State of the Market

[AndrewK]

Indeed.

The funniest thing was we decided we could at least use them to format reports.
The state when they had "finished" them was pretty terrible to be frank, everything misaligned, different fonts, sizes and colours the business would have laughed us out of town.

We realised why when we got the guy to share his screen and he was trying to size everything using the mouse, as he didn't realise you could set the column widths via a dialog box.

We have expensive Indian out-source workers. They used web page (with graphical watches) to convert EST to UTC time (300 lines CSV). Took a little bit time. But they managed.

[jfazzie]

Calls from these agencies are only going to increase, my current banking client is now looking to get all PM and BA roles through TCS who are unable to resource right candidates. But TCS have already committed to lower rates so they can't supply people at loss and after cheap contractors - nothing new in this except ALL new roles will go to them.

And I know from the calls that I have received at least two other banks have done same (at least partially).

Was called about one of these so called roles. Trying to negotiate down £100 - £150 below market rate with the old "I've got a guy who will take £370", err ok then they can have it.

[oliverson]

Indeed.

The funniest thing was we decided we could at least use them to format reports.
The state when they had "finished" them was pretty terrible to be frank, everything misaligned, different fonts, sizes and colours the business would have laughed us out of town.

We realised why when we got the guy to share his screen and he was trying to size everything using the mouse, as he didn't realise you could set the column widths via a dialog box.

Seen a similar thing on a WPF project I worked on when aligning a form. SDD - Spacebar Driven Development.

<TextBlock Text="Surname:____________________________________ ____________________________"/>

n.b. imagine the underscores are white space

[oliverson]

Whilst following up on my own response is a sure fire sign of madness, I wanted to resurrect the original intent of the thread and just add that the current market has to be the worst I have ever seen it in almost 13 years of contracting (.NET, web, whatever). Is it possible to get even worse? I'm beginning to question whether contracting is actually a viable business model and that's before the govt start twisting the knife even more.

[quackhandle]

Whilst following up on my own response is a sure fire sign of madness, I wanted to resurrect the original intent of the thread and just add that the current market has to be the worst I have ever seen it in almost 13 years of contracting (.NET, web, whatever). Is it possible to get even worse? I'm beginning to question whether contracting is actually a viable business model and that's before the govt start twisting the knife even more.

This +1.

qh

[MrMarkyMark]

Whilst following up on my own response is a sure fire sign of madness, I wanted to resurrect the original intent of the thread and just add that the current market has to be the worst I have ever seen it in almost 13 years of contracting (.NET, web, whatever). Is it possible to get even worse? I'm beginning to question whether contracting is actually a viable business model and that's before the govt start twisting the knife even more.

Yes, its bloody harsh out there.

The Mrs and I both contract and she has just started to get one or two calls now, she has been looking for a few months. Obviously, there is the summer lull to consider, but usually you would expect one or two things to crop up.

Luckily, in hindsight, I had a couple lined up with the German bank currently in big in trouble, but these fell through.
I then had a previous client contact me for a direct role at a decent rate, I believe I would still be on the bench otherwise.

[Big Blue Plymouth]

Yes the state of the market is appalling.

I have 10 years in the MS stack with a few other strings in my bow e.g. various CMS, number of JavaScript frameworks, good backend skills too.

I am now nearly at the point where I will be longer out of work than during the Crisis.

Then I could understand, yes, But why now? Service sector is booming.

Agents tell me market is totally saturated with out of work contractors.

I now am thinking that I need to spend some time reskilling otherwise I worry about being out of work long term unless the market will dramatically pick up soon.

[jamesbrown]

Whilst following up on my own response is a sure fire sign of madness, I wanted to resurrect the original intent of the thread and just add that the current market has to be the worst I have ever seen it in almost 13 years of contracting (.NET, web, whatever). Is it possible to get even worse? I'm beginning to question whether contracting is actually a viable business model and that's before the govt start twisting the knife even more.

You're in IB, right? I'm not massively surprised w/r to the general trend in IB, plus the post-Brexit situation. I haven't noticed anything in my particular niche area (mainly math/stats consultancy for large civil engineering projects), but it's a world away from the London IB scene. Perhaps it's IT more generally though...

[SussexSeagull]

Hasn't picked up in Testing either. As said elsewhere it must be the availability of out of work contractors as all the other indicators would seem quite encouraging.

Really don't fancy going back to a permanent job.

[MrMarkyMark]

Hasn't picked up in Testing either. As said elsewhere it must be the availability of out of work contractors as all the other indicators would seem quite encouraging.

Really don't fancy going back to a permanent job.

My Mrs is a Test Manager, been well dead up to now.
She is just getting 1 or 2 calls now, but it's still well slow.