State of the Market

[cojak]

it's not the rate, it's the principle.

you'd also have time off

Principles are fine and dandy if you have a regular income or breaking them puts you on the wrong side of the law.

Otherwise it’s known as cutting off your nose to spite your face.

[GigiBronz]

Principles are fine and dandy if you have a regular income or breaking them puts you on the wrong side of the law.

Otherwise it’s known as cutting off your nose to spite your face.

It is true... most of the people cannot afford to sit this one out. They should not act on spite and think what is better for themselves.
£260pd to be fair is slightly better than draining a bit more out of your warchest and taking a side job stocking shelves.

My personal advice, for those who can afford to, just take a holiday outside, enjoy some sunny days. Rent your home out.
Times are uncertain, maybe it will get better, maybe not. There is life outside work and for now the risk/reward of contracting is out of balance.

[FIERCE TANK BATTLE]

They don't realise that offering £260 is gonna get you someone tulip, even in trying times. All the decent contractors should have a warchest and be able to sit and wait for the good (or at least, average) roles.

I went to a gig at 380 and there was another guy there who later revealed he was on 270.

Guy was the tuliptest contractor i've ever met, they eventually canned him when he accidentally took the entire public website down without a backup. His work was utterly garbage.

He was proper miffed because he was in mortgage arrears and desperate for the cash.

This is what you get when you offer £260. Even in trying times.

[GhostofTarbera]

They don't realise that offering £260 is gonna get you someone tulip, even in trying times. All the decent contractors should have a warchest and be able to sit and wait for the good (or at least, average) roles.

I went to a gig at 380 and there was another guy there who later revealed he was on 270.

Guy was the tuliptest contractor i've ever met, they eventually canned him when he accidentally took the entire public website down without a backup. His work was utterly garbage.

He was proper miffed because he was in mortgage arrears and desperate for the cash.

This is what you get when you offer £260. Even in trying times.

£260 outside IR35 will soon be better than £450 inside IR35 if you have some expenses


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[suityou01]

I read (I think in this thread although I'll be darned if I can find it) about folks finding more and more interviewers using the gattling gun quick fire question and answer method to do the interview.

This is very unimaginative, extremely subjective and I for one certainly don't hold up well under this barrage of questioning. I am a deep thinker, not a performing seal.

I am now making a habit of failing these interviews it seems and getting feedback that I am technically weak or not a good fit for the team. Joking aside from the normal ritual abuse I get on here, I am in all seriousness not arf bad at what I do so this is not really a fair assessment of my skills and abilities. It is however a fair assessment of how I performed at interview, which would be really really badly.

Take for example my most recent experience. I see a gig on JS, tailor the old CV, fire it off and get an interview. Nice. Then I get a brief on the format of the interview and some handy pointers on what to bone up on (presumably from previously interviewed candidates that didn't make the cut and were grilled by the agent as to what questions they were asked). So I knew that async/await patterns were high up the list and that strong SQL skills were a must, also experience with Dapper (a light weight ORM written and used by the chaps at StackOverflow) was important.

So we kick off with question 1. What are the join types in SQL Server. I rattle them off. The interviewer seems surprised I mention CROSS JOINS, so I get a bonus question of explaining how they work. He disagrees with me about how they work. Fair enough, but I explain what I mean but he is not interested. "You can look it up on your own time" comes his frosty retort. Wow.

Question 2. What is a table variable. I pause. Is this a trick question? I mean I can't use the word "table" or "tabular" in my answer as this isn't really much of an answer. "It's the diammetric opposite of a scalar, and let me explain what I mean by that."

"It has nothing to do with scalars".

"Yes, but...."

"It's a table, it has nothing to do with scalars".

"OK but I was meaning the diammetric opposite of scalar, in that a scalar holds one value, it is effectively one row and one column, so the diammetric opposite of that is many rows and many columns"

"It has nothing to do with scalars".

"OK how about key value pairs?"

"It has nothing to do with key value pairs"

"A table is just a tupular array of key value pairs though"

"I think I've heard enough. I will give feedback to your agent"...... <click>

Feedback received "Not a good fit for the team right now".

Gone are the days when you could have an interview where you were actually interviewed, and could talk around things and explain what you meant. Unless you give the answer that is word for word what is on their scrap of paper you are hosed.

To that end the barrier to entry is set too high for me right now. You need to find a role that actually exists, is paying enough, that is outside of IR35, that you can commute to, that you have the exact versions of all the javascript libraries and frameworks on their lengthy shopping list, that you give the varbatim correct answers to their GCSE level quiz, no points for workings out.

An example I gave to a muggle was imagine being asked to define "colour" in an interview. You sit baffled about where to start, then choose your approach. You're going to build upon the biology of the retina and visible wavelengths. The interviewer cuts you off at the knees and tells you you are wrong, and you should have listed ROYGBIV.

[Old Greg]

I read (I think in this thread although I'll be darned if I can find it) about folks finding more and more interviewers using the gattling gun quick fire question and answer method to do the interview.

This is very unimaginative, extremely subjective and I for one certainly don't hold up well under this barrage of questioning. I am a deep thinker, not a performing seal.

I am now making a habit of failing these interviews it seems and getting feedback that I am technically weak or not a good fit for the team. Joking aside from the normal ritual abuse I get on here, I am in all seriousness not arf bad at what I do so this is not really a fair assessment of my skills and abilities. It is however a fair assessment of how I performed at interview, which would be really really badly.

Take for example my most recent experience. I see a gig on JS, tailor the old CV, fire it off and get an interview. Nice. Then I get a brief on the format of the interview and some handy pointers on what to bone up on (presumably from previously interviewed candidates that didn't make the cut and were grilled by the agent as to what questions they were asked). So I knew that async/await patterns were high up the list and that strong SQL skills were a must, also experience with Dapper (a light weight ORM written and used by the chaps at StackOverflow) was important.

So we kick off with question 1. What are the join types in SQL Server. I rattle them off. The interviewer seems surprised I mention CROSS JOINS, so I get a bonus question of explaining how they work. He disagrees with me about how they work. Fair enough, but I explain what I mean but he is not interested. "You can look it up on your own time" comes his frosty retort. Wow.

Question 2. What is a table variable. I pause. Is this a trick question? I mean I can't use the word "table" or "tabular" in my answer as this isn't really much of an answer. "It's the diammetric opposite of a scalar, and let me explain what I mean by that."

"It has nothing to do with scalars".

"Yes, but...."

"It's a table, it has nothing to do with scalars".

"OK but I was meaning the diammetric opposite of scalar, in that a scalar holds one value, it is effectively one row and one column, so the diammetric opposite of that is many rows and many columns"

"It has nothing to do with scalars".

"OK how about key value pairs?"

"It has nothing to do with key value pairs"

"A table is just a tupular array of key value pairs though"

"I think I've heard enough. I will give feedback to your agent"...... <click>

Feedback received "Not a good fit for the team right now".

Gone are the days when you could have an interview where you were actually interviewed, and could talk around things and explain what you meant. Unless you give the answer that is word for word what is on their scrap of paper you are hosed.

To that end the barrier to entry is set too high for me right now. You need to find a role that actually exists, is paying enough, that is outside of IR35, that you can commute to, that you have the exact versions of all the javascript libraries and frameworks on their lengthy shopping list, that you give the varbatim correct answers to their GCSE level quiz, no points for workings out.

An example I gave to a muggle was imagine being asked to define "colour" in an interview. You sit baffled about where to start, then choose your approach. You're going to build upon the biology of the retina and visible wavelengths. The interviewer cuts you off at the knees and tells you you are wrong, and you should have listed ROYGBIV.

Sounds awful, Suity. I don't do interviews any more.

[suityou01]

Sounds awful, Suity. I don't do interviews any more.

You retard?

[dx4100]

I am finding a similar theme to interviews.

I personally breakdown with the one on one peer programming exercises some clients love to use now. Feedback is am a weak developer

I think the best interview process is giving the space to the candidate to showcase to me why I should take them on. If I am going up with a rigid interview process and basically trying to put them in a box and expecting them to behave like a performing monkey I am not going to be getting the right people in.

Just seems utterly pointless me to be asking 20-30 year experience contractors to tell me what a join is, questions around basic OO principles - at best they are just going to give me a basic stock answer most juniors would give me and at worse I am going to catch them out on a bad day asking them something they haven't answered in 10 years and just do every day without thinking. I don't see the point.

Much better to talk around what people have been up too - and ask a few searching questions around that. Its pretty easy to asses what skills people can bring to a project. If you really want to some some code in anger - give them the space to do it at home and submit it to you. I am much more interested to see what they can do with everything going for them rather than me creating some toxic artificial environment.

The reality is a lot of dev hiring managers are simply the tech guy that's been there the longest - and everything that goes with that.

[tsmith]

Maybe because supply and demand balance shifted so theres more candidates per role.

Therefore increase in numbers of interviews that companies are doing to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Result = more quick fire questions to "cut to the chase" to see if you can cut it.

[GhostofTarbera]

Just met an agent at canary wharf, this at least this one paid for a beer, but asked if i want some crips, I said yes so he got some out of his bag saying times were tough

Tesco 6 for 89p

Said he had no roles but fancied a beer


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