State of the Market

[tsmith]

I can't think of anything that won't get bobbed eventually, even extremely technical stuff like data science, there is a production line of statistics Phds all the way back to Beijing and Delhi.

As far as devops is concerned I am surprised that companies are willing to pay so much for engineers who know how to put a kubernetes cluster together efficiently when most of the time a simple cloud native solution would have done.

Any developer worth their salt should be able to get an app onto a PaaS and the whole devops role becomes redundant.

I'm also amazed at the amount companies are willing to spend on cloud solutions with their opaque subscription models, and have seen several burnt with massive and unexpected bills.

I think there will be a big movement to private clouds and pure PaaS.

"Any developer worth their salt should be able to get an app onto a PaaS and the whole devops role becomes redundant."

Exactly "Devops" has been simplified / noddy-fied. Back in the day it was a lot more command line interface driven.

Theres been an avalanche of work getting stuff from onprem to cloud. some consultancies have done very well riding that train. once everybody off on premise - the devops hype train will hit the buffers - its starting to slow already

Surely only very large enterprise companies will have enough work for a team of 'devops' engineers moving forwards

[rocktronAMP]

Market has been ballistic for me since just before xmas after an exceedingly quiet Oct/Nov. I started a new consulting gig at beginning of Jan and had calls for five interim IT director roles since I started.

There definitely seems to be a lot of movement in the market for very senior roles, several friends have also confirmed this. Would imply that there should be a wave of hiring starting in the next 3 months.

I'm also recruiting 25 permies at my new client so it's not all doom and gloom.

I wish I could get an interim director role myself . Where do CEO /companies go hunting for interim? What website do they use?

Disclaimer: I had someone come to me a few times in as many months about Chief Technology Officer role (permanent) and speculatively about a new startup "be employee number 3 and even become CTO" - none of them were appropriate really. The last one about becoming CTO contract to permanent seem to me like recruiter tulip.

[northernladuk]

They don't. If they are any good people a companies find them. Those that aren't good enough to be found have to ask questions on anonymous forums..

[rocktronAMP]

It is not the market for Generalists at all.

I managed to get a contract as a BA in a very niche and in demand sector within Investments. I am fielding around 2-3 calls a week asking if I am available to go for another role along with the rates going up.

This market is going to get tougher after IR35 lands however I truly believe there is a correction going on where the true Outside IR35 contractors will prevail.

With this view, I probably will be heading to an IR35 at this rate, I tend to agree with. There is no loyalty to client-co and / or agency. So if you are proved to be correct ContractorHardman, then I am going bail whatever it is that I am doing in 6 months. The new philosophy is / will be Always Be Available and Interviewing

[dx4100]

So finishing with current client on the 21st Feb - outside IR35 (they did offer outside extension but I don't want it lol)

Just secured a new gig from the 1st March - inside IR35 - 3 months but should extend... Rate is higher than usual to compensate some what and the agent was telling me about something called paid holidays etc ? ? Whatever they are...

Either way just glad to have something to ride out the storm.

[rocktronAMP]

They don't. If they are any good people a companies find them. Those that aren't good enough to be found have to ask questions on anonymous forums..

Ha! Thanks NorthernLadUK , the fact that I have been contacted or other people have thought of me as a potential CTO leaves me hope. Maybe, I will get to live on that mythical White Mansion on the very Top of the Hill looking down on the all punks.

[ContractorHardman]

With this view, I probably will be heading to an IR35 at this rate, I tend to agree with. There is no loyalty to client-co and / or agency. So if you are proved to be correct ContractorHardman, then I am going bail whatever it is that I am doing in 6 months. The new philosophy is / will be Always Be Available and Interviewing

The thing about IR35 is what has really changed? Nothing on the surface. It is just a switch of liability from one source to another to filter out contractors who were always inside IR35.

IR35 was designed to turf out your Permie-tractors who sit in the same role for years. The average career in Financial Services is 2.5 years (It has been a while since I read that Stat so dont quote me) and whilst some projects may go over that, the proper projects wont go past that. All of my contracts have been projects to either implementing, fixing or designing something before handing it over to BAU then waving the client off good bye.

Now where this IR35 change gets unfair is at the Client level. They are blanket banning contractors due to Liability over IR35. If there was a fair and independent judgement of who is and isn't in IR35 then this wouldn't be bad. Companies like HSBC who have blanket banned Contractors are doing so unfairly however I do wonder how they are going to replace such a massive loss of skilled workers which makes me think that there will be a further correction in a year or two where they will begin to assess contractors on a case by case basis once they realise there is a lot of things to deliver but no one to deliver them.

IR35 wont end contractors, it ends the 7 year in the same role at the same company contractors!

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk

[LondonManc]

That reminds me of my week long training in Lean UX. It is something like Agile extended to product development. After all, since you are expecting the devs to manage themselves, do operations and deployments and testing, you might as well get them to design the product as well. We were LITERALLY told to go to the bus station and ask people whether one page layout was better than another. Absolute hell.

Sounds crazy, letting furry-toothed geeks out in public. We'd never let that happen.

[CheeseSlice]

Almost every call I get now is about a perm role. Agent asks what I'm up to then "would you consider a permanent role?", or "what sort of salary would interest you?".

The other calls that I get about contracts are from offshore bob agents who are almost certainly getting their RLMT tick-box stamp to process a visa for someone else.

[Bluenose]

I wish I could get an interim director role myself . Where do CEO /companies go hunting for interim? What website do they use?

Disclaimer: I had someone come to me a few times in as many months about Chief Technology Officer role (permanent) and speculatively about a new startup "be employee number 3 and even become CTO" - none of them were appropriate really. The last one about becoming CTO contract to permanent seem to me like recruiter tulip.

Finding and interim Director/CTO role is a cake, just refine your linkedin profile and the AI will connect you. Linkedin has become especially good in the past year or so as they have amped up the job board code as they smell Google is about to come in an steal their lunch (next few years).

The problem with these roles, apart from the unicorn ones with 250 applications, is that you end up working 60 hour weeks for crap money. If its a startup, 80% of them go bust.

Once you have done one, you realise how good the 35 hour week, contract specialist roles have been to us, having a fancy title is good an all but the reality is rarely as good as the concept.