Dedication

Need to write.

Preface

"Steven, our mortgage payment has bounced and your salary hasn't hit" came Sarah's shaky voice from the other end of the phone.

It was late July 2011. I had recently moved from a job as a web developer within local government to a local mobile software house. In hindsight, the move was dumb but without it, I might not be writing this.

"I'll go speak to HR", I said, trying my best to reassure her. I went to speak to HR and find out why I hadn't been paid. I can't remember exactly what was said, but I was assured it was an oversight, but my spidey-sense was tingling. In truth, I should have researched the company I was about to work for more than looking at their website. Their website was the reason I took the job. Not because it was a great website - that's why they were hiring me - but it was a website in Glasgow that was running on ExpressionEngine and I wanted to use that particular tool in my daily work.

As I started to pull at the online threads of the company I'd been at for a month, my eyes were quickly opened. On the face of things, they looked to be a thriving mobile app business with a respectable senior management and engineering team. Companies House told a different story. A dedicated ex-employee website told an even worse story entirely.

The company had a chequered financial history, not to mention "Phoenixing". Phoenixing or phoenixism is the practice of setting up businesses multiple times to avoid paying debts. Each time the company becomes insolvent, its business and assets are transferred to a new, similar company, so the same directors can carry on trading.

As it would happen, my salary payment was an oversight - everyone else in the company had been paid. I was the exception. It was paid within the hour and they did me the courtesy of writing a letter to my bank so as not to impact our credit history of a missed mortgage payment.

Two weeks later, they announced a round of redundancies from the engineering team. All wasn't well, if you've ever been in that environment, it's a horrible place to be and a horrible thing to happen. If you're in this situation right now, I'll say this, keep your head up. Things can get better for you and contracting can be an option for you.

I sat within marketing rather than engineering team, but I was still surprised to hear I was safe - for now - but the writing was on the wall.

As I started to look for work online, I saw a lot of contract opportunities for web developers. None were using ExpressionEngine mind you but that wasn't really a concern at that point. I just needed something that was going to be a bit more stable than a company that looked to be slowly sinking.

I'm not sure why I'd never considered a contracting career before that point. My dad was a contracting software engineer for pretty much all of my childhood with a sizeable portion of Scotland's financial service companies. Heck, I'd even started a 3-month contract with the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2006 before Sarah and I got married, but I never really thought of it as a career option then.

The best offer I had on the table was an on-site engagement with Under Armour in Baltimore 🇺🇸. $75 per hour for 8 weeks of work. They'd cover my expenses of travel, lodgings and even food. As much as I was less than enthused about being away from Sarah and our 2 young daughters, we figured that it was £16,000 for 8 weeks of work. To put into comparison, my annual salary for the job I was about to be leaving was £32,000! As it turned out, that contract was worth more than £16k, both in that project itself and the work that has followed in the years since.

And so here we are. I'm Steven Grant. Between September 2011 and March 2024, I was a contracting software engineer in the UK and beyond, invoicing a little more than £1.5m in that period.

As I write this, my family and I are in the final months of our time in the UK before we emigrate to New Zealand in August 2024.

This is my contractor's guide to contracting. Some transparent, friendly and practical advice that will hopefully serve you well as you explore building a contracting career.