Question

State Reasons for Working as a Contractor
Why are you working as a contractor?

Answer 1

Back in the heady days of 1984, working on the development of Microsoft Unix (yes, that was a real product, AKA Xenix), we needed to write an Ethernet driver, but none of us really felt up to that. We needed to hire an expensive specialist.

And so I met my first contractor, who turned up in a far better car than anyone else and illustrated why contractors are hired: either because your boss needs something done by a specialist, or because office politics stop people from hiring permies who can actually do the job.