As with anything choosing projects/contracts/employment is a multi-faceted thing. Personally, I prefer doing things as a permenent employee as you have the added amount of security that you have a job even when the latest site/app goes live and you get to see how things develop, however contracts in my experience have been more well-paid. Also just as a side note, trying to get people genuinely excited about things works for me, apart from the fact that I as usually excited about anything webby, even just data migrations, but making it sound cool/fun/groundbreaking is a plus for me. The real last thing I think that developers want to do is hear the words, 'just make it the same as that last site'.

Hope it helps, Will

Can only speak from experience so here's mine. I was an in-house drupal developer for 3 and a half years for a publishing company in london untill last year. I was happy there and the money was alright but I wanted to move on as drupal was getting hot, but  my reason for leaving wasn't money. So I went to work for a web agency, got basically the same amount of money and the job was interesting, but working with web agencies you are under even more pressure to hit deadlines than in-house imho, and for that amount of money I wasn't going to stress myself out even if I liked the job, I was just happy doing anything to do with drupal big or small, it didn't have to be exciting as even the most boring websites can get the wow factor with some of the drupal modules. Contract work was always in my mind, getting to know more developers, more experience of working in different environments, that in itself is a challenge if you've been into drupal for a few years. Money was also starting to play on my mind, I've come to the conclusion, at my age, the drupal bubble will burst sooner or later in terms of the financial rewards and demand, as drupal is starting to get to the point any idiot can build a cool website with drupal, think of it as becoming the new dreamweaver (shudder) but better. So I took the plunge and went for contracting, and now I'm contracting for another publishing company, which is my comfort zone, and I'm getting £1500 clear a month more than I got paid before, my commute is the shortest it's ever been living in london, and it's very likely they will renew my contract as other contractors have been there for a couple of years, so in the end I took the plunge and it paid off for me, you can quote me happy if you like. What will I do next, contract or in-house? I'd try another contract job before I went back to in-house, the money is just too good and I don't care what kind of projects I get to do, as long as it's drupal. I get satisfaction just by seeing peoples faces when I show them what drupal can do, thanks drupal for making me look cool :)