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.
Tag: contracting
Acting Contractor
I’ve worked as a contractor in the IT industry for several decades and I’ve often noted the parallels between the contracting world and the acting world. Even more so since IR35 started to affect actors and TV presenters as well as those of us in the IT industry.
As a contractor you are recruited to work on a project with other contractors and it may be for a month or a year, or longer. You become good friends working together but eventually the project comes to an end and you move on. You may meet up again with one or two of your colleagues on a future project, or you may never see them again. If you do conferences and speaking engagements you may run into someone you worked with once, or not.
With acting you are hired for a TV show or movie and you work on it until it is complete, cancelled, or your role comes to an end. You move on to other shows or movies and may run into other actors that you have worked with before, or you may never work with them again. If you do conventions you may run into other actors that you’ve worked with before, or not.