I want to thank you all who have been reading so far and give you some background about myself and why I went down this IT Contracting journey.

“A stranger is just a friend you haven't met.”

― Roy E. Stolworthy

Who is Nado?

I am Nado an IT professional who has been in the IT contracting space for more than  7+ years. Throughout my career, I’ve worked in the financial services, defense, and entertainment industries.

How Did I Find Myself Doing IT Contracting?

I graduated from university in 2015. At this point, I had 2 internships ( data analyst + full stack developer) and a research paper under my belt at this point.

I had no interest in being a developer and needed to figure out a new plan.

I came across a job post for a business consultant which I thought would be the perfect mix of my technical and soft skills for a first job.

I went through the interview process and discovered that the position was a Contract-To-Hire position. This was my first time becoming aware of these sorts of positions.

Contract-to-Hire positions are an arrangement where you work for a 3rd-party vendor with the potential to convert to a full-time employer of the client at the end of the duration or when an opening is available. This gives you the opportunity to try a company, but also saves the client some money if the opportunity is not a good fit.

Me being an excited new grad, I took the opportunity knowing I would receive relevant experience and could start paying those dreaded student loans.

Career Growth

Fast forward a few years, and I converted to a full-time employee with my former employer. When I felt I was no longer learning as much as I needed, I began looking for new opportunities in a different state.

In higher cost-of-living areas, many jobs will require a couple of years of experience in order to justify a liveable wage.

Thankfully my first IT contracting position was in a low-cost-of-living area which allowed me to save money as well as get experience. I miss the days of $400 rent.

After leaving job #1, I was hired for another contract position at job #2 as a business analyst at a 34% salary increase. I enjoyed this role as it exposed me to the world of documentation and process improvement. However, the client was a government agency which meant that we were impacted by any government shutdowns which occurred.

I left job#2 shortly after the government shutdown. For job #3 I was offered a 14% salary increase. I stayed at job #3 for quite some time and received a roughly 13% salary increase each year with that client.

Now for some folks, this increase in salary may be normal. However, from conversations with different full-time employees often the salary increases are minuscule each year which means you have to really negotiate to get a high base knowing each year the salary increase may only be 2-3%.

Since then, I have moved away from being a W2 contractor and have created my own corporation for working on different C2C projects. Moving to a C2C model has enabled me to save more than $15,000 in taxes annually while still paying myself a great liveable wage.

Reflection Time

When I was younger, my main focus was on increasing my base salary in order to pay my student loans at a faster rate and build a nest egg. While I did pay them off, I did reduce my contributions to my retirement and investments throughout those initial years.

Looking back, I would have likely taken a slightly less aggressive approach but ultimately you live and you learn. This approach is not for everyone but I will be writing in future posts about different considerations when factoring in benefits and pay dependent on the stage of life.

So Why Are You Writing Articles?

I benefited significantly from IT contracting from a career and financial perspective. However, I think there are a few missteps I made throughout such as negotiations or saving more money.

Fairly routine, I will have someone ask about how I went about setting my corporation up, benefits, and IT contracting in general. I give this advice out for free but I figured creating a formalized place to share my thoughts could help.

Many of the resources out there focus too much on the rate per hour or don’t answer the concerns people have when offered opportunities such as:

• What questions should I be asking, outside of the rate per hour?
• The client likes my work and wants to bring me on full-time should I take a pay cut?
• How do I know what’s a good C2C rate vs a W2 rate?

After years of operating as a W2 contractor and now a C2C contractor, I think there are nuances and factors to deciding what’s the best decision for yourself.

I hope to provide a framework for those new to the space to make the best decision for you and your family.

If you’re interested in learning about how to get started in C2C take a look at our step-by-step guide.

Opportunities tend to appear when you least expect them so you need to be ready.

“Shooters gotta Shoot”

– Someone learning basketball