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Comment by rokhayakebe | Hacker News Reader

Going from Jr to Sr in an organization is "easy/ier." Making the same progress as a freelancer/contractor is more difficult.

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I disagree. I would struggle to get many senior dev roles in companies due to gaps in my knowledge (e.g. TDD, Agile or whatever PM style they use). As a freelancer/contractor however I can pick roles that only require skills I'm very good at and can therefore charge senior rates.

NB: This is if you were defining junior/senior based on pay. Hard to tell from your comment if you were.

Most contractors are senior devs from my experience. One reason to go contracting is if you're a senior dev already and your career progression seems stuck because you're at the top of salaried positions in your company already. Going contracting is a way to get a pay rise for people like that.

Going contracting in IT in London is a way to get a pay rise for anyone. A senior dev contractor will likely make more than a director or architect at the same company. The whole situation is wacky.

Yeah that's true. But to get really high daily rates you need to be senior dev with decent amount of experience from my experience.

I agree the whole situation is a bit ridiculous. But when in majority of companies salaries for developers are limited to something like 60-70k.

This has been slowly changing and there are more companies willing to pay up to 90k but even then as contractor you can make equivalent of 120k or more even after still taking 25 days off per year.

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