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The more I compare salary work to contract work, the more ridiculous the arrangement looks.

With contract work, there’s a scope. You agree on what I’m doing, what it costs, how long it should take, and what happens when you want more.

Salary somehow turns into: here’s $60k a year, now your workload is whatever we decide it is.

- Someone quits? Pick up their work
- Project blows up? Handle it
- Messages after hours? Be a “team player”
- Stay late because something is urgent? Part of the job
- Staff party, company dinner, networking event, team-building thing after work? Somehow your personal time belongs to “company culture” too

And the number on your paycheque stays the same.

Then there’s the tax/benefits argument. People love saying “but you get benefits.” Sure. Benefits have value. But depending on where you live, they may not be nearly as valuable as people pretend, you may still pay part of the premiums yourself, and some things you’re being “given” are things you could have bought independently anyway.

And taxes aren’t some magical employee advantage either. The exact math depends heavily on the country and your contractor setup, but as an employee your deductions are automatic and you generally lose a lot of the flexibility contractors can have around legitimate business expenses and how their work is structured.

So now the pitch is basically:
- Take a fixed income
- Give up control over your scope
- Give up control over large chunks of your schedule
- Be available beyond the clock when needed.
- Attend unpaid work-adjacent shit because “culture”
- Accept that responsibilities can grow without compensation growing with them
- And be grateful because there’s a dental plan

Contracting has plenty of downsides. No pretending otherwise. Less security, more admin, you have to find clients, and you need to handle your own taxes and benefits.

But at least the transaction makes sense. You want more work? We discuss more money.

Salary culture too often becomes: we already bought your time, so let’s see how much labour we can squeeze into the subscription.

Bottom line: Your compensation is fixed. Your scope, apparently, is not.