State of the Market

[willendure]

They don' t typically walk into jobs, because:

• Bad interviews, insane interviewers, bad managers, who lose the serious talent folk - like A&R in the early 1960's missing out on signing the four young guys from Merseyside, who didn't fit the mindset profile of the interviewer.
• Bad code / overly extreme death programming exercises - take home projects that seriously do your brain in (only desperate devs will ever mount them)
• Terrible code interview experiences - if you are nervous during live coding, dyslexic, or the exercise is so stupid, "build a merge sort from scratch" - who knows that since university? If you need a sort, call a library API for it.
• Prejudice against ethnicity, sexuality and "othering" so called culture-fit issue
• Elitism - we are bad-8ss ThoughtWorkers and we need people who look like us and behave like us, sing like us, dance like us, and obey the rules like us, and we only hire people like that, lady.
• Far too many steps in the interview process (Goldman Sachs investment bank, I am looking at you with the 7 stages of process and this was in the "Noughties" J.F.C!)
• The right CV fit - that old chestnut suited to the industry, vertical sector and niche - "no banking experience" "not enough digital agency jobs / contract. Sorry."

When the market is weak hiring managers can get picky, since they have plenty applicants to choose from. I feel like job specs at the moment are setting the bar very high whilst offering uninspiring rates. It changes if the market is strong and they are practically pulling bodies off the street.

[Fraidycat]

When the market is weak hiring managers can get picky, since they have plenty applicants to choose from. I feel like job specs at the moment are setting the bar very high whilst offering uninspiring rates. It changes if the market is strong and they are practically pulling bodies off the street.

It is the old, "is it a buyers or sellers market".

Currently more contractors on the bench than gigs so its a buyers market at the moment.

That being said even in the boom times when its sellers market, if you give a bad interview you can ruin your chances for something that should be a slam dunk.

[dsc]

They don' t typically walk into jobs, because:

• Bad interviews, insane interviewers, bad managers, who lose the serious talent folk - like A&R in the early 1960's missing out on signing the four young guys from Merseyside, who didn't fit the mindset profile of the interviewer.
• Bad code / overly extreme death programming exercises - take home projects that seriously do your brain in (only desperate devs will ever mount them)
• Terrible code interview experiences - if you are nervous during live coding, dyslexic, or the exercise is so stupid, "build a merge sort from scratch" - who knows that since university? If you need a sort, call a library API for it.
• Prejudice against ethnicity, sexuality and "othering" so called culture-fit issue
• Elitism - we are bad-8ss ThoughtWorkers and we need people who look like us and behave like us, sing like us, dance like us, and obey the rules like us, and we only hire people like that, lady.
• Far too many steps in the interview process (Goldman Sachs investment bank, I am looking at you with the 7 stages of process and this was in the "Noughties" J.F.C!)
• The right CV fit - that old chestnut suited to the industry, vertical sector and niche - "no banking experience" "not enough digital agency jobs / contract. Sorry."

That can apply to any position really (with some details changed of course), what I meant is that the demand for sw devs is so high (or was at least), that as long as you have some exp in delivery, you'd be fine. I guess even that is no longer the case, I'm curious if it's a temporary thing or more long term.

[tsmith]

Recruiter LI post says contract market currently dead gets 2000 likes and 160 comments

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nickg...member_desktop

[avonleigh]

Recruiter LI post says contract market currently dead gets 2000 likes and 160 comments

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nickg...member_desktop

Grim reading that. Not just IT then that is going through this.

[tsmith]

Grim reading that. Not just IT then that is going through this.

AI + OFFSHORING = RIP UK

"Companies are accelerating their efforts to send jobs to lower-cost countries in response to the challenge of finding workers and inflation driving up wages. A recent Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta survey found that 7.3% of leadership in the United States plans to move more jobs offshore as the next step from remote work within America.

Richard Baldwin, an economics professor at the Graduate Institute in Geneva who studied the “offshoreability” of teleworking jobs, gave a warning at the European-based Center for Economic Policy Research last year, “If you can do your job from home, be scared.” Baldwin added, “Be very scared because somebody in India or wherever is willing to do it for much less.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkel...h=36c98e4742a1

[sreed]

Grim reading that. Not just IT then that is going through this.

Definitely not just tech. Media, animation, gaming, digital marketing, etc. are all going through huge changes involving AI and AI enabled offshoring. What's worse (for the people involved) is that a lot of jobs in these areas are freelance and contracts so changes filter through very quickly.

Agency cos in this space like Publicis, Omnicom, Dentsu are offshoring and near-shoring jobs by the tens of thousands.
https://www.campaignasia.com/article...ategies/484143

In the coming years, you can bet that countries like the US, and EU are going to get more protectionist about things like these.

[Fraidycat]

Grim reading that. Not just IT then that is going through this.

IT has been in slump for 20 months now, started middle of 2022. What industry is that linked in thread about, have they only started to really feel it now?

Thats to be expected from the 18 month delay from interest rates hikes to really hit the economy, but the IT contract market saw the effect after just 6 months.

Although 18 months ago interest rates were only 3%, so thats what the wider economy is feeling at the moment, just 3% interest rates, it might still require another six to nine months before the economy feels the full effect of 5% interest rates.

[tsmith]

sreed yes the agency space is hyper competitive / not much to differentiate apart from price - love that quote "WPP said it was using offshoring to mitigate salary inflation"

Put a more accurate way we're offshoring as UK people are too expensive and we need to get cheaper wages asap to undercut the competition whos still not offshoring yet and make more profit for our senior management bonus fund.

Fraidycat - agreed. I guess theres been people out of the loop in contracts or maternity leave and its only just dawned on them

Im not convinced even if they put interest rates down to 1% it would make much difference to our industry - it feels like the end of an era

I agree with Techleads take...

"A low opportunity, low growth, stagnant era that we're living through where theres nothing really exciting going on"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l222fIkesAY

[gables]

Well as we all know offshoring has been around for ages (decades) but if it is ramping up maybe then, just maybe, we should stop with the insistence on remote roles and start sending out the message that on site is best for projects\deliverables etc? And I include myself in this as someone who has relished the remote working of recent years.