Finding it too quiet!!!!

[SueEllen]

Ok, then you're in a privileged situation...

To be fair he's not the only one.

[oliverson]

Lack of experience working on projects that use them. With a CV that screams of MSFT software experience all they can hope for is another job in an MSFT environment. That applies equally to Indians, Brits, or any other nationality. I see similar problems with understanding the basics in the JS/Node.js/Full Stack camp...

You give them a Unix command line prompt and they are lost. You tell them to use Unix pipes and they can't tell STDIN from STDOUT. You tell them to kill the daemon hogging the socket and they think you're taking a piss.

But hey, they have the best beards in IT. No, I'm not worried. Their rates are plummeting while my rates are steadily growing.

My 15 years .NET experience hasn't prevented me entering the Angular world. There again I was a UNIX guy (Sequent Computer Systems) before going down the MS route. Developers are developers - you have to move with the times. When I saw WPF being eaten by Angular 1 in finance it was time to make the shift and focused on Angular 2 (now known as just Angular). Fortunately there's a lot of commonality with SPA's like Angular and desktop development in WPF. It's just a shame JavaScript truly sucks.

[Bluenose]

Speaking to a few agents, they say every time a new BA role is advertised they get loads of applicants (sometimes hundreds) and also uncertainty around Brexit have companies being cautious however I thought contractor market would be buoyant as companies wouldn't take on the risk employing permies. They also say my CV is at a very good high standard which makes me then think....Is there too many people for so few roles or is there other factors which I haven't yet mentioned?

Appreciate your replies.

Timing is a problem at the moment.

Inside the services industry, there are plenty of permie redundancy rounds going on at the moment and so people will be chancing their arm at a contract by sending in CV. Inside manufacturing and government they are doing well but the pay can be far lower unless you are on the DV cleared gravy chain.

After this election we will either have savage spending cuts and/or tax rises, this is going to result (over the next 18 months) in a crunch.

We got an national election running and euro elections. The euro elections IMHO are more of a problem for UK contractors.

In September the Tier 2 UK Visa reforms would have really started to bite at the labour pool (it has started already) and so these jobs will either be filled locally or permanently moved to 'lower cost countries'.

If you don't have money to last that long my advise is to take a pay cut and ride it out for 18 months. Even if you have money to last that long, in my area of expertise you would have a gig wave between the end of September and November to ride and then you may need to wait until the last week in Jan for the next wave.

[uk contractor]

I think the Passporting situation in Financial Services is having a very negative effect on the IT market and the economic inactivity trickles down to other industries if FS is not hiring much. Its clear the services sector in the UK (80% of our economy apparently!) has contracted a lot this year so expect to see some scary numbers when they correct the official numbers.

JP Morgan announced yesterday they may move some staff to Dublin for instance. As EU are determined to make it as difficult as possible for UK to leave the EU its obvious Passporting is not going to get a magic bullet solution anytime soon either.
JP Morgan buys bigger office for 1,000 staff in Dublin - BBC News

[SussexSeagull]

Obviously every contractor is different and some will be doing well but there are people who have been doing this for decades struggling at the moment, not just beginners.

[pauldee]

Obviously every contractor is different and some will be doing well but there are people who have been doing this for decades struggling at the moment, not just beginners.

Could this be because the rate of change of technology has accelerated in recent years? As I've mentioned before, you used to be able to get along just fine with .NET/SQL and a bit of front end knowledge, but now you need to know every JS framework imaginable.

[JohnM]

Be prepared to travel and be prepared to lower your rate

They are the two golden rules for me, apply nation (even EU wide) and when discussing rates with the agency always let them lead and ask "What is competitive with your client and other people you have put forward"

[squarepeg]

Could this be because the rate of change of technology has accelerated in recent years? As I've mentioned before, you used to be able to get along just fine with .NET/SQL and a bit of front end knowledge, but now you need to know every JS framework imaginable.

Knowing Django, Flask, RoR, AWS, and GCP won't hurt either. But you really need to know your Unix and the Open Source software ecosystem to get good rates. And you need to be willing to adapt to the world outside FS/PS. Unfortunately, when I get to screen CVs, most of the candidates from the FS/PS world never get a call from us. Their CVs go straight into the bin.

[SueEllen]

Knowing Django, Flask, RoR, AWS, and GCP won't hurt either. But you really need to know your Unix and the Open Source software ecosystem to get good rates. And you need to be willing to adapt to the world outside FS/PS. Unfortunately, when I get to screen CVs, most of the candidates from the FS/PS world never get a call from us. Their CVs go straight into the bin.

What even those with mixed experience?

[pauldee]

Knowing Django, Flask, RoR, AWS, and GCP won't hurt either. But you really need to know your Unix and the Open Source software ecosystem to get good rates. And you need to be willing to adapt to the world outside FS/PS. Unfortunately, when I get to screen CVs, most of the candidates from the FS/PS world never get a call from us. Their CVs go straight into the bin.

Why so?