State of the Market

[agentzero]

You mean that because interest rates are dropping that things are worse off?

I'm not saying you're all doom & gloom, but you're complaining that interest rates are down and that the stock market is up.
The crash that some on here have been predicting for the last 4 years hasn't been the big bad thing, and those with any sense are busy paying off their debts, not borrowing to "invest".

Perhaps you should stick a few million in hedge funds if you're so convinced that in the next 2 weeks interest rates will be 20%, house prices will be at 1970 levels, and all the people who said they were going to leave the UK a few weeks ago actually do.

Your normal sensible posting style has went awry here. It is true that many of us are on our highest rates ever and in good, apparently stable interesting contracts.

Not everybody is. It's important to have empathy and recognise that luck and chance are often down to us being in contract during downturns. Nobody can deny we are seeing a significant downturn, I see it all around me in friends and family across the UK, Europe, and the world.

Read the financial times and a lot of companies do not look healthy at all. The money bubble seems to have inflated previously good quality companies. There is a lot of rot. We are arguably due a recession since the covid postponement of one. If it happens soon, I would prefer that, as this will allow the market to reset and get contracts emerging for those who need them.

The clue for me is that there a hell of a lot of good contractors on the bench right now, people who I trust and I know to be experts in their fields. They are getting offered pitiful rates. I'm in contract but am not a loudmouth and have empathy. The biggest clue for me is that I have walked away from concurrent projects relating to AI. It is hype and I've never seen so much money wasted. Normal business automation would save a lot of money, the notion that AI can just magically make everything better is starting to disappear as an idea, thankfully, and not before time. When this realisation spreads it is then that we will see the crash and market reset. Better sooner than later for the sake of those on this forum.

[squarepeg]

The clue for me is that there a hell of a lot of good contractors on the bench right now, people who I trust and I know to be experts in their fields. They are getting offered pitiful rates. I'm in contract but am not a loudmouth and have empathy. The biggest clue for me is that I have walked away from concurrent projects relating to AI. It is hype and I've never seen so much money wasted. Normal business automation would save a lot of money, the notion that AI can just magically make everything better is starting to disappear as an idea, thankfully, and not before time. When this realisation spreads it is then that we will see the crash and market reset. Better sooner than later for the sake of those on this forum.

Companies use AI to scare their workforce into thinking that it's better to not ask for more money or else they will be replaced by a bulltulipting LLM. Wayfair even went as far as telling their people to train AI to do their job and then fired them.

I said no to an AI startup who wanted to pay me half my usual rate after a three-stage interview involving timed coding, a technical assessment interview, and a business interview. They do pair programming and are believers in hexagonal architectures... the recruiter was surprised, but we both had a chuckle when I said that if their AI cannot tell that I have enough experience for this job from my CV then perhaps the product is not that great.

[jamesbrown]

Your post is crass and clearly incorrect. The single anecdote is yours. The person to whom you replied is currently the majority of contractors. I'm also in a good position, in a well remunerated role, but have the intelligence to know it's luck, rather than something unique about me or my roles or divine intervention. It's not nice to pretend others are at fault when there is a direct correlation between the stockmarket trend upwards or downwards and volume of contractor roles upwards or downwards.

The contractor market statistics speak volumes, or lack of volume if we're avoiding puns.

In this sense, it's probably worth you being binned from your role soon to ensure that you learn to be humble, which as I have done throughout my long contracting career. If the expected stockmarket major correction occurs soon then it would be fitting if you weren't spared. My patience for contractors who are too big for boots expired a couple of decades ago.

Indeed, you have been quite lucky

It’s interesting, nonetheless, that stock markets have been doing pretty well post-pandemic, but contractors with commoditised IT skillsets seemingly have not been doing so well. It’s a basic premise of linear association that the relationship between the associated variables holds during upturns as well as downturns.

It’s also curious that such a “humble zealot” would wish others to lose work. I’ve made no such scummy comments. On the contrary I would like anyone out of work here to get work. A very revealing personality trait of yours, methinks.

[swamp]

Some good news from the government:

https://www.ft.com/content/b8d4fba5-...b-182d21eb08e0

[oliverson]

Some good news from the government:

https://www.ft.com/content/b8d4fba5-...b-182d21eb08e0

Behind a paywall, and a very expensive one at that.

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Then £59 per month.
g £Try unlimited access

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[eek]

Some good news from the government:

https://www.ft.com/content/b8d4fba5-...b-182d21eb08e0

Readable version https://www.standard.co.uk/news/poli...-b1175334.html

[OzzieExpat]

Readable version https://www.standard.co.uk/news/poli...-b1175334.html

That's a joke. It's already too late.

[SussexSeagull]

That's a joke. It's already too late.

Better late than never I guess but most of us saw it coming 15 years ago.

[ladymuck]

Behind a paywall, and a very expensive one at that.

//---------------

Try unlimited access

Only £1 for 4 weeks


Then £59 per month.
g £Try unlimited access

Only £1 for 4 weeks


Then £59 per month.

//---------------

Who in their right mind would take out a subscription for £ 59 a month?!?!

Put the URL into archive.ph and they'll return the content for free

[willendure]

Your last post about the markets and recession were fair. This post is mad. Labour are not "anti commercial activity", which is a huge badge to attach to what is going on now. The current administration are very obviously not Marxists either.

Why did you post this rubbish? Some people here seem to read zerohedge and take some sewage seriously. It's disturbing.

Fair enough - it probably is rubish. I think my fear is that Labour want to tax the tulip out people like us, viewing us as nothing more than an easy target to squeeze some cash out of because they know what better to do with it.

We need to let ordinary people (like us) accumulate wealth in this country, and I feel like a lot of people who voted Labour find that idea somehow unpleasant. They cannot distinguish between a contractor building up £1 million for their pension, which is realistically what you will need, over a lifetime of honest work, from some Tory crony cheating the taxpayer out of £100 million. It would be a good thing in my view if wealth was more evenly distributed, but I disagree that taxing the hell out of the middle classes is the way to achieve it. If ordinary people can save money, then they can invest, and pretty soon a virtuous feedback cycle will develop - this funny thing called capitalism. If governments and central banks are constantly changing the rules and interfering, its more like central planning, we'll all be constantly looking over a shoulder worrying that our hard earned might be stolen away by the tax man for the greater good. In reality, the greater good is to let people keep it, because that actually does not mean they keep a pile of cash under their mattress, its invested or in a bank account, which means its lent out to someone else to grow the economy with.

That said, given the state of the nations finances, the options are pretty slim on what to do about it.