor; the issue becomes a potential one of obsolescence where you are very good at the current technology, if the trends change and you end up not getting involved with the newer ways of configuring networks; it could be bad.

How about "asking" for more challenges where you are at?
You may very well be shocked.