Originally Posted by TimNiceBut

That's what I'm doing here in the UK at the moment, but even after deducting all the taxes and insurances, I think there's more left in my pocket than 33%. Considerably more, actually. I guess what that means is that I need to find out exactly what the overheads are because if the overhead's around 2/3rds it's probably not worth my while.

Originally Posted by md95065

From the tax point of view you will be dealing with Federal, State (and, possibly, Local) income taxes and Medicare and Social Security taxes. At the income level you will probably have that can easily add up to 50%.

You will (I assume) also have to pay for your own health insurance (unless you have a working spouse who can get you covered under their health plan) - that can be a big expense - don't forget to factor it into the calculation.

Originally Posted by goatherder

I'm a SAP consultant (does that count as IT?).

Anyway problem I had with Contracting (like I did in the UK) was that the health insurance was horrible and expensive. I've got 2 little dependants and one older one. I went Permie...

Originally Posted by TimNiceBut

A bit more than 20 years worth of commercial software development, around 18 of that in C++ (and not 18 repeats of year one either like some people I've interviewed), Java, C#, Ruby, Lisp (all of that in the last 6 month) and some other languages that I won't mention because I really don't care for tons of agents calling me for Perl jobs . I've mostly been working on scalable systems (trading systems, most of the time) for the past 8-10 years but I tend to throw in some completely unrelated work from time to time (like mobile phone technologies) in order to broaden my view. Oh, and I've got management experience ranging from team leading to playing IT director at reasonably well funded startup...



Nothing's going to happen without an LLC/LLP - I've made that mistake once in the past and it cost me a sizeable sum. Never again. Took several years of court cases and almost another 10 years to pay off.



Oh joy. That's a tad worse than it is in the UK then. Mind you, we have fly-by-night agencies over here as well but due to the nature of the majority of my clients, the fly-be-nighted ones usually don't get the interesting work I'm after anyway.



If I read this right, you're talking about the Accenture-type consultant here? Ie you're employed by one place and then body shopped out to various other places and dropped like a hot potato if/when the "employer" can't find another follow-up contract?

That's something I'm definitely not interested in, plus I'm not the right sort of material for that sort of work either (too old and experienced, for starters - I've seen what the consultancies in the UK are sending through to clients of mine and there is no way they can add that sort of markup to anything they'd have to pay me).




That's what I'm doing here in the UK at the moment, but even after deducting all the taxes and insurances, I think there's more left in my pocket than 33%. Considerably more, actually. I guess what that means is that I need to find out exactly what the overheads are because if the overhead's around 2/3rds it's probably not worth my while.




Oh, the "contractors first against the wall" approach is the same here in the UK and I'm used to that. I just found that it's a decent niche for me as I don't seem to make that good an employee for a large corporation - too blunt and germanic, for starters. Although one (American) company I used to work for was more than happy to make use of these traits when dealing with an Indian outsourcing company . That said, through a recruiter I've worked with before, I should be able to find something in a couple of smaller companies where getting things done is more important than playing political ping-pong. For some reason the bigger companies I worked for seemed to be worse for that.

I do prefer the existence as a consultant for the simple reason that the downtime between contracts tends (if I had had any, which I didn't for the past three years) to afford me to keep current in other technologies and also do things that aren't work related. The trouble with IT and programming is that if you want to stay ahead you've got to spend a lot of time keeping current and that's something I find hard to do as an employee.



I've had people like that come through as well, only that in their case the agency "embellished" the CV somewhat. That's happened to me in the past as well (agency editing my CV before sending it on, and I'm not talking about removing my personal details here) and I only found out during the interview when I asked the interviewer if I could have a quick look at the CV he was looking at because some of his questions didn't make any sense to me at all. Fortunately I had a non-edited one on me "just in case". The agency was a little surprised when I gave them my 'feedback'.

Originally Posted by veryfunny

Please PM, me your email address. So, I can pass your experience on to a few people.

Originally Posted by BritishGuy36

Why do you need his email address?

Just email your friends a link to his post.

Originally Posted by TimNiceBut

Now that I've got a tentative move date to the US , I'm starting to think how I go about the "finding work" part. Over here in the UK I worked as a contract/consultant programmer (prefer that to being employed) and while I'm pretty convinced that I should be able to find work either as a permie or a contractor - I've got some contacts from previous jobs so reasonably paid permiedom should be attainable. I'm just not sure if I want that or stay contracting...

For those who are doing this sort of work, how do you go about the setting yourself up for contracting?

My thinking was to set up an LLC in order to split business and personal assets. Nevada LLCs (wife lives in Vegas) seem to be pretty favourable for that. This would mirror my current setup in the UK (Ltd Co).

However given that programming jobs in Nevada are currently a bit in short supply, I expect that I might have to work in other states from time to time. If I get a, say, 3-month contract in another state (Illinois for example), does that mean that I suddenly become a resident there for the time of the contract, even though the consulting company supplying the services is in another state?

Originally Posted by veryfunny

What part of SAP modules? all of them?

Originally Posted by md95065

You will (I assume) also have to pay for your own health insurance (unless you have a working spouse who can get you covered under their health plan) - that can be a big expense - don't forget to factor it into the calculation.