"Contract Engineer" is a term that gets tossed around a lot, and, as I understand it, it's supposed to be when you're a professional engineer and you contract with a customer to perform particular task, and a particular time frame. It's like one business contracting with another. To not finish the task would be unethical.

Then there's "Temp work", when not applied to engineering, is just regular work, not particularly well paid usually, that's not going to be permanent and might or might not have a particular endpoint. No one expects you wait until those jobs end if something better comes along, and will generally be happy you found something, but if you take this kind of work and apply it to engineering, apparently you're expected to continue working until the customer's (employer's) need is fulfilled? Then be unemployed again (from which situation it's always harder to find permanent employment). The only time I was considering a "contract" type position (which seemed more like a "temp" position), they seemed very happy with my skill set, then asked if I planned to stay to the end of the time period, and I honently said I'd still be looking for something permanent, of course, and that queered the whole deal.

Is staying until the end of "contract" expected and typical practice when doing "contract" work through an agency, or are they asking a stupid question and shouldn't be surprised at a stupid answer?