Do companies whose primary employees are programmers also employ contractual programmers? According to my observation, computer technology companies may have contractual workers, but only for other roles.
From personal experience (and admittedly stale by some 8 years), IBM had lots of contractors doing software development alongside full-timers. It was a pretty insecure position to be in because they would take the brunt of layoffs, and many I knew were gone by the time I left, with a couple of exceptions. Many were ex-employess who had been previously let go or were retired. Some were not, and all were basically indistinguishable from regular developers... they just happened to fill a req that merely funded a contractor instead of a full-time employee, depending on how the money was handed out to departments.
Yes, absolutely. I've had several clients like that. Usually, the work centers around something that isn't their core business or a technology that their full-time programmers aren't very experienced with. Sometimes it's just a matter of fluctuating workload where hiring another person full-time wouldn't make sense.
Most companies that I've worked for have had them, usually for specific purposes (billing system related) but they've also had them as more general cases, for less than full time work usually (the people also contracted out to multiple companies). I don't know how common this is though since it's only a few companies and the people involved are all semi-related (Perl programming community).
> Do companies whose primary employees are programmers also employ contractual programmers?
Yes, e.g., firms whose main line of business is contracting out employees who are programmers hire programmers as subcontractors in addition to regular employees to round out special skills needed in contracts.
Yes, all the time. Often in key positions or on strategic initiatives where expertise or specialist skills are needed. I've also seen short contracts used while a company ramps up hiring FTE as a velocity optimization to get the ball rolling on something new.
I couldn't tell you the reasoning, but I've worked at a couple of places where there were contract programmers alongside FTE programmers. In one case, that contract programmer became a FTE, but in either situation, most of the programmers were FTEs.
