RE: Decisions,decisions.(longish)

[Janet Valade <janetv -at- systech -dot- com>]

	<<I can commit to a company now and give a good 5-10 years, whereas
if 
	I continue contracting, I might not be able to convince a company of

	that commitment a few years from now. On the other hand, I have to 
	wonder how much longer I can stay competitive as a contractor, and 
	where contracting will leave me in 5 years.>>

	I'm not sure what you mean here. I believe you mean that the older
you get, the more difficult it might be to obtain a perm job as a manager.
But its not clear to me what your concern is regarding contracting. Is it
that you think age is also an issue in contracting and that you will get
fewer contracts as you get older?

	There's no question that job offers are somewhat more difficult to
obtain as one moves further into the gray hair stage of life. Still, I think
it is less of a problem for a contractor than for finding a perm job. People
hire contractors for specific jobs for the short term. They look for people
with experience as short term problem solvers. Many people looking for
contractors actually consider your years of work as an asset and see older
contractors as the expert help they are looking for. I think that as long as
you have needed, relevant skills, you can continue to contract successfully,
although work may arrive in streams instead of floods. My boss's father has
retired 3 times in recent years, but has been dragged back into the work
place by deals-he-couldn't-refuse because he has the skill to deal with Y2K
issues in COBOL programs. 

	Still, I think you looking toward life at 60. You are saying that if
you are a perm employee at age 60, you are less likely to find yourself out
of work than if you are a contractor at age 60. This is probably true, but
it's still crystal ball stuff. You don't know for sure that you can't
contract successfully at age 60 and beyond. So, it's a question of the
intangibles. If you believe you would be perfectly happy as a manager, it's
a simple decision. But, if you know you are going to be less happy as a perm
than as a contractor, you get into how much less happy. If you are going to
be miserable as a perm, you might rather take a chance on the age factor.

	And, of course, there is the truck factor. When choosing less
satisfaction in the present in trade for more satisfaction in the future,
you always need to factor in the possibility of being run over by a truck
before the future arrives.

	Janet

Janet Valade
Technical Writer
Systech Corporation, San Diego, CA
mailto:janetv -at- systech -dot- com