Becoming a contractor has both positives and negatives which those who make the career change to working as a contractor may not expect. Yes, you do have the potential to potential to earn more money, and yes, you do have the ability to choose your own work hours and often the chance to choose your own work hours, but the opposite for all of this can also be true.

Often times, because a contractor will be taking work with numerous different companies, they will have to travel a lot for new work, and occasionally a requirement of the job is to work on site. If you’ve become a contractor so that you have more freedom, then this could quickly disenfranchise you.

You may say at this point that you have the freedom to take and refuse whatever work comes your way and you’d be right, mostly, but when work is few and far between and you have zero job security, you’ll often find yourself having no option but to take every job you can which comes your way.

The last drawback to working as a contractor to go into, is that you only get work and only of a certain quality as to fit your reputation. Now this doesn’t sound like such a big deal, but if you make a mistake, or take a lot longer to do something than you quoted, this could damage your reputation and damage your ability to continue to find work.