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Discussion on: Those of you who've worked as a contractor and as a full-time employee, which did you prefer?

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Ashwin Hariharan • Edited

I think there isn't a simple answer and the right choice can differ from personal circumstances, goals, country you live in, and also the company you work for. If I may offer my personal experience working in the tech ecosystem in India:

Employees are generally taxed more than contractors. In theory, they are supposed to enjoy certain benefits that contractors can't avail, such as:

  • Health insurance provided by the company
  • Work equipment
  • Stock options (especially in startups)
  • Employee provident fund
  • General job security is supposed to be better

and so forth.

However in reality, several companies (especially startups), you may or may not get several of the aforementioned benefits, and it is left entirely to the company to decide the compensation structure and benefits. After working with several startups as an employee (some of them were based out of San Francisco and were well funded, with an engineering team in India), I hardly ever had any real, tangible benefit working as an employee.

Now I work as a contractor, and honestly it has not much difference from my earlier experience as an employee anyway - and on the upside, at-least I get to save more on taxes. So for now, a contractor role is what I prefer (though my preference might change again in future).