Day rate or full time

Hi guys,


I'm job hunting at the moment and have had some offers recently.


Full time I'm looking at about €70-75k + pension + benefits etc.

The full time jobs are easy to compare salary/benefits etc.

However, I've also been offered a day rate contracting job on an initial 6 month contract (expected to last a year but no guarantees) with a day rate of €600 per day. For the contracting job I would have to setup an umbrella company and pay my own stamp etc.

All the jobs (incl contracting) are for major financial institutions or tech/engineering companies.

How would you go about comparing these offers, obviously the contractor role is great money but the fulltime jobs will give me 10-15% pension, pay prsi for me, health + job security, training etc. and the prospect of promotions etc. Would contracting hurt my career progression in the long term by not building up seniority in an organisation?

Does anybody have any experience with these type of contract roles?


Thanks for reading!

For the full time job assuming you can negotiate 80k pa + 10% pension that is a daily rate of 380 per day if you work 230 days per year

In my experience the tax advantages of contracting are not significant unless you are going into it long term (at least 3 years) in which case there are some reliefs you may be able to apply in order to extract funds from the company in a tax efficient way a few years down the line, or if you are nearing retirement age (50+)

I would focus on the extra daily pay and how that measures up against the other factors (likelihood of getting more contract jobs in future, contracting work atmosphere vs. permanent work atmosphere etc).

In terms of long term career progression contracting should enable you to get varied experience quickly being thrown in at the deep end. Over the long term there probably is a risk your skills fall behind but that is the case in a permanent role too. Most people I know contracting would be looking to retire early so I'm not sure of experiences of people in their 50s or 60s.

Thanks for the reply Camlin.

After doing the sums and thinking about the respective merits of both types of working I've decided to accept a full-time position.

camlin90 said:

For the full time job assuming you can negotiate 80k pa + 10% pension that is a daily rate of 380 per day if you work 230 days per year

Click to expand...

NOt sure if this is the best way to calculate it.
For PAYE, assume:
365 days a year
104 weekend days
The rest is paid work whether it be holiday, sick, cant be bothered days etc. That means 260 or so working days a year

However as a contractor, you should assume:
365 days a year
104 weekend days
10 bank hols
20 (?) holidays
5 (?) Sick
That means in the region of 230 billable days per year.