In most of my career I have been treated as a temp worker Software Engineer. I have a non-STEM degree.
In the first place I worked for after college in 2008, they treated every rank-and-file person as a temp, making them work in the office but skirting employment laws by hiring them all as 1099s. I eventually went back with them three years later, but to work as a consultant. From then on it was one 1099 job after another, at a startup followed by a very long drought of no work dotted by contract jobs lasting only a few months for the smallest of businesses. Layoffs, or company running out of project budget usually end the jobs.
Tech-wise it's just as stagnant. Places usually have cowboy coding practices. I have led a few projects before, but scale at which I've done things is a joke. And if you ask me about unit testing, CI or systems development, my mind will draw a blank.
My last shot at a "regular" salaried job was in 2010 but I didn't stay longer than 3 months. And since I was a junior I didn't really do much at that point to have a strong staying presence. It's now just a minor footnote of my job history.
So as generally being a "temp" I don't really have a presence in growth since companies don't want to commit me to full-time. My average tenure is 1.5 years. Since I'm not really an employee I never participated in hiring decisions and don't move up the corporate ladder. It feels like I'm stuck on a weird holding pattern waiting for the next breakout job to happen. I want to grow within a company now, but even with modern side projects, I'm terrible at convincing companies to hire me full-time.
So I probably should have become a manager or at least senior developer at this point, that much I know. Everyone that's given me interview feedback said the same thing. I'm disproportionately inexperienced for my years. But a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. How can I capitalize on the what I have now and use that to turn my career around?
In the first place I worked for after college in 2008, they treated every rank-and-file person as a temp, making them work in the office but skirting employment laws by hiring them all as 1099s. I eventually went back with them three years later, but to work as a consultant. From then on it was one 1099 job after another, at a startup followed by a very long drought of no work dotted by contract jobs lasting only a few months for the smallest of businesses. Layoffs, or company running out of project budget usually end the jobs.
Tech-wise it's just as stagnant. Places usually have cowboy coding practices. I have led a few projects before, but scale at which I've done things is a joke. And if you ask me about unit testing, CI or systems development, my mind will draw a blank.
My last shot at a "regular" salaried job was in 2010 but I didn't stay longer than 3 months. And since I was a junior I didn't really do much at that point to have a strong staying presence. It's now just a minor footnote of my job history.
So as generally being a "temp" I don't really have a presence in growth since companies don't want to commit me to full-time. My average tenure is 1.5 years. Since I'm not really an employee I never participated in hiring decisions and don't move up the corporate ladder. It feels like I'm stuck on a weird holding pattern waiting for the next breakout job to happen. I want to grow within a company now, but even with modern side projects, I'm terrible at convincing companies to hire me full-time.
So I probably should have become a manager or at least senior developer at this point, that much I know. Everyone that's given me interview feedback said the same thing. I'm disproportionately inexperienced for my years. But a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. How can I capitalize on the what I have now and use that to turn my career around?