About a year ago I got laid off by surprise and, having recently signed a mortgage, was looking for work with a strong sense of urgency when I came across a company looking for a 6 month contract to hire position that had some pretty cool tech(I'm a software developer specializing in building out human to ai interfaces). I had never done a contract to hire before so I figured I'd try it out. At about the 7 month mark I reached out to my contact at the contracting agency and he told me that “congrats! The contract renewed for another 6 months!”. He also told me that the company was very happy with my work Which made sense to me because the cool tech had inspired me to spend a lot of nights and weekends supporting product launches. I was surprised by them not choosing to bring me on full time but blamed myself for not being more diligent and expressing what I wanted more directly. I made sure at the 10 month mark to bring it up with my manager and told him directly that I want to be a full time employee with benefits at the end of the 12 month period and was told that not only would I be paid less as a full time employee, I should consider becoming full-time to be “less of a short term priority and more of a long terms one”. This made me furious. I do not set goals lightly and I don't take kindly to other people telling me what the value of my work was. 1 week after that meeting I had a new full time job. I went from a 140k a year(40 hrs a week x 52) contract position to a 160k a year full time position. According to a different manager I'm still in contact with, things went downhill fast, major clients are unhappy and there are currently more managers on staff than developers in that department. Moral of the story: fuck contracting gigs and fuck people who try to lower your value.