I've been offered a new job and I've accepted. What's more, I've got them to agree to a 4-day week!

The project I'm working on for my day job is due to hand over to Operations in November, meaning my involvement would end at that point. Last week my employer called me in for a chat to discuss the future. Their Security Compliance arm of the business is really taking off and they need to strengthen the team to cope with the growing volume of work. They asked me if I'd consider joining their Compliance consultancy on a permanent basis.

I'm contracting at the moment and since becoming an IT Contractor I vowed I would never go back to being a 'permie'. However, circumstances have changed. Here's my thinking:

  1. IT Contracting is not a lucrative proposition in Australia like it is in the UK. For a start, the rates mean I only get paid roughly the same as a permie, and secondly the legal and tax situation is different meaning I can't get the same financial benefits working under my own company like I did in the UK. Basically, contracting here is just like being a casual employee.
  2. Christmas is not too far away and the company I work for shuts down for two weeks over xmas. As a contractor I don't get paid for holidays and sickness. Even if they found me another project straight away, if I stayed with them on a contract basis I would have to take 2 weeks unpaid leave over xmas. Signing on as a permie I get two weeks paid leave!
  3. Everyone keeps telling me that their is a skills shortage in Brisbane but whenever I look on the job sites a) I'm not seeing much contract work, and b) most of the work seems to to be on the network/firewall side of things, similar to the project I'm assigned to now, which doesn't really interest me and is not my core expertise.

With all that in mind, I decided my best option would be to try and find a way to guarantee a decent income for the foreseeable future, but also reduce my hours doing a 'proper job' so I could devote more time to my Internet projects.

So, when they called me in for a chat I made it clear that I would consider going permie only if I could reduce my hours to four days a week.

Yesterday they made me an offer. They met my salary expectations and they've agreed to the four-day week. I love it when a plan comes together!

I cut over to permie at the beginning of November.