i am an employee. or at least i will be on August first.

yes, that's right, i have been wooed to the "dark side", as so many of you have dubbed it. i saw this decision coming a long way off, ever since i started work with this client back in December. and for most of that time, i've been fairly adamant that i would never return to the W2 world. (W2 being the tax form used to report wages earned as an employee as opposed to a 1099 which is used to report money earned as an independent contractor.) i was even fairly decisive about it when the VP of Engineering pulled me into his office a couple weeks ago and told me they wanted to bring me on.

but something happened. and no, i wasn't won over by their nice words and compliments. what kind of a sucker do you think i am? no, i carefully weighed all the goods and bads of becoming an employee versus staying contract and decided that it was a better deal to make the change, plain and simple.

since i'll be coming on as Manager of User Interface Architecture, it will be a significant boost in responsibilities and give me that management training and experience i've been looking for. booyah!

as a contractor, nothing would have changed, really. not that that's a bad thing. i'd just continue on with a healthy freelance business.

no way i'm buying into the idea that being W2 makes my job any more safe. not after last year. they can lay me off just as easily as they can cancel my contract. it might be slightly easier to cancel a contract than fire an employee. then again, a company might be more willing to reduce the hours of a contract than cancel it all together.

this was my biggest reason not to become an employee. three weeks of paid leave is just not enough for a healthy lifestyle. i don't want someone restricting me like that. but after talking with the client, repeatedly, they reassured me that while i will have three weeks paid leave, i can take more than that unpaid. just so long as it works with the project schedule, which is no different than if i'm contract. as a contractor, i can't exactly pick up and go somewhere in the middle of a project cycle and expect to be on contract for very long. so i told them i plan on taking at least five weeks off and they said, "good for you!"

now, control of my day may become impacted a decent amount by becoming a manager. it's not like i can work from home two days a week, every week and expect to effectively manage a team. so that will be a change when i'm an employee. but the benefits of management experience justify the lifestyle adjustments. besides, i've become very good at making sure i'm in the office just enough to get the work done and be available when i need to be, and still not feeling overwhelmed by the commute.

ah, money. all things being more or less equal, this is the one thing that always tips the scales. i was pretty sure that contracting would win out just because, well, it's contracting. but after crunching the numbers and adding in the cost of benefits (leave, insurance, etc.), it turns out that i'll make just about as much if not a little more as an employee.

so ... ok!

why not. that's the answer i came up with. why not. (actually, that's a question, so i should say it's the question i came up with to the question of should i become an employee.) no reason, really. my heart tells me there is no reason not to. i've been working with the client for a decent amount of time, we work really well together, the project's very interesting, i can always take on side contracting business if i get bored, and, well, why not.

by the way, thank you to everyone who provided advice, especially those who dissented -- your opinions were more valuable than you know.