State of the Market

[hungry_hog]

Another agent called me.

After few minutes of waffling he said: "Can I ask you one last question, before I forward your details to my colleague at contracts?"
"Sure, ask anything."

"What is objective programming?"

I got this

Is it being objectionable and being a programmer?

[elsergiovolador]

Well that's good. I've had it occasionally where agents have actually asked me to explain the difference between a couple of tech items. If that helps decent contractors get gigs and weeds out the bluffers, great.

I do wonder whether he said it this way on purpose to test the candidate's character.

[LondonManc]

I do wonder whether he said it this way on purpose to test the candidate's character.

It could be either. Some recruiters are genuinely interested in improving themselves so that they can offer the best candidates to the client. Generally it's those that are on a percentage margin. Unfortunately 95% of them give the rest a bad name.

[ContractorHardman]

I got a call from the Agent who placed me in my current gig. I let it ring out, no voicemail left so it must not have been that important. He checks my LinkedIn Profile and calls me the next day.

I answer. To cut a long story short, he was fishing to see how I was doing and how likely it will be that I get renewed in the Project. I am probably one of the very few contractors bringing them in revenue and they are worried in case that goes.

The contract divisions in agencies must really be on its knees now. The start of IR35 brought it to its knees followed by COVID really kicking it whilst its down.

[hungry_hog]

I got a call from the Agent who placed me in my current gig. I let it ring out, no voicemail left so it must not have been that important. He checks my LinkedIn Profile and calls me the next day.

I answer. To cut a long story short, he was fishing to see how I was doing and how likely it will be that I get renewed in the Project. I am probably one of the very few contractors bringing them in revenue and they are worried in case that goes.

The contract divisions in agencies must really be on its knees now. The start of IR35 brought it to its knees followed by COVID really kicking it whilst its down.

It's been on its knees well before IR35.

Before IR35 you already had the massive push to outsourcing. For example the (FS) client I was at had a team of 50. Probably 30 contractors. Now that team has probably 15 perm and 4 contractors in UK, with the rest in India. Even some of the perms (good perms not jokers) were binned.

Another FS client was very similar, huge cuts and offshoring. Understandable client would pay someone 150 a day in Chennai (even via 3rd party) rather than 600 (maybe 700 with agency) a day in London

[elsergiovolador]

It's been on it's knees well before IR35.

Before IR35 you already had the massive push to outsourcing. For example the (FS) client I was at had a team of 50. Probably 30 contractors. Now that team has probably 15 perm and 4 contractors in UK, with the rest in India. Even some of the perms (good perms not jokers) were binned.

Another FS client was very similar, huge cuts and offshoring. Understandable client would pay someone 150 a day in Chennai (even via 3rd party) rather than 600 (maybe 700 with agency) a day in London

All smaller clients I know who did this went out of business in a short space of time, because projects produced were not fit for production. They had to take local contractors again, but it usually meant to build the whole thing again and they didn't have enough money to continue. At least company bosses enjoyed flashy cars and long holidays while it lasted.

[BigDataPro]

PS: What is your onboarding situation looking like? WIll they DPD you a laptop from the clone farm? Or do you have to go into the office just for 1 day?

I got my laptop through DHL, Login info through another. MFA setup triggered while logging in. Inside bunch of emails on mandatory courses :-)

[Naruto1]

Another agent called me.

After few minutes of waffling he said: "Can I ask you one last question, before I forward your details to my colleague at contracts?"
"Sure, ask anything."

"What is objective programming?"

What he meant was OOP - Object oriented programming. Most Programming languages are OOP. eg. C++ . What this means you create a piece of code to do something , let's say Spellchecker tool in MS Word. Now, you have been tasked with a new software and need to use Spellchecker again. You simply change pointers and point your new application to use the Spellchecker object.

[perplexed]

What he meant was OOP - Object oriented programming. Most Programming languages are OOP. eg. C++ . What this means you create a piece of code to do something , let's say Spellchecker tool in MS Word. Now, you have been tasked with a new software and need to use Spellchecker again. You simply change pointers and point your new application to use the Spellchecker object.

Could be a reference to Objective-C?

OOP imo died a long time ago as a viable concept. You just end up with helper objects etc... most people just code, use concepts such as polymorphism, SOLID etc and don't bther with pure objects. Or as in later versions of Java, mix pseudo objects with functional programming concepts.

[BR14]

i'll stick with HLAL and REXX ta very much.