State of the Market

[BR14]

i'm Sooo glad i'm an engineer, - agile, scrum devops, - all exist in a different world.
Bullsh1t Artists and Powerpoint Monkeys still pop up now and again though, unfortunately.

[Bluenose]

If i get enough junior resourcers calling me, admitting they have not seen a contract requirement from a financial services company in 4 months and if 'i know anything', I might switch my mobile number to a premium rate and change my PSC designation to 'Un-qualified Psychiatric services Ltd.'

I might actually earn more money that way in this quarter.

Oh, and also taking calls from wet-behind the ears contractors who have downed a bottle of bourbon and have just had their IP temporarily shadowbanned from Jobserve for 'higher than permitted traffic'...........

You know what they say, you need to see the bottom at least once to know what it looks like..........

[GhostofTarbera]

***** WTF IS GOING ON? *****

I came to this thread for a quick catch-up on the State of the Market. That's the name of the ******* thread after all. And all I find is talk about the piece of tulip that is agile. Can we get the thread back on track please, or just shut the ****er down?

+ 1

There does not appear to be a market anymore


Sent from my iPhone using Contractor UK Forum

[LondonManc]

Agile but most especially Scrum are terrible, at least in the way it his been adopted by most of industry. It is a form a micro management that leads to some very bad behaviours. This is about a 20 min read but a very good critique of it's failings.

https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com...-are-terrible/

Arf arf.

Had a read of that. Sounds like the OP is the slacker that is resenting being weeded out. What a car crash of an article. Doesn't have a clue how to do waterfall properly and clearly has never worked with good people who have respect for each other.

[BlackCountryContractor]

Hitting the bench for the 28th of Feb like many here, I had a interesting chat with a colleague who is a agency consultant and his probable view is that there is going to be a rush of horsetrading in march then market will be dead for a few months as everyone adjusts.

Myself I'm concidering whever or not to sit this out and keep my company dormant but still playing with the idea of of going permie for 2 years and then returning back once things are settled down.

[BritishLad88]

***** WTF IS GOING ON? *****

I came to this thread for a quick catch-up on the State of the Market. That's the name of the ******* thread after all. And all I find is talk about the piece of tulip that is agile. Can we get the thread back on track please, or just shut the ****er down?

well... the current state of market is .. depends on what industry you're in i guess.

From what I read in this thread seems PM,BA, Scrum roles are pretty much dead on the contracting side.
For other roles (especially the techie ones) there's still plenty of outside IR35 roles out there but it's just that:

1. likely to be very short term (3 months - 6 months max)
2. a role require very niche specialist/expert skillset
3. rates are driven lower than ever...
4. location is in obscure part of the UK

so for the generalist contractors looks like not much of those long term 12 month contracts that are outside IR35 anymore. These kind of contracts have been converted to become inside IR35 PAYE, FTC, require umbrella etc

Yes, market seems quieter than ever. Mainly so because big banks & other big enterprises are feeling a bit cold & want to cover themselves with blankets, (pun intended btw). As a result, smaller sized company are too chickened to hire outside IR35 contractors so instead only opening perm roles instead.
And with brexit uncertainty that have cloud us in recent times, not helping much putting a halt to certain projects being fired up.

And in terms of how that affect us - less and less outside IR35 roles have caused:
- some have switch to perm already
- benching themselves to see how things pan out
- some are willing to convert to umbrella, PAYE, be inside etc.

[tsmith]

well... the current state of market is .. depends on what industry you're in i guess.

From what I read in this thread seems PM,BA, Scrum roles are pretty much dead on the contracting side.
For other roles (especially the techie ones) there's still plenty of outside IR35 roles out there but it's just that:

1. likely to be very short term (3 months - 6 months max)
2. a role require very niche specialist/expert skillset
3. rates are driven lower than ever...
4. location is in obscure part of the UK

so for the generalist contractors looks like not much of those long term 12 month contracts that are outside IR35 anymore. These kind of contracts have been converted to become inside IR35 PAYE, FTC, require umbrella etc

Yes, market seems quieter than ever. Mainly so because big banks & other big enterprises are feeling a bit cold & want to cover themselves with blankets, (pun intended btw). As a result, smaller sized company are too chickened to hire outside IR35 contractors so instead only opening perm roles instead.
And with brexit uncertainty that have cloud us in recent times, not helping much putting a halt to certain projects being fired up.

And in terms of how that affect us - less and less outside IR35 roles have caused:
- some have switch to perm already
- benching themselves to see how things pan out
- some are willing to convert to umbrella, PAYE, be inside etc.

This is spot on BritishLad

[BigDataPro]

well... the current state of market is .. depends on what industry you're in i guess.

From what I read in this thread seems PM,BA, Scrum roles are pretty much dead on the contracting side.
For other roles (especially the techie ones) there's still plenty of outside IR35 roles out there but it's just that:

1. likely to be very short term (3 months - 6 months max)
2. a role require very niche specialist/expert skillset
3. rates are driven lower than ever...
4. location is in obscure part of the UK

so for the generalist contractors looks like not much of those long term 12 month contracts that are outside IR35 anymore. These kind of contracts have been converted to become inside IR35 PAYE, FTC, require umbrella etc

Yes, market seems quieter than ever. Mainly so because big banks & other big enterprises are feeling a bit cold & want to cover themselves with blankets, (pun intended btw). As a result, smaller sized company are too chickened to hire outside IR35 contractors so instead only opening perm roles instead.
And with brexit uncertainty that have cloud us in recent times, not helping much putting a halt to certain projects being fired up.

And in terms of how that affect us - less and less outside IR35 roles have caused:
- some have switch to perm already
- benching themselves to see how things pan out
- some are willing to convert to umbrella, PAYE, be inside etc.

True. A friend of mine (contractor) went for a number of Agile Coach / Scrum Master interviews only to be told that he should also have expert skills in Programming languages, Cloud and DevOps, so that he can act like a technical lead as well. He said to me "Mate, go and acquire some scrum certification like PSM 1. You will find roles instantly. Because they are looking for you (techie) and me (scrum master) in one candidate"

[PlanB]

True. A friend of mine (contractor) went for a number of Agile Coach / Scrum Master interviews only to be told that he should also have expert skills in Programming languages, Cloud and DevOps, so that he can act like a technical lead as well. He said to me "Mate, go and acquire some scrum certification like PSM 1. You will find roles instantly. Because they are looking for you (techie) and me (scrum master) in one candidate"

Madness, they are looking for an entire dev team in one person. I've done tech lead roles, but draw the line at running the Scrums, mainly as it is something I have zero interest in.

I'm something of a generalist and can code, deploy and lead but don't kid myself I'm an expert in anything but the first one.

They will quite possibly hire a complete BS artist.

[Paralytic]

They will quite possibly hire a complete BS artist.

That's funny, as the role I'm doing just now is pretty much the Scrum Master/Tech Lead BigDataPro describes