State of the Market

[BlasterBates]

The can was kicked down the road several times now. However it will be kicked alot further.

Bigger reason is offshoring. At least in IT overseas conditions are not too bad. In manufacturing there is child labour and no health/safety.

If the can can be kicked down the road indefinitely then you don't have a problem. It's like the Euro where for ten years ago, the argument has been the "can has been kicked further down the road". If debt is seen as a problem then the can has been successfully kicked down the road over the last few hundred years. The First World war debt was successfully kicked down the road for a hundred years.

What matters is not how much debt you have but is the debt affordable.

The only problem Britain now has is Brexit, which means a shrinking economy and rising spending might cause a completely new can, a big heavy one where you stub your toe painfully when you try to kick it down the road.

[Cirrus]

Talk to any veteran contractor who was around in the 90s and they will accept that things were beyond rosy. ... can you imagine being a contractor then? What a market it must have been!

I was a contractor in the 90s. And in the 80s. It wasn't that rosy. There were less people. But also less roles. True: I was never out of work.

That all came to a halt in 2002

[BlasterBates]

I was a contractor in the 90s. And in the 80s. It wasn't that rosy. There were less people. But also less roles. True: I was never out of work.

That all came to a halt in 2002

Absolutely it is a myth that the 1980's and 90's were great contracting years, getting a contract from a perm job was almost impossible in the 1980's unless you were some kind of hot shot.

There was a short boom in the late 1990's but that was a combination of the dot com boom and year 2000 problem and that all came to abrupt halt in 2002.

Offshoring and outsourcing was just as much an issue in the 1990's.

[perplexed]

Absolutely it is a myth that the 1980's and 90's were great contracting years, getting a contract from a perm job was almost impossible in the 1980's unless you were some kind of hot shot.

There was a short boom in the late 1990's but that was a combination of the dot com boom and year 2000 problem and that all came to abrupt halt in 2002.

Offshoring and outsourcing was just as much an issue in the 1990's.

I just don't see signs the market will improve anytime soon. I think for most contractors out there, finding a perm role for a few years is probably the best option right now. Get skilled up in newer techs, get money coming in and then see how the market changes.

I can see some public sector orgs will have to be spending big in the future - those deliberately shedding contractors to replace with recent grads for example will definitely need people back in few years to fix the inevitable problems... but that's in the future.

[perplexed]

I eventually got a contract in the health sector, which I have no previous experience of but had previously worked with someone there.

Three weeks in I am picking up nicely and basically left to get on with it. If only agents and clients looked past keyword bingo the industry would be in a much better place.

Agents in particular use buzzword bingo because they haven't got a ******** clue about the tech. it's as simple as that - I'm fed up explaining JavaScript isn't Java for example.

Clients want agents to provide resources, filter out chancers. That's all fine and dandy but it's almost impossible as a developer to have a technical discussion with an agent which demonstrates your level of knowledge about a tech the client wants that may not be on your CV commercially. A good agent would push a CV like that with "well, X lacks Y in terms of commercial experience but has demonstrated he knows the concepts - maybe it would be worth you interviewing based upon that?". That's overly idealistic on my part, to be fair.

Agents and clients fail to grasp a CV with disparate technologies shows an ability to be flexible and adapt. I've used several techs in contracts I'd not used before - how do they think I did so? A magic fairy helped me? A combination of market factors imo make getting a role where you match but not perfectly is incredibly difficult right now.

[SussexSeagull]

Absolutely it is a myth that the 1980's and 90's were great contracting years, getting a contract from a perm job was almost impossible in the 1980's unless you were some kind of hot shot.

There was a short boom in the late 1990's but that was a combination of the dot com boom and year 2000 problem and that all came to abrupt halt in 2002.

Offshoring and outsourcing was just as much an issue in the 1990's.

When I was permanent in the 90s Contractors were very much the top of the tree and treated with almost reverence. In practice some deserved it and some didn't!

It has gone from one or two specialists to entire projects being resourced by Contractors (peaking three or four years ago perhaps). Wage stagnation has meant a lot of people who previously would have had a steady career and earnings growth over decades went contracting to earn a better life.

[BlasterBates]

When I was permanent in the 90s Contractors were very much the top of the tree and treated with almost reverence. In practice some deserved it and some didn't!

It has gone from one or two specialists to entire projects being resourced by Contractors (peaking three or four years ago perhaps). Wage stagnation has meant a lot of people who previously would have had a steady career and earnings growth over decades went contracting to earn a better life.

At the beginning of the 90's virtually everyone was perm and there were few contractors always spoken to in hushed reverent tones , by the end of the 1990's everyone was a contractor, and by 2003 they were all on the bench.

[BrilloPad]

At the beginning of the 90's virtually everyone was perm and there were few contractors always spoken to in hushed reverent tones , by the end of the 1990's everyone was a contractor, and by 2003 they were all on the bench.

For a thicko remoaner like you, I can believe it.

[gables]

I was a contractor in the 90s. And in the 80s. It wasn't that rosy. There were less people. But also less roles. True: I was never out of work.

That all came to a halt in 2002

Absolutely it is a myth that the 1980's and 90's were great contracting years, getting a contract from a perm job was almost impossible in the 1980's unless you were some kind of hot shot.

There was a short boom in the late 1990's but that was a combination of the dot com boom and year 2000 problem and that all came to abrupt halt in 2002.

Offshoring and outsourcing was just as much an issue in the 1990's.

It's interesting how experiences differ. I started contracting in 1993 having been permie with DEC for only 4 years out of Uni. Never had a gap until 2002 when I chose to leave to start a retail\online business. I didn't feel roles were in short supply but certainly there were less contractors to fill those roles, which meant for extensions rate rises were (for me and my friends) the norm.

Contrast that with now, where supply is high, demand is low, hence putting pressure on rates and certainly no rise on extension for the same role which is probably how it should be.

When I was permanent in the 90s Contractors were very much the top of the tree and treated with almost reverence. In practice some deserved it and some didn't!

We were the dogs bollox mind fantastic it was

[l35kee]

I eventually got a contract in the health sector, which I have no previous experience of but had previously worked with someone there.

Three weeks in I am picking up nicely and basically left to get on with it. If only agents and clients looked past keyword bingo the industry would be in a much better place.

They have to pick something though, keyword bingo is at least a method.. It's extremely difficult trying to filter through a pile of CVs to figure out who is worth the time spending a couple of hours of your already extremely day to interview, from a couple of pages of words..

Having said that, my current role is also in a domain I had no experience of.. Couple months in I'm probably the go to guy now. Soft skills still aren't as focused on as they should be.