{"id":1328,"date":"2013-12-06T14:12:05","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T19:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/?p=1328"},"modified":"2013-12-06T14:39:34","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T19:39:34","slug":"contractors-dissociation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wrote-about\/contractors-dissociation\/","title":{"rendered":"Contractor’s Dissociation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I tell people “I work at the National Cancer Institute.” Not “I’m a contractor working for Terrapin Systems supporting the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health.” Partially because it’s a mouthful but mostly because they’re eyes glaze over and they want suddenly want to talk about the weather.<\/p>\n

Being a government contractor often means having very little contact with the company I actually work for and pays my salary. I work on the client site. For the client.<\/p>\n

I am one of them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Scarlet

Scarlet CONTRACTOR Letters<\/p><\/div>\n

It’s a strange dissociation. Some contracting companies are very hands on. I’ll interview at their offices for their people initially. I will meet HR and Finance people in addition to the recruiter. I will meet my manager-to-be if I’m hired. I will know the faces attached to the phone numbers and email addresses. It all feels very real.<\/p>\n

Other contacting firms might as well be ghosts. I’ve never met the people. Never been to their offices. I don’t even know where the offices are. Sure, I have an address but it’s still not real. It’s just a number on a page. I know they exist because my salary gets paid. And I get emails from people I don’t know and will never meet.<\/p>\n

It’s a strange life, that of a contractor. I often think of it as being a hired gun or a nomad. Roaming from job to job. Learning a new language. A new culture. Then doing it all over again in a few years. In the world of IT Support, every job is the same. But every company is different. Changing jobs is all about unlearning everything I know culturally about where I am but transferring my technical knowledge and soft skills to the new place.<\/p>\n

It’s like moving to a new school. All the subjects are the same. There’s a gymnasium and a cafeteria. There’s a track and rows of lockers. But everyone is different. I am the stranger. I have to make new friends. I have to learn new social norms and expectations.<\/p>\n

I would love to live my grandparent’s ideal. I would love to work for one company for 20 years and never think about leaving. I want a company to invest in me.<\/strong> But that’s not the world I work in.<\/p>\n

I will never work for one company for 50 years, retire and receive a pension. I will never be taken care of by a company I’ve committed my life to. That world no longer exists. I’ve never worked anywhere more than 3 years. I’ve been laid off in budget cuts. I’ve been fired. I’ve left for a whole host of reasons. My mother is fond of say I still don\u2019t know what I want to do when I grow up.<\/strong> And it\u2019s true. I don\u2019t know what I want to do when I grow up.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I tell people “I work at the National Cancer Institute.” Not “I’m a contractor working for Terrapin Systems supporting the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health.” Partially because it’s a mouthful but mostly because they’re eyes glaze over and they want suddenly want to talk about the weather. Being a government contractor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Who do I work for? Where do I work? Well... I have Contractor's Dissociation http:\/\/wp.me\/p1rw6z-lq","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[510,21,195],"class_list":["post-1328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrote-about","tag-contractor","tag-life","tag-work"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1336,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions\/1336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}