Question: Is there a downside about taking too many short-term contract positions? I'm still early in my career (I'm 25) but I've only been in a perm full-time job once for 1.5 years. My other 2 jobs have been been 6 month contracts. My current job is a 6-month contract-to-hire position which has been ok but I'd like to move elsewhere when the contract finishes. Are all these short-term jobs seen as a black mark? 

I've read that it's recommended to stay at a permanent full-time job for a year but don't contractor jobs have different guidelines? Isn't it common for contractors to jump around jobs like this?

Answer: 
**Resume Considerations**

You may wish to phrase things in such a way to make this clear. If you are sending out resumes, consider how it would look to to see something like:

* Widget Engineer at MegaCorp A
* Widget Engineer at MegaCorp B

It will not be clear at the outset that you have been doing contract work. If you include bullets under each job and include something like "6-month contract to build Awesome Widgets" and have the dates match accordingly, I don't think this is an issue.

In fact, there may be companies which see this as a plus - because if they are looking for a short-term contract employee and see someone with only 1+ year periods at each of their job, it will be difficult for the employer to judge how you would take a contract offer and if you would be happy to accept a shorter contract and have the employment end after this period.

**Interview Considerations**

If you get to an interview, this should be an easy thing to talk about as you are able to give explanations as to why you have had so many jobs. It is not a given people will see this as a negative, however, if you run into older hiring managers or even HR people they may (regardless of this being more typical in software) care and so it is probably a good idea to at least talk about your work experience to answer the unspoken feeling of "does this guy just have a hard time liking any company; he probably won't like us either" a lot of those people likely will have.

Again, keep in mind if you are applying through the traditional route, you and your resume/information will interact with people who are not part of the software-engineering role, and they likely will view things with a somewhat different perspective.

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Just a note, if you are simply changing jobs because you never like them or because the company doesn't want to renew any of the contracts because of performance, then yes, it probably will be seen as a negative.
Most hiring managers wouldn't consider that to be a black mark. Deliberately changing jobs every year or couple years is viewed very negatively by a lot of hiring managers though. (A survey of recruiters and hiring managers found that 39% of them listed "job-hopping" as the biggest obstacle for job seekers. <http://www.askamanager.org/2012/10/job-hopping-is-killing-your-career.html>)

Because of that, I think it's worth listing the temporary jobs as such on your resume, for example by putting "(6-Month Contract)" after the dates of employment. This can prevent someone who's worked a lot of contract jobs from being viewed as someone who gets bored after a few months and moves on.