Contractor for 7 months with no benefits and almost no vacation. My mentor got fired and now I’m alone with an unrealistic workload. I have an interview for a full-time permanent job with benefits, but I don’t want to burn bridges by leaving so soon. What should I do?

I have been at this contract job for around 7 months. The job itself is quite cool, but unfortunately I feel like I’m being abused. Since it's a contract through a third-party contractor, I have zero benefits. During those 7 months, I’ve only accumulated a little over 4 days of paid vacation.

One of my mentors, who is also employed by the same contractor and was essentially the senior in our division, was recently fired. There were only two of us on the team, and now I’m completely alone. Apparently they don’t plan on replacing him, so now all the work is falling on me.

I applied for another job that is not a contract position and offers a lot of great benefits and the same pay but it would finally make me feel like I’m actually part of a company. The only thing is that I now feel bad about leaving, and it might look bad for the contractor company if two employees leave in such a short period of time. I also don’t want to burn bridges with the company because maybe one day an opportunity will arise and I may want to apply again. That said, I am planning on giving a 2–3 week notice.

So I’m not sure what to do. At the end of the day, I’m getting pretty tired of being used and treated poorly. But then again, it’s really their problem for not replacing him. Apparently they were already planning to hire someone right before he was fired, but for another division, so they don’t really have much of an excuse.

I really wanted this to work, but I’m just tired. It almost feels like I only have one week of paid vacation per year (which comes from my paycheck, as I mentioned earlier) and one week of unpaid vacation, which isn’t great.

I’ve heard of some people eventually getting hired full-time if they work long enough as contractors, but honestly nothing is guaranteed, and I’m tired of the uncertainty. I just want to finally feel like I’m part of a company.

Nothing is set in stone yet. I have my interview with the company next week. Any advice on what I should do would be appreciated. Thank you.