I don't go looking for people per se. Originally there was me and a dude I met through work who seemed like a dude on my wavelength and was looking for a way out of corporate suffering.
For quite a while it was just us. He moved on a while back and I bought out his equity, but he brought in through work/personal contacts the people who became basically our first generation of contractors. Some of them are still on board with us and they bring people to me they can vouch for. If they bring on someone and the person completes a project for us, I throw them a couple grand introduction fee. If the person does two or three projects, I throw them another five or ten grand. So it's in their interests to bring forward people who they know can and will get the job done. It is way more time and money efficient for me to acquire contractors via my existing contractors than to try and deal with the enormous and costly bullshit of using a recruiting agency, and the existing contractors can already answer the vibe check questions.
The best place for you to start is probably to work your personal connections, for that reason. I have some folk who only do maybe ten hours here and there for me, but they are in my crew so they know there will be ten hours offered to them pretty regularly as long as we are cool with our working relationship. Some people basically work full time for me. I need both because we do have very noticeable demand swings. So if someone has just a bit of work now and then to offer, take it if you can. People know people and will pass on numbers/emails of contractors they use and trust when someone asks me if I know a guy who could [insert task here].
As for the experience of being a contractor, I can only really speak to what I expect of my contractors and what I will do for them. I have no particular idea of whether or not this is 'normal' but this is what has worked for me and my crew for some time now.
I work weird hours personally since I really only work once the kids are in bed. So I will call at eleven o'clock and I will call Saturdays and I will say I'm very sorry but I need this done by lunchtime tomorrow. If someone has a hard boundary about when they will take calls and emails, I ask them that at the outset and I respect it. It does affect what sort of work I will throw them since certain things have the tendency to go boom on a Sunday and if your Sunday is sacrosanct, I need that project to be in the hands of a no-lifer.
I pay you for specific bits of work to be done, not by the hour. If you want paid by the hour, go back to salary work. Something delivered tomorrow is worth more to me than something delivered Friday, even if you spent the same amount of hours on it, so I will pay you more to deliver faster. By all means use the hours spent to figure out how much you want to bill me. I have no technical understanding and I genuinely don't know how long it will take you to do X thing I am asking you for. One of the things I am paying you for is to scope the work involved.
If you do not want to get into negotiations about the value of your work, you and I will amicably not do business. If you don't value what you do, I don't either. I don't know how difficult or not it is, and I don't honestly care. I just want someone else to handle it and not complain about it and hand me something that works.
If I think you are way lowballing yourself, I will tell you. I expect and intend to pay a fair wage for fair work. If I wanted pajeet serfs, that's what I would hire.
I will always without fail be polite and pleasant in our interactions and respectful in my tone. You will do the same. Fighting is for the internet.
We are not going to be facebook friends and I do not have insta or twitter or that shit and no I will not be getting it. You can email or you can phone like an adult. Do not even say the word Discord to me or I will suspect you are a tranny groomer or a pedo or both.
If we don't vibe I won't throw you work. You need the corporate protection of HR if you don't think that kind of work environment is for you.
We will touch base in person every so often, generally coffee but occasionally lunch, but honestly, we really don't need to hang. I am pretty friendly outside of work shit with quite a few of the crew, and some of them I respect their skills but they are not my people. We go out for dinner/drinks and maybe some kind of a show or event on my dime at Christmas time and once in the summer but you really are under no pressure to come and your partner is obviously welcome. You will get some kind of a decent Christmas bonus, generally dependent on how well we did financially that year and how much of the load you shouldered. If you have kids they get an envelope with cash and a selection box and they get a pantomime ticket I pay for. I do not care that this is 'not fair'; complain to the HR department that doesn't exist. I like contractors with kids because I find they value their time and their money and so do I. They also tend not to randomly go travelling or other shit.
I do not want to hear your political opinions about anything no matter what they are. I do not want to hear your pontificating about how the NHS 'should' be run. Go and apply to be a fucking chief executive of an NHS board if you have big ideas. We deliver specific services for money. Management consultancy, leadership skills, change management and strategic planning are strictly in the services I deliver. I don't tell you how to code and you don't tell me how to consult. If you have a difficulty accepting that, we will not work together beyond the end of the week.
If you turn out to be a creep I will not hire you again and I will lose your number and no I will not pass your number on to anyone else I know who is looking for people. This has happened three times. Again, if you don't want to deal with that kind of vibe check, you need the protection of HR. I don't have to keep you around and I won't. There are plenty of people with competent technical skills who don't look up my fucking house on the internet and send me decorating suggestions and who don't insist they can only meet me over dinner and who don't hit on the other contractors over email.
I have assisted with sorting out childcare and its costs on a number of occasions before. Sometimes your skills and ability to deliver will be worth that to me. My longest and most trusted contractor is a single mother and I will do whatever is in my power to keep her onside because she is important to make sure I can deliver what I promise to our clients. Yes this is preferential treatment and again, this is what no HR department means. If you can do what she does as reliably as she does, I will hire you emergency nanny cover too.
I will pay your large and unexpected vet bill. There is absolutely no business reason for this; I am just a total soft touch for sick pets. I have also paid the scalper prices on new PS5s because I am also a total soft touch about disappointed kids on Christmas morning.
