You probably don’t think of contracting as a lonely profession. The truth is you can be lonely even when surrounded by people. Lots of people, day in and day out. From the moment you leave your home to the moment you return.
I’ve contracted for the best part of three decades, and while it has been a profitable and rewarding experience, you make friends with loneliness. With each new contract comes a new location, building, and people. You say hi, maybe chat by the water cooler or coffee point. No conversation is too deep and no friendship too real. Eventually you will move on. Your contract has an end date.
After a while you get used to it. With each new contract comes a new location and new people. You start spotting personality types, management styles, office politics. You spot patterns. It becomes a game. You find the best places to eat or get coffee, and for a while you become a regular and are recognised. But it’s fleeting. Eventually you move on to the next contract and your face is forgotten.
Maybe you’ll return to a previous role on the recommendation of someone and the people there may even recall your name and ask how you’ve been. Sometimes you return to find the only constant is you. Same building, same office, same desk, different project, different manager, different team. It’s a strange feeling but after a while you can get used to anything. Like ending up working on every floor of a particular building over a ten year period, working for different companies on different floors. It felt like I’d completed a weird goal when I was hired by a company occupying the only floor I had yet to work on. Reward unlocked! Set complete!
Contracting can be a lonely profession. You leave your home, commute to a location, put in the hours, commute home, and repeat. The location changes often so even the people you see on your daily commute change. Variety can be fun and you are certainly never bored. But you rarely make any real connections.