Personal

So Now I'm a Contractor / 16 Tips for Being a Contract Programmer

David J. Sokol — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 07:23:44 GMT

Skip my personal experience and go right to the list.

I realized, last week, that I am a contract coder. I never intended to be one; I wanted a job with a regular boss and a 401k and a health insurance plan. Sure, contractors earn more, but they also deal with a lot more instability in their daily lives. As of right now, I'm not sure if I'll be employed next week. I have a job lined up, but it's only a temp deal for around $1500 total. That covers about a month of my living, if I stretch it thin.

Right now I have a desk and a job and an employer. My employer doesn't seem to exist sometimes; I have very spotty (once-twice a week) contact with my boss, and I deal mainly with the customer over the phone. My paychecks are irregular; I work 40ish hours a week and get my pay at intervals ranging from 6 to 42 days. Right now my paycheck for the 1st was received on the 16th. Over the past few months I've accrued over $600 in late fees due to instable pay. This has all been on the same job with the same contract. Well, contract is a funny word; I didn't sign anything. Right now I go to work and do some stuff and then get paid an agreed-upon amount. If myself or my employer ducks out at anytime, I've got no legal reprisal. I doubt I'll even get 1099ed.

This life sucks. Sure, my friends are making around $7-10/hour, and I'm getting ~$30, but I lose tons of my money to extras. I have to buy my own computers, my own IDE (and add-ons), I have no automatic tax withdrawal, I have to get health insurance through a third expensive party. I'm not guaranteed pay at all. This is, by far, the worst possible career choice right out of college. If I was at a startup, that'd be something different. That'd be a common goal with the allure of hitting it big. No, the best thing I have to look forward to is a slightly bigger paycheck that might on time and not getting nailed by the IRS.

I repeat: do not start contracting for yourself right out of college. Unless you like the adventure and the unknowns or you just have a lot of extra money lying around (Like, taking out loans instead of paying them back, like I start next month), I would not recommend it at all. If you do it on the side to get some extra cash? That's fine; that's extra. But when you first get on the scene and are trying to make some money to eat more then hot-pockets and beer, get a stable job.

If you decide to ignore my above advice, I have some other, possibly more helpful advice that I've learned (and wished I'd followed) as a contractor. I've only been doing this about half a year, but I think it's worth it's salt. It's born out of sweat and tears (well, not tears, but a nervous breakdown or two. Well, the salt that would have been in the metaphorical tears, so lets go back to tears).

Enough with the intro shit, lets get right to it*.

Get your taxes done professionally. There is a ton of stuff you (and I) don't know about that you can get money back on. Well worth it.
Sign contracts with your employers. Starting out it's easy to use the line "Oh, sure, I'll write up that program for $15/hour." Don't do it. Nothing sucks more then bugging somebody for money when you don't have a written agreement.
Don't write code without signed specifications. Write your specifications jointly with your clients and agree what the program will and will not do. Software Requirements from Microsoft Press is a great book, and a must read for any independent contractor. Even if it's a simple list of 'This software will/this software won't', it's better then nothing.
Make sure your employers give you the right tax forms. In GA, if you do over $700 of business with somebody, they need to send you form 1099. This may be a bigger issue with some people, but I find it pretty important. I don't like living in fear of huge fines.
Understand how software licensing works. When I first got out of school, I had my wonderful MSDNAA academic licenses of Visual Studio, SQL Server, Visio, Windows Server, Access... well... every Microsoft product but Office. Pretty much everything you do now will be under the 'unacceptable' category. There's probably a few good resources on the web, but actually going through and reading the EULA before clicking Next does wonders too.
Don't spend money until you actually have it. If you send out an invoice for $1000, don't spend the money until it's back in your hands or in your bank account. Don't assume all clients will pay prompt; calling them on the phone and telling them how you have to pay rent is remarkably unprofessional.
Know when to say 'no' to new features and additional work. Most customers do this unintentionally, but think critically about every little 'change' made to the software. Even something as trivial sounding as upper-casing everything in the application can turn into a hassle; make sure they know it's billable.
Keep track of your miles. Start writing down all of your odometer readings when you drive to and from customer sites. This is tax deductible/See #1.
Track your finances and save all of your receipts. For everything. Get a filing cabinet. Get some financial software. I use MS Money (it's... decent.) Another guy I know uses Quicken. Apparently they both kind of suck, but you need to keep track of everything. Hell, use ledger paper if you have to.
If possible, use a separate email address for work purposes. This makes categorizing everything when it sinks into your inbox. Don't get client emails intermixed with forwards of forwards from relatives who just got the Internet.
Keep business and friendship as separate as possible. When you start out, chances are a lot of your customers will be friends, or friends of friends. Remember, this is a business and your livelihood. If they can't make pay that's acceptable to you (or want something for a ridiculously low price), don't do. Friendship be damned, you have to eat.
Know when a project is too big. Don't agree to do something unless you're sure you can do it. Right out of college, everything seemed easy to me. I estimated a 6 month job at about 1 month. Whoops. Chances are, when you agree to do a small website for a local business over lunch one day, you're biting off a huge project. The line 'I'll have to know about the project more in depth before I commit to anything.' has served me well.
Make sure you have some sort of health insurance. Car problems suck, health problems suck more. One ambulance ride can set you back a few thousand. Nothing will cut your profits faster then a trip to the hospital. It is well worth the $100-$200/month. (Monthly rates may vary, mine are much higher. Damn accident-prone-ness.)
Never ever ever ever ever stop learning. I know this goes for programmers and IT guys and computer people double, but it goes quadruple for the self-employed. Not only do you have to keep up with technology, but you have to keep up with running your own business and everything about your life. You have no handy HR rep to go to. Always be on the lookout for information.
Keep your clients costs in mind. All of the clients I've worked with are fond of fixed-price contracts. Fixed price contracts are hell on developers. We like hourly, in case unknown stuff pops up or your client keeps making changes over time. If your client has a set budget, keep it in mind. Bill hourly, but only work hours that will meet your clients budget. If they have $2000 to spend on the program, and you bill at $10/hour, work 200 hours. Cut the extra stuff, like input validation, and any other crap that doesn't fall into the primary use cases. Yes, there is a matter of personal pride, but presenting a large bill to your customer with excellent software is probably worse then presenting the expected bill with some average software.
Make sure to discuss long term client support options. You might not be contracting forever; who is going to take care of the application after you move off across the country? Not saying that anything needs to be decided, just make sure that all parties know how support is going to work.

* Bonus points for identifying the quote.

Edit: A few days later, some guy on reddit posts this: 10 Absolute "No's!" for Freelancers

. Poor apostrophe-ing aside, it's a good read.

From Community Server to Subtext

David J. Sokol — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 08:02:14 GMT

I switched weblog providers tonight. I had been using Community Server 2.1, but now I'm using Subtext. I much prefer Subtext. When I first began my hunt for ASP.NET powered weblog software a few months ago, I started with .Text. Well, I tried to start with .Text. I remember reading a few blogs that were powered by .Text in my early ASP.NET developer days. I figured that if it was good enough for ASP.NET developers, it'll be good enough to me. Sadly, I couldn't easily find a link to a .Text download/installer. I found the now-defunct godotnet.com workspace, but that didn't offer a download. It also appeared that sadly, .Text development stopped before I touched Visual Studio. Scratch that idea. I poked around the web a bit (even tried WeblogMatrix, sister to WikiMatrix which ignited my love affair with DokuWiki) and couldn't find anything. Then I remembered that worsethanfailure switched over to Community Server a while back, and checked the site. Seemed pretty good. A download and somewhat troubled install later (mostly due to DNS issues, and my desire to host a blog directly on the homepage) I was up and going. It was pretty cool, albeit slow. Granted, the server it was running on was fairly weak and carrying Exchange 2007.

Once I installed Community Server, the CommunityServerApp app pool kept crashing unexpectedly. It appears that whenever the application was recycled, it'd terminate. Since my site is fairly low-load (one or two hits a day), I'd imagine that the application pool would load itself, serve one or two pages, then crash. Whenever I logged into the server over rdesktop, there'd be fifteen+ error messages awaiting. Most annoying, even for a dev server. I tried upgrading to the recent release of Community Server 2007, but that required me to download the web install (documentation well hidden) and run a SQL Script manually (poor form). Not to mention the fact that the Community Server license agreement changed and it was super-overpowered. Seems like solid software, and it works for a lot of people, it's just not what I needed.

I was reading Reddit one day when I came across a link about the Dvorak layout. Now, whenever I go to a new blog I always read the About page before the post, just to see where the user is coming from. Well, apparently, this guy ran a successor to my original choice of .Text. And he knew Jeff Atwood. And he was one of the people who posted in the thread on CodingHorror where I finally got over my fear-of-the-professional-internet and posted a comment. And, on top of that, he uses the Dvorak keyboard layout. All that coolness made me realize that it was time to switch. The Subtext was install was clean and running within fifteen minutes. Porting my old posts (all eleven of them) was done by hand.

Subtext is FAST. Much faster then Community Server. Though I will point out, it has about 1/8th the functionality. Again, just want a ASP.NET/SQL Server based weblog. So Subtext wins. It is now my weblog software of choice. I'll probably have more to say on it after a few more days use. It also supports Windows Live Writer/MetaBlogAPI. Windows Live Writer is pimp. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Note: Windows Live Writer also works for Community Server. The coolness of Subtext is also independent from that of Windows Live Writer.

Small Admin Note

David J. Sokol — Mon, 28 May 2007 04:58:18 GMT

I think I found my title. For some odd reason I was browsing webserver error codes. Reserved for future use my ass.

Yay! More/Less Student Competition!

David J. Sokol — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 04:58:18 GMT

Computer science enrollments at my liberal-arts university are up. It had been dropping recently, but a few new faculty members and some higher profile advertising changed that. The CS department usually grabs people who are drop outs from the GaTech Regional Engineering Program (GTREP) or students from other majors who require a computer course. The department is still growing very slowly; I'd estimate 2-5% growth on a program that graduates about 20 people per year. That's not being echoed by other Universities. Computer science enrollments are down, despite efforts to boost them. According to an article I read in Network World (which I cannot find online, but it was the last-page editorial column), the total amount of computer scientists enrolled is about to drop. I disagree, but I have to explain my perception of the dot com era first.

Dot com started in 1996. The internet held huge amounts of untapped wealth, just waiting to be grabbed by the next geek with a P2 250Mhz and a weekend supply of Diet Shasta. Computer science enrollments exploded, along with the web. The stock crashed in 2001. Those students who enrolled in university during the height of the bubble (from 1999 to 2000) stuck with it, finished out their program, and went into the industry a few years ago. The students that followed behind it, who were in high school at the time, are graduating now. Soon the students who were choosing their major as the major financial backlash hit the technology community will be graduating. Most of the people in my classes have no fear of not being able to find a job, regardless of outsourcing. Current graduating CS students love computers enough that the .com burst didn't scare them away. These are the dedicated programmers; screw financial problems, screw india, screw liberal arts. And they're all going straight into web development.

These the-bubble-didn't-scare-me programmers are the ones behind Web 2.0. They take risks that older seasoned programmers won't. They never experienced the harsh realities of losing their job or being unable to find work. (Note: I graduate college in two weeks.) They do, however, remember the stories of internet millionaires, and they're thinking they can be one. With all of this new Web technology, it's certainly possible. The mistakes made in 2000 are going to be repeated because the Web 2.0 crowd wasn't around to benefit from them. It's kind of hard to care about the state of the industry when you're sitting in Data Structures learning about linked lists.

Jeff Atwood thinks we're in another bubble. I agree, to an extent. It's going to burst sooner or later, heralded by a sharp drop in Google's stock price. Then the entire economic situation will repeat itself. It's just not going to be as bad, because it's only being perpetrated by the industry neophytes. The people who have been programming for the past five to thirty-five years will keep the industry on target, but it'll involve some wrangling. Right now, the web is hot hot hot: look at Facebook and MySpace. People are turning down huge sums of money for their startups because they want more. If cash keeps flowing into the Web, more people are going to enroll in CS courses (yeah, pretty basic logic, I know). The next few years should have a huge increase in computer sciences enrollment. Then current market will crash, there'll be devaluation, then in another few years, Web 3.0 will come from the kids entering the CS a few years from now. Every industry cycles to some extent, the IT sector just does it faster. Same thing happens to university computer science enrollment. A few years of more CS students, a few years of dropping numbers.

Please Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself

David J. Sokol — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 04:58:18 GMT

I guess I'll get started with a short introduction of myself and this site. Introductions seem to be the thing to do. My name is David Sokol, I am currently a software engineer in training. I complete my CS degree in a few weeks, and I'm about to hit the wide world of programming head-on. This blog is a second attempt at writing/blogging.

I'm not exactly new to the internet community. My first blog at went online when I was 16, in 2002. I was young and reckless; full of teenage angst and PHP code. It was a very personal site, frequented mainly by friends with no real content. I'll summarize my first five years of being online: everything sucks, omg girlfriend, everything sucks, omg new girlfriend, everything sucks, ooo I can drink now, oh I'm grown up. I figure since I'm going out there trying to get a good job, it'd probably be a good idea to not post professionally to site containing that kind of content.

I've been following professional blog world fairly closely for the past few months. I finally overcame my distaste of RSS & Atom. I still have an intense hatred for Digg, but some things can't be helped. Reading other people's sites made me realize a few things. First, I could actually intelligently contribute to the conversations. Secondly, all of the main blog sites are by professional programmers with years of industry experience. Their audience is probably the same. I'm not one to discriminate on age, but I think a younger, more naive perspective might be welcome. I'm just past the basics of software engineering, and I'm certainly not a superstar. I've never written a program with more than four threads, I've never written a game in my spare time, and my institute of higher education kind of sucked. So I'm stuck here, in new programmer land, trying to get a handle on this stuff.

It was time for me to start a real, readable blog. I have a few goals for this site.

Share my experience in coming to the world of professional software development.
Get a super-high paying job. (Apparently everyone agrees having a blog is a big plus on resumes)
Knock David J. Sokol, Dental Attorney out of first for the Google Results of my name. (Nothing against you David, it's just that it's my name, and I was here second.)
Boost my own self-esteem by having people comment. Yes, I'm at the top of my needs pyramid.
Join the programming/software engineering blog community.

I think it'll all work out. I like writing. I believe content should be both educational and entertaining. (How many nights have you been up late on the internet looking for something to do and ended up reading about programming?) I also write at a very casual level; I'll probably end up swearing, referencing pop culture, and using contractions. Stick around, we'll see what happens.

Note: The site name (but not URL) is still subject to change.