Would You Work as a Temp?

But temporary employees work on short term assignments and often live in cheap furnished apartments. Would you!

I resent this, I really do. I worked for Westinghouse until the break up began way back.

I went contacting/consulting. and made out so much better than my peers who stayed, and did until I ventured out completely on my own. I owned a house, a truck, a car, my own furniture, an did well as the kind of temp you describe...

I learned to love the short term assignments, I learned so much, made so many great contacts, and got to see parts of the world I would not have had the chance to...

I have had to work with the real by the day pay druggie or alcoholic temp that lives like you describe many times and never again...

Today, I use real and skilled consultants in a scenario akin to the Union Construction Industry and offer a technician capable of doing what my customer wants and pay them a better than average wage. My preferences on who I hire have been honed by working with successful consultants, and they have made me a moderate success in my industry.

Looking around at all of my peers, I consider my experiences closer to the norm, and long ago all of us found out that working as an employee for a company sucked...

Yes I would. . . . and have.

A regular, full time position may have it's advantages but I enjoy the change of pace and the novelty that come with a change in venue. Commuting to the same place, doing the same thing over and over again, tend to take the fun out of the activity which is one reason why I try to find jobs in experimental and research environments. Money is not the primary influence in my accepting positions.

BTW, I do not live in a cheap furnished apartment!

L.J.

I worked as a job shopper back in the glory days of NASA. I lived in everything from nice apartments to furnished rooms, trailers, hotel rooms and a brownstone in NYC. It all depends on the rental market where the assignment is and how long you expect the job to last. Sometimes, you take what you can get.

Unless you can find lots of assignments in the same metropolitan area, being a job shopper, mercenary, industrial prostitute or consultant (call it what you will) means traveling all over the country for short-term jobs, hauling everything you need in the trunk of your car, and becoming an ingenious packer (I acquired an assortment of suitcases that fit perfectly in the trunk of my Buick Riviera). For longer assignments, I'd rent a 5x8 U-Haul and take my motorcycle and stereo.

What I liked best was walking in as the Pro from Dover*, being expected to do in a matter of weeks what the client was unable to do with a whole team in months, and then delivering--bringing their project in on time and saving their butts.

And working on NASA projects was the only time in my life that I qualified for the A Ship.**

I look back fondly on my years as a job shopper. Although the furnished room in Phiiladephia was probably the worst place I ever lived in my whole life.

*--from the movie M.A.S.H.

** from the books, Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I preferred to be called a Roadwhore, and it sure was nice when they gave you the keys to the plant, building, whatever, and then you walked away, mission accomplished with a project that the cubicle guys couldn't figure out, with them still shaking their heads.

I just started working on a proposal for a large US company, one that will employ me and maybe 4 or 5 of the Roadwhore Inspectors.

Well, naturally, the PMs asked for my resume and experience first.

All of my Fellow Roadwhores know that a resume with our experience, education, special certifications, etc. tends to be 20 pages long or so.

So, to keep it easy, my resume is 4 pages long, but I have created a 3 page Excel Workbook further breaking down specifics that I also present.

Since I am young with only about 35 years of specific experience, these PMs are and stay impressed. More education, theory, knowledge, and experience than the company guy. Some of the really positive things that I have done through the years such as writing to the editor to making a short video and everything in between have made an impact, were fun, and usually didn't cost my client anything. Most I saved, and lately I have been making 2 Final Reports, one in Word and one as a Power Point Presentation. Fun things, a company guy usually is not allowed to do.

It may sound like the Loco Viva, but Roadwhoring is the best, and all that I hire are Roadwhores.

Roadwhore? That's a new one.

I am a temp (nuclear) and I enjoy it. It comes with its own set of difficulties but the traveling is interesting, most of the time the people you work with are very nice and appreciate the assistance you provide. I have lived in cheap, unfurnished apartments as well as comfortable furnished condominiums. It depends on the per diem rate you receive (and of course, your lifestyle preferences). The pays is generally not twice what regular employees are paid, more like 1/3 more. It takes more to to provide your own benefits and to maintain two working residences (if you spouse doesn't travel with you). I took an early retirement from a utility and have been contracting for 6 years now. My only regret is I didn't do it sooner. What is really nice about contracting is not having to be at the mercy of corporate politics, not working overtime hours for no pay or giving 5 hours of free time before getting paid for overtime. As for the overtime, many utilities are cutting back on contractor hours, partly because of regulatory requirements, mostly because of budget cutbacks. The purpose for my contracting is to build (or re-build) my retirement savings.Working away from home, maintaining two households on 40 hours a week is kind of like marching in place. I do try to find jobs that require at least reasonable overtime (50 or 60) but they're getting harder to find. Overall, I really like doing what I do and recommend it highly.

GA, my ex and I divorced after I tried a perm job back home.

Way to much friction.

More money for me now.

Roadwhore is cute

I'd make a stronger distinction between contracting and consulting - but only to avoid insulting consultants and whores ; )

Back in the day contracting was a lot of fun, wages were where they needed to be, 2X to 3X salaried equivalents. Work was plentiful.

Work has been picking back up in my industry, but if you can get 1.5X salaried equivalent you are doing well.

Having spanned the continental US just this year, (one gig in San Diego, one in New Hampshire) it takes months to make up the broken leases, utility deposits, etc. Much less putting it in the bank for the rainy days.

And my industry leaders stand in front of Congress and tell them they can't find engineers. They need more H1-B visas. I've worked with many well qualified H1-B holders over the years and they get my respect. But industry giants are just pushing costs down.

So this fall at last in aerospace there is a demand for Systems Engineers who have actually certified things with the FAA.

And they cannot find them.

Well over a decade ago I began wondering aloud if they refused to keep people more than the projects end, if they rigorously staffed so no minute was wasted, where we were going to get and train the next gen. And why would a next gen pick aerospace?

You spend less and less time touching airplanes, more and more time in a cube. All celebrations of great efforts or bringing it home for the customer in big on-time deliveries were canceled years ago lest someone drive into a pole on the way home.

So we have let our industry get hijacked into a cube dwelling schedule chase being flogged by spreadsheet updating business majors instead of the joy of aviation it used to be.

Or I'm just a crabby old fart on a Sunday morning with no better task than getting the kids off my lawn. ; )

Rockwell Collins used to use a lot of contract employees, and was paying them about $90 per hour. I don't work there, but I have friends, neighbors and fellow racers who do, and I hear all kinds of horror stories about aerospace and avionics projects that are failing, are behind schedule, and costing the company a bundle.

Things have changed completely from when I was a job shopper in avionics. In those days, we came in to lend expertise and save projects. Today, they hire contract employees just to fill slots and manpower requirements. It doesn't matter if they can do the job or not, because the managers don't know enough to tell who's good and who isn't.

Avionics and aerospace is getting to be a lot like Toyota--that is, empty suit managers (hordes of them), who are afraid to tell the Big Boss what's really going on, why projects aren't getting completed on time, why the software doesn't run correctly, and why the hardware doesn't work. The blame gets passed down the line. First, the contract employees get let go (that happened last year at Rockwell). Now they are firing their engineers. Soon, they will be left with nothing but the empty suit managers, who are incapable of doing the work.

I wonder if this is true across the board in avionics? I hear similar stories from Honeywell and Garman.

Avionics and aerospace is getting to be a lot like Toyota--that is, empty suit managers (hordes of them), who are afraid to tell the Big Boss what's really going on, why projects aren't getting completed on time, why the software doesn't run correctly, and why the hardware doesn't work. The blame gets passed down the line. First, the contract employees get let go (that happened last year at Rockwell). Now they are firing their engineers. Soon, they will be left with nothing but the empty suit managers, who are incapable of doing the work.

I can confirm a few of those, sadly

Rumor has it that one avionics company (no names, please) threatened to send their engineers and software developers up on test flights, but they refused to go. On the last flight test of the company's new avionics, the cockpit screens went blank.

That's just a rumor, mind you. I heard it second hand. Probably isn't true.

Ah no, surely not

If you won't fly your own gear you need another job

>So this fall at last in aerospace there is a demand for Systems Engineers who have actually certified things with the FAA.

From what I hear, FAA certification is a joke. The FAA relies on the avionics company to certify that its avionics work, and the company relies on testing services in India to test the software. There are lots of FAA and peer review forms and statements to sign, and one avionics engineer I know was fired because he refused to sign off on such a review when he KNEW there were problems in the software. That was the software, by the way, that went blank on its test flight. (Remember, that was just a rumor.)

Things have changed since my NASA days. Back then, we had to first write avionics test programs that exercised every logic branch in the software; after passing that test, we tested it under the supervision of NASA engineers on a hardware simulator in a grueling, exhausting acceptance test that lasted for days, sometimes weeks. We would fly entire Apollo missions from launch to splashdown in the simulator--over and over. They called that stuff "man-qualified" software and some of it is still flying today.

Today, they just send it off to India, a couple of guys look over 6,000 lines of code for a few days, approve it, and the FAA accepts it. Worse, modern airplanes are all "fly by wire," so if the avionics fail, there are no mechanical backups. I think I'll stick to flying in 727s--you know, old airplanes with old avionics that work.

I am not making this up.

"a couple of guys look over 6,000 lines of code for a few days, approve it, and the FAA accepts it"

Scary.

That's what I hear. My buddy got fired because he would not sign off on a peer review of the software, and the next week the screens went blank on a test flight. I sure would not want to fly on any airplane that had that avionics in it.

Heck, I wish more people had ADD and AADD.

Those were the people who did all of the inventions and thinking in the past, too intelligent and inquisitive for the "instructors".

Darn I am bored with the rote all of the time.

It is so sweet now that I can build the fires in the field and let the politics roll.

It is a great life, word of mouth, reputation, and git er done.

Been there, enjoyed it while it lasted. I enjoyed the things mentioned by others, did not like the lack of security. There's something to be said for a high expectation that you've got money coming in. Simply, I may not have managed to make a go of brain-whoring long enough to build up the necessary financial cushion.

I now work for the government and am as close to as certain as possible that I will have paychecks for the forseeable future. This is nice. I have it faintly penciled into my career plan to hit the revolving door at some point, pull down a fat private sector salary for a few years, then return and retire from the civil service.

Bean counters have driven compensation and process-related expenses down in the corporate world, and quality and quality of life suffer commensurately. But profits improve! Until they don't, that is, and people may die along the way.

Somewhere between the way engineering corporations do things today and the way the government does things is the right way. I happen to think it's closer to the government's way. Good engineering is sort of expensive and one should simply not try too hard to avoid the costs. OTOH, government is notoriously expensive and it must be said, wasteful. Much of that can simply not be avoided.

One makes their own security and it is a real security, not like the false one flashed in a worker's face by an employer.

That said, if not for perms, us Roadwhores would not have any work.

Not to reflect on individual capability but corporate politics.

Some of us are superb at making things, some of us better at troubleshooting, etc.

I did the temp thing once. No cheap apartment living for me.

Got laid off and divorced, in that order. Stumbled into a contract CAM/NC programming job within driving distance of my lovely New Hampshire home that paid so well that I took 6 months off after 18 months of work (with time and a half unlimited overtime ) I really enjoyed the time of not having to participate in company/office politics. Just came in, did my thing, went home.

As I look forward to retirement, probably within the next year, I should look into temp possibilities again.

Hooker

I think the thing that is notable is the environment in which you stay on off time and the job site environment. Traveling to new job sites in Civil Engineering tends to be a huge nuissance, since most places that involve civil enginering are new construction out on the outskirts of a developed area, or in a disaster or redevelopment area. So you need to be near by the site. The social life takes a serious hit moving every week to 3 months, all that driving and flying on the off time between the start of work on 6 or 7 am Monday and end of day near dark on Friday, especially when you are in places like Bishop, CA or some other little town that is getting a first shopping center or home depot. Bridges and High Rise engineering jobs I suspect would be nicer, as the large projects tend to be in more interesting locations and are longer term.

After a long turn of doing lone projects, I have been doing short ones under 3 months for years, find those are the best paying ones, short enough not to get boring, and usually passed on.

Last year from Mar to Aug, I worked 2 weeks on, and 2 weeks off. Still ended up with a better than average salary, and loved it.

I did it for a while, I stopped because a company paid me more to go direct and gave me plenty of interesting work, plus my wife felt more secure. I had been on the national circuit in the sixties, back then there were a group of people, at or near retirement, who bought motor homes as well as permanent homes in Southern California or Florida. During the season, they would rent out the permanent homes for seasonal rentals, and go job shopping in the motor homes to different parts of the country. Off season, they lived a gentle retirement.

That was the way to go, and yes with the PDs, one could invest in a condo in a tourist area.

I was in Panama City, FL for 2 years, lived in a hotel for a few months, and then bought a condo with a $600.00 a month mortgage. When I left, I could rent it to the retired snow birds for $1600.00. Made and saved a tidy sum as did a few of my friends.

I've spent probably half my 20+ year EE career at contract jobs in the industrial automation field. Sometimes I took the jobs for money, sometimes because it was the only job forthcoming. It used to be easier to get work, with less down time, and each job paid more. I was able to find work without travel or long commutes. Often I worked hard and did the drudge work the direct guys didn't. I got good experience which led to a pretty good "permanent" job, but not the kind of experience that puts you on the path to climbing the corporate ladder. Eventually I had enough of that dead-end cubicle job and moved on, back to small companies and contracting.

Then it seemed like there was less work, and downward pressure on wages. I ended up back at my previous employer, as a contractor. They strung me along, 3 months at a time, until I was let go because of the 2-year co-employment rule. Now I'm 4 years into a job at a small company, and enjoying it more.

I'd go back to a contract job if my job ended, but it wouldn't be my preference if I had a choice.

I am working on a contract/consultancy basis lately. I should have done this long time ago. Although I work on small projects, the satisfacion is great because I do it for myself and not enriching someone other idiots. Also I can aford to tender for les than the corporate companies. Less overheads.

Job shopping can be extremely risk.. even a career killer.