State of the Market

[nucastle]

Struggling with the JavaScript market at the moment.

Rates are so high it's a joke. 550-600 a day. But for what used to be a 'toy' language the complexity of the tools/market/patterns has suddenly gone sky high. I've fluffed a couple of interviews now as they all seem to obsess over theoretical / academic aspects of programming it either in full OO style, or worrying so much about testing and architecting solutions about maximum testability, that whether or not you can actually do the job seems to come second. I had someone getting me to write a class and function calls out on paper yesterday. My brain doesn't work that way!

I was spoiled on 7-8 years of SharePoint consulting where you could walk into a job within a couple of days on the basis that you knew the product and how to work with/around it.

[oliverson]

Struggling with the JavaScript market at the moment.

Rates are so high it's a joke. 550-600 a day. But for what used to be a 'toy' language the complexity of the tools/market/patterns has suddenly gone sky high. I've fluffed a couple of interviews now as they all seem to obsess over theoretical / academic aspects of programming it either in full OO style, or worrying so much about testing and architecting solutions about maximum testability, that whether or not you can actually do the job seems to come second. I had someone getting me to write a class and function calls out on paper yesterday. My brain doesn't work that way!

I was spoiled on 7-8 years of SharePoint consulting where you could walk into a job within a couple of days on the basis that you knew the product and how to work with/around it.

Think you hit the nail on the head when you said it "used to be a 'toy' language". Despite pinching features from other languages in ES6 it's still dreadful but with has enjoyed a lot of success courtesy of Node.js.

The problem in this space is because the barrier to entry is so very, very low they have to filter out the engineers from the script kiddies, particularly for roles with those sort of rates. The want proper disciplined software engineers who understand how to create robust, maintainable code, and because of the lack of type safety, the need for proper testing increases. The type of interview you've mentioned is something we've all had to endure for years, particularly in London IB.

[SussexSeagull]

Struggling with the JavaScript market at the moment.

Rates are so high it's a joke. 550-600 a day. But for what used to be a 'toy' language the complexity of the tools/market/patterns has suddenly gone sky high. I've fluffed a couple of interviews now as they all seem to obsess over theoretical / academic aspects of programming it either in full OO style, or worrying so much about testing and architecting solutions about maximum testability, that whether or not you can actually do the job seems to come second. I had someone getting me to write a class and function calls out on paper yesterday. My brain doesn't work that way!

I was spoiled on 7-8 years of SharePoint consulting where you could walk into a job within a couple of days on the basis that you knew the product and how to work with/around it.

Slightly different but I had to do a test on 'Testing Fundamentals' the other evening. Been doing it for eighteen years and it wasn't that good a daily rate.

Seems to be the way it is going now.

[ShandyDrinker]

Are you factoring in the fact that on a contract you could be out on your ear tomorrow and on the bench for months afterwards? Obviously that can happen as a permie too but it is far less likely.

I'd agree with that, purely because employers tend to tolerate incompetence and deadwood in permies but not contractors.

Although it depends on the client/sector, I've seen plenty of contractors who can only be described as dead wood or getting away with the minimum possible who are never shown the door and at worst may not get a renewal. This certainly seems to be prevalent in the financial services sector where no-one would ever want to admit they'd hired a complete duffer.

[MrMarkyMark]

Although it depends on the client/sector, I've seen plenty of contractors who can only be described as dead wood or getting away with the minimum possible who are never shown the door and at worst may not get a renewal. This certainly seems to be prevalent in the financial services sector where no-one would ever want to admit they'd hired a complete duffer.

"At worst" for me is when they get a renewal and you are unfortunate enough for them to be on your workstream

[MyUserName]

Although it depends on the client/sector, I've seen plenty of contractors who can only be described as dead wood or getting away with the minimum possible who are never shown the door and at worst may not get a renewal. This certainly seems to be prevalent in the financial services sector where no-one would ever want to admit they'd hired a complete duffer.

Yes but you cannot depend on your contract lasting more than its length. You might not get another straight away and when you do it might not be on the same rate or might require addition expenses (travel etc.) a perm job does not have these considerations (generally).

Hence the only valid comparison is a life style one, a day rate to salary calculation is no where near the whole story.

[nucastle]

Think you hit the nail on the head when you said it "used to be a 'toy' language". Despite pinching features from other languages in ES6 it's still dreadful but with has enjoyed a lot of success courtesy of Node.js.

The problem in this space is because the barrier to entry is so very, very low they have to filter out the engineers from the script kiddies, particularly for roles with those sort of rates. The want proper disciplined software engineers who understand how to create robust, maintainable code, and because of the lack of type safety, the need for proper testing increases. The type of interview you've mentioned is something we've all had to endure for years, particularly in London IB.

I spent 13 odd years doing .net with C# so I know what you mean. I think my problem (getting old here!) is that I used JavaScript back in the late nineties so I've seen it come the distance. So when I see these tests and approaches it all feels a bit surreal to see an interpreted language being spoken about in the same way I used to do with C#.

What's interesting though, is the emphasis has shifted from what you can deliver with the tools, to just an obsession with the theory, testing and repeatable patterns. As if the rest writes itself.....

I guess if you can't beat em. Join em!

[oliverson]

I spent 13 odd years doing .net with C# so I know what you mean. I think my problem (getting old here!) is that I used JavaScript back in the late nineties so I've seen it come the distance. So when I see these tests and approaches it all feels a bit surreal to see an interpreted language being spoken about in the same way I used to do with C#.

What's interesting though, is the emphasis has shifted from what you can deliver with the tools, to just an obsession with the theory, testing and repeatable patterns. As if the rest writes itself.....

I guess if you can't beat em. Join em!

It's OK, I'm old as well. .NET since beta. Same experience with JavaScript. I've been doing it since 1995, just that nothing meaningful the last 16 years ;-)

Btw, it's not interpreted anymore, at least not on the server. It's JIT compiled, much like .NET IL or Java Bytecode.

[munkee]

I spent 13 odd years doing .net with C# so I know what you mean. I think my problem (getting old here!) is that I used JavaScript back in the late nineties so I've seen it come the distance. So when I see these tests and approaches it all feels a bit surreal to see an interpreted language being spoken about in the same way I used to do with C#.

What's interesting though, is the emphasis has shifted from what you can deliver with the tools, to just an obsession with the theory, testing and repeatable patterns. As if the rest writes itself.....

I guess if you can't beat em. Join em!

In previous life I was a .net C# developer die hard web app lover (razor views were lovely) and I remember javascript being laughed at. I think it was when the javascript libraries started to take off mainly Jquery which gave javascript a place. I was at a conference in london and there was a node.js workshop I walked into. Crazy to see them spinning up a webserver so fast in javascript. I spend a few evenings a week now building node apps ranging from mobile apps, apis and even interfacing hardware its a very versatile language now. I think what really set node off was the packages. I know theres nuget for the .netters but for some odd reason NPM just exploded. Take a look now and its in the millions of packages. Granted a lot have died and deprecated but even now they are evolving on.

[SussexSeagull]

Had a phone call about a permanent job. Not ideal but we shall see.