They see regular employees as an investment and contract employees as expendable. As a result, you may be held to higher standards than regular employees. If there is any interest on their part in hiring you, your contract work will be like an extended interview. If you wish to get a permanent position there, you will need to do good work, get along with the regular employees, and do not miss work. If there is an attendance policy that says you can miss up to five or so days, that does not apply to you. You will show up to work unless you are in the hospital or maybe a couple of hours for a funeral if you parent, child, or spouse dies. Do not in any way offend your supervisor or any reputatable regular employee. If there are other contract workers there, you must do better than them because you are probably competing against them for permanent employment.

... and check my dignity at the door for an extra $15,000 to $20,000 per year.

Kind of what I figured.

It could be a good opportunity for more money and maybe other improvements over your current situation. I have seen how some places have treated contract workers though.

I have a friend that did contract engineering work for many years. What he liked about it was he could take off much more easily. The down side was if he took off, he didn't get paid, but as long as he had his work caught up, the company didn't care if he took a week or two off. Since he liked to travel and work on other projects on the side, this suited him fine.

I manage a few contract employees and as previously mentioned, you are much more vunerable. When I have a problem with a contract employee, pretty much my only option is to pass on my concerns to my contracting officer, who then speaks to that contractor's boss. Usually the result is they are shown the door. If there's a dispute between a regular employee and a contractor, the contractor is almost always going to lose. Be very careful of your conduct. Things that regular employees can get away with, contractors can't. There's no shortage of regular employees who like to snitch contractors out to management. Do not make any enemies, even other contractors or poorly performing regular employees.

Here where I work, we don't have contractors doing the same jobs as regular employees. Although we have occassionally moved some contractors into regular employee positions, this isn't the norm for us. However, some companies do have both types of employees doing the same jobs and one very commonly used trick is they will entice the contractors to be more productive with the promise of a regular employee job that rarely, if ever, comes. The next thing you know you're compelled to work off the clock, sacrifice days off, etc. for promises that will probably never materialize.

and had good contract experiences. None became permanent, but hourly salary increased from first to second to third; after that, all 'temp' positions. AND the fairly long-term employers contributed to 401k's for me, which I later rolled into an IRA; worth quite a bit. Had health insurance w husband's job, so no problems there.

Best of luck!

I was a "1099" contractor, so no health care, and had to pay estimated taxes.

It was with the same company that laid me off a year earlier. They maybe overdid the cost-savings thing, and had to bring back some experienced people for a particular job.

I liked it because I got paid for each hour I worked. When I was on salary, the company demanded a lot of "free overtime". As a contractor, I got paid for overtime. Not time-and-a-half, just straight time, but it was some good extra income.

My vacations were, of course, unpaid, as were holidays. I knew that going in, so no big deal.

If you are a "1099" contractor, consult a tax accountant to discover what sorts of things are business expenses or tax deductions. This will help you identify which receipts will be useful to keep.

Good luck!

They reached out to me. I didn't go to them. They know what I can do. So, my guess is that they are considering cheaper options.