Worked at a big company as firmware dev a few years ago (less than 2) but switched cause of bad pay. Joined a consulting firm with better pay and bemefits. In 2 weeks I am going back to the old company but as a consultat... they should have just payed me and we could have avoided this :D

Had a similar experience. Quit my job, said I am going freelance. They told me all the reasons why this was a bad idea, one of them being it's "hard to score contracts on your own". I said I'm not worried about that, and before I even got out the door they offered me to stay on, as a contractor.

I didn't.

Couple of years later though I went back there as a contractor, and charging them a fair bit naturally. Some of the management had issues with me, because in their eyes I was still one of "them", but had just gotten greedy. I sent them invoices monthly as a nice little fuck-you and felt good about myself.