Month: February 2009

More doom and gloom I’m afraid.  There’s a story on Silicon Republic that 1/4 of Irish companies say they will be letting IT staff go.  As usual, IT is seen as a non-revenue generating cost centre that cannot add value to the business.  Personally, I see that as being a failure on the part (not necessarily both) of two parties:

• Management or directors who do not appreciate the skills of their staff and lack the vision of how to use IT to enhance their competitiveness and efficiencies.
• IT staff who fail to develop their skills and provide advice to management, i.e. the 10-till-4 administrators that you may seen me talk about before.

It seems that most of these businesses have ongoing IT requirements and projects that must be finished and they will be looking at contract or temporary staff to complete them.

The last time we had an “IT recession” was in 2000-2002.  There was almost no movement on the permanent job scene in IT.  But contract work was pretty lively.  I tried to get into contracting then but couldn’t do it.  You had to have some sort of background in contracting before an agency would submit your CV.  I got lucky when a relative put my CV in with his employers and I finally got my foot on the ladder.  I think it might be like that again.

If you are contracting for the first then consider your options and requirements.  In Ireland you must have a company.  You cannot set up as a sole trader in IT contracting.  That’s reserved to the likes of builders, i.e. it’s defined as someone who works under their own direction and brings their own tools onto the site.  A call to Revenue confirmed an IT contractor must have their own company.  You can set up a company but there’s a tonne of paperwork that can take months, e.g. set up the company and 2 directors, set up VAT, set up bank account, set up PAYE taxation, monthly VAT reports, quarterly VAT reports, annual VAT reports, annual CRO report (this is a real biggie because there is ZERO flexibility on it), annual directors reports and pension compliance.  The benefit is you have all the perks of a company, e.g. purchase assets, depreciate them and write them off from VAT.  If all the paperwork sounds too nasty and you need to get up and running quickly then you can join an umbrella company managed by an accountant.  All you have to do each month is submit your timesheets to the accountant along with your expenses.  You cannot expense assets, e.g. a laptop, because you don’t own the company.

Finally, do a lot of research on the accountants.  I went through 3 before I found one I could trust.  The first one was a fool.  The second wouldn’t answer the phone or return my emails.  The 3rd didn’t do the paperwork or advise me and put me in a bind which took some work to sort out.