The Foreign Service Journal, May 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2022 35 You are a contractor, and personality matters. contacts with the current Foreign Service—I read AFSA’s daily Media Digest religiously. And I subscribe to the department’s emailed announcements about what senior officials are doing. Employment status. I established a sole-proprietorship LLC (easy to do in Virginia) as the preferred vehicle to sell my services to most defense contractors, which makes me a “1099-MISC” self-employed person for income tax purposes. However, several of my employers have me on their rolls in a “part-time, on call” status, which means they deduct for taxes and social security. Sometimes this means benefits not avail- able in the LLC relationship, though IRS has very generous options to contribute to a “Simplified Employee Pension Plan” (SEP) IRA if one is so inclined. Culture shock. Members of the military have a fixed idea about who we FSOs are: liberal tree-huggers, savers of whales and promoters of socialist values. If you want to work for the mil- itary, you have to expect a conservative (and very well-educated) group of people. They are OK with you bringing a different set of values and perspectives (I get humorously stereotyped early and often), but you should ask yourself, are you capable of returning the favor? I get too many sad anecdotes frommy “customers” of how they are treated by FSOs overseas. Employment security is an oxymoron. Contracts come and go. The company I started with lost all the contracts it had with the Army, but the competitors that prevailed on two picked up the interagency team. Several times I got hired for a one-off event. Other times the requirement for role players changed, and posi- tions were eliminated. And there are plenty of people seeking these opportunities. The first time you turn down an opportunity, you might never hear from that company again. Final words: you are a contractor, and personality matters. Team players who get along well with a diverse group of people succeed. Those who don’t, don’t get invited back. n