State of the Market

[LordAsriel]

Mmm - well, that's it, I don't have much in the way of interviews at the moment. The few I've had haven't panned out, because either they have had stronger candidates (high supply for all demand), and looking for stronger software dev skills. I'm just a humble cloud architect, eight years experience in AWS and Azure, integrating or migrating on-prem to cloud, either by VM to EC2, or redesign solution for Lambda/DynamoDB/ECS/EKS/Mesh/sprouts/stuffing/gravy. I'm relatively light in modern dev skills, and I'm getting annoyed that they are increasingly being included as mandatory skills, ostensibly simply as differentiators / filters for screening purposes.

Personally, I'm not that much in demand at the moment, most roles seems to need software dev skills at the moment, even for roles where software dev skills have never been historically needed and may never be used, and I've been benched for a while, much longer than I ever usually have, even when considering the time of year. Are we expecting more vacancies to open up soon?

I suspect there may be more roles appearing on the market after the budget is announced in March. This will provide the finalised detail as to how HMRC intend to roll out IR35 and give companies more clarity. This combined with finalising budgets for the new financial year may result in more roles becoming available.

[PerfectStorm]

Follow up

#2 will require me to move out of Kensington

[hairymouse]

eight years experience in AWS and Azure, integrating or migrating on-prem to cloud, either by VM to EC2, or redesign solution for Lambda/DynamoDB/ECS/EKS/Mesh/sprouts/stuffing/gravy.

What??? I thought those are the hottest skills going and I see tons of contracts available for those every day. I must be missing something.

What dev skills are you missing? CI/CD? Python?

[rocktronAMP]

Mmm - well, that's it, I don't have much in the way of interviews at the moment. The few I've had haven't panned out, because either they have had stronger candidates (high supply for all demand), and looking for stronger software dev skills. I'm just a humble cloud architect, eight years experience in AWS and Azure, integrating or migrating on-prem to cloud, either by VM to EC2, or redesign solution for Lambda/DynamoDB/ECS/EKS/Mesh/sprouts/stuffing/gravy. I'm relatively light in modern dev skills, and I'm getting annoyed that they are increasingly being included as mandatory skills, ostensibly simply as differentiators / filters for screening purposes.

Personally, I'm not that much in demand at the moment, most roles seems to need software dev skills at the moment, even for roles where software dev skills have never been historically needed and may never be used, and I've been benched for a while, much longer than I ever usually have, even when considering the time of year. Are we expecting more vacancies to open up soon?

The grass is always ____ greener, mate.

I'd swap trade recent skills with you, because although I have the strong software dev skills, only rarely do I get involved in the [no offence] ivory tower stuff. I thought that architects (solution architects ones) were sought after, because 2017/2018/2019 daily rates for technical architects were higher than the senior dev ones.

I think the agents want to push the best candidate forward as you and I would expect. Somehow Jack of all trades and master of none springs to mind and to that end, I'd add the "fullstack developer" - look ____ you can be either strong on the server side or strong on the front-end (react or angular or HTML / CSS/ JavaScript coding). It is extremely rare to find people excellent in both.

Whatever next? Agent: I need someone to be both the engineering manager, the project manager and developer and also the tester simultaneously.

[SimonMac]

5 weeks to find a new contract, just had a follow up call with an agent for an actual outside role

Nothing from the hiring manager but but the Transformation Director remembers me from an offer he made but I had to turn down due to location. Don't want to say I am now less fussy on location, but I am!

[ContractorHardman]

Whatever next? Agent: I need someone to be both the engineering manager, the project manager and developer and also the tester simultaneously.

I wouldn't put it past some companies to ask for that In my last role, I was BA, PM, VBA Dev and Data Analysis.... I even had to take Data Analysis off the actual Data Analyst because they were useless.

[Disguised Contractor]

What??? I thought those are the hottest skills going and I see tons of contracts available for those every day. I must be missing something.

What dev skills are you missing? CI/CD? Python?

I have CI/CD - but I don't call myself a Dev, which seems to confuse people and make them angry, and counts against me. And everybody in IT knows Python.

[Disguised Contractor]

I thought that architects (solution architects ones) were sought after, because 2017/2018/2019 daily rates for technical architects were higher than the senior dev ones.

They're not so much in demand at the moment, and where they are, strong dev experience is now required, as we move into the Infrastructure-as-Code era, and infrastructure and cloud architects are replaced by "architecture developers" who will code the layout of the infrastructure in software, and be able to remodel at the drop of some scripting.

Last year was the year of Terraform, and now it's on almost all job descriptions. I was lucky to see quite a bit of it in my last architectural role to put in my CV today, or I'd be unemployable.

Clients don't want to pay for expensive non-dev architects who have experience to understand architectural patterns and delivery models - the perception is that much cheaper architectural devs will soon pick up this methodology from their experience of building Kubernetes and Docker deployments.

So, that's where I'm focussing my skills, to meet demand.

[fool]

They're not so much in demand at the moment, and where they are, strong dev experience is now required, as we move into the Infrastructure-as-Code era, and infrastructure and cloud architects are replaced by "architecture developers" who will code the layout of the infrastructure in software, and be able to remodel at the drop of some scripting.

Last year was the year of Terraform, and now it's on almost all job descriptions. I was lucky to see quite a bit of it in my last architectural role to put in my CV today, or I'd be unemployable.

Clients don't want to pay for expensive non-dev architects who have experience to understand architectural patterns and delivery models - the perception is that much cheaper architectural devs will soon pick up this methodology from their experience of building Kubernetes and Docker deployments.

So, that's where I'm focussing my skills, to meet demand.

The move to infrastructure-as-code has been happening for years; but it's not about being able to remodel at the drop of a hat, it's about assurance.

If you have code that defines your stack you can:

• "Shift-left" and run "compliance-as-code", which basically means a good security team can automate god awful approvals process. You then get higher levels of trust, because instead of having a couple of guys slow the org down doing the same scratch the surface checks, they can actually write a ruleset they continuously improve on.
• You get a lot of trust in your tests. Add in CI/CD and you curtail human-error, misconfiguration, and "works on dev". You're basically building trust in automated OAT and that things will actually work when deployed. It also plays a large part in modern DR.

Architects that don't really understand the why of it all aren't particularly useful.

For the record though, I think the market sucks for pretty much everyone.

[Lilibet]

End of week 1 on the bench

I've had 5 interviews -

2 x consultant positions (perm) - both video interviews, both rejected/ not invited onsite (happy as didn't want either)

1 x full time position - had 2 calls including one with the MD, next steps etc from next week. Not really feeling the role and company tbh. Dont know the salary range on offer yet...

2 x classic contract gigs - had successful onsite meetings with both companies but they only offers FTC 6 months (to avoid ir35). They look me right in the eye and say it straight. "company policy". BS.
I want one of the gigs so trying to negotiate a better PAYE rate at least - I mean if im treated worse than a perm I want the salary to reflect the fact its 6 months plus WFH once a week plus pension etc.

So far nothing else - have not even applied because whats on offer out there looks awful. how's your weeks been? (if on the bench/searching)