IT Contract Work

[jfish]

working in IT for a large company at the moment in a senior position, need a change and contracting seems ideal.

Anyone in contract work, whats the pros and cons ..

my skill set range from Infrastructure, Citrix, Netware, Windows, Linux, IBM ISeries, Lotus Domino, Project Management using Prince2 and also ITIL .. also what kind of hourly rate will I expect

problem is I am a 3 month notice period

[chroma]

Not many pros at the moment to be honest.
Contractor work is temporary so you spend large portions of the year looking for a new contract ad a fair portion unemployed.

It used to be good in that you could set your terms and fees but its an employers market nowadays and the likelyhood is that you get the duff end of the stick.
Not to mention that when shit goes south (which is so often the case) regardless of who set fire to the server room its going to be you that gets blamed. i mean your a temp whereas the firestarter was likely a permanent employee.

I just write code on a contractual basis however, i dont get involved with any of the IT side of things. but im certain that the setup is the same, contractors wind up as fall guys for the permanents, the wages have gone downhill and the conditions are raidly deteriorating. Work is also getting harder to come by (i work sesonaly for a supermarket stacking shelves as a fallback when times get hard, i can take or leave it so its a good plan and a steady income away from the dole queue)

Id sell my left nut for a decent permanent post at a company.