State of the Market

[eek]

Who the hell costs 1650pd?

Think that was less than my charge rate at MS…

[mogga71]

My summary of 2022 is that the contract market pumped real hard until approximately just after the Boris Johnson speech in the first half of July and then gradually started to die off.

Behaviour from agents was, generally, appalling. As someone pointed out earlier, if you do an interview, getting ghosted because you did not get the role is not really a winning long-term business strategy for agencies because I black-book any agent that does it and I would reckon on many others doing the same.

Looking to bail to Spain from September and work partially remote for half the money. Total deductions for some of the poor bastards caught by IR35 will be 53% come 5th April.

Regarding rates in 2022, Financial Services in London looking to pay 650pd (inside!), Public Sector roles outside of London paying up to 1,250pd (Inside). I assume this is the muppet discount because there is a shortage of Joe's willing to work outside of Zone 2.

I managed to get an outside role in September for 850pd outside but the aforementioned noise from agents made this search almost impossible. The 'system' for finding work in 2022 is more broken than its ever been, its deeply in-efficient.

Regarding 2023, I can't really see the status-quo carrying much over into 2024, there's going to be a large movement of musical chairs in the second half of 2023 as those that can (and some can't or won't) look to leave the U.K and work abroad and travel for 2-3 days a week max or work fully remote from GMT 0 or GMT +1.

Who wants to work in London for a 650pd IR35 caught role paying 50% tax where you have to be in the office most of the time? The rates and tax no longer match for me.

Nearly all the inside contractors I know still don't need to go to the offices regularly. I have been in twice since COVID. Some I know haven't been in at all. Being forced to go full time to the office has gone forever for most devs I reckon.

The moment I am forced to go into the office is the moment I start looking for another contract. The commute alone costs £45.00 a day .... but it's the lifestyle change I couldn't cope with.

[mattster]

Nearly all the inside contractors I know still don't need to go to the offices regularly. I have been in twice since COVID. Some I know haven't been in at all. Being forced to go full time to the office has gone forever for most devs I reckon.

The moment I am forced to go into the office is the moment I start looking for another contract. The commute alone costs £45.00 a day .... but it's the lifestyle change I couldn't cope with.

Unfortunately I must be an outlier then - my place went to 2x week from Sept 22 and, as someone with a long (and expensive - £80+!) commute I am really struggling with it. This, btw, from 2x month which was doable. Agree that full time in the office is probably a thing of the past for devs, but this 1-2x week thing does seem fairly common now. Anyway, renewal coming up so I'll see if I can wangle fewer days - otherwise time to hit the market.

[Bluenose]

Who the hell costs 1650pd?

corporate rate cards for technical architects, security, data, enterprise, senior engineer runs up to 2250pd. 1650pd is just where some rate cards in that area have sat for 10 years and its time to uplift the cards for the people there or, get rid for a contractor. This is the churn I am referring to.

You gulp at 1650 a day, I gulp at the corporate-to-corporate rate card for senior UX/UI strategy design directors that reads 3250pd.

[PCTNN]

Nearly all the inside contractors I know still don't need to go to the offices regularly. I have been in twice since COVID. Some I know haven't been in at all. Being forced to go full time to the office has gone forever for most devs I reckon.

Since feb 2020 I have been in the office once, in November 2021, and I went in that day only to return my hardware at the end of a role.

The moment I am forced to go into the office is the moment I start looking for another contract. The commute alone costs £45.00 a day .... but it's the lifestyle change I couldn't cope with.

Same here. My current client has been talking for a couple of months about starting to bring people in the office once a week. They're never going to be able to enforce it though because during covid they heavily struggled to recruit so they recruited permies from hundreds of miles away. Good luck asking them to come in. And if they make an exception for them, they'll have to make an exception for the rest.

[dsc]

corporate rate cards for technical architects, security, data, enterprise, senior engineer runs up to 2250pd. 1650pd is just where some rate cards in that area have sat for 10 years and its time to uplift the cards for the people there or, get rid for a contractor. This is the churn I am referring to.

You gulp at 1650 a day, I gulp at the corporate-to-corporate rate card for senior UX/UI strategy design directors that reads 3250pd.

What the hell is driving those rates? is there a few people in the world that can do the work or smth else?

[jamesbrown]

What the hell is driving those rates? is there a few people in the world that can do the work or smth else?

You cannot compare the rates at which consultancies bill out their consultants (often to gov't) with rates charged by contractors - they've always been miles apart (the usual suspects famously charge north of £1k per day for a bog-standard, mid-ranking consultant). But there are plenty of contractors earning far north of £1k per day too, just not that many in IT (until you get to very senior positions).

[Bluenose]

What the hell is driving those rates? is there a few people in the world that can do the work or smth else?

For consultancy fees, in the good old days, the rate was set based on the total cost of paying the consultant a wage in PAYE (plus benefits), plus flights, plus hotel plus 45% profit margin semi-divided by average utilisation rates across the year. That's why the day rates started out at 1450 per day in the early 2000s for corporate-to-corporate. Around 2004 there was a disconnection between outsourced, off-shored rates and the higher end consultancy fees and consultancies started to charge over 1450pd for mid-level peeps and really started to crank up the fees for MD/partner level (read: posh but dim) peeps.

What's driving the top end rates now to 2250/3250pd is a combination of two factors a) big tech companies paying kids with 5 years experience $325k-400k per year basic salary (sans bonus) and so these top UX/UI peeps with some big previous customers under their belt can charge what they like b) talented young people, with a top notch university degree, not sticking with technology long enough to make it inside the non-boardshort wearing big tech consultancy/corporate structures (as defined by HR dogma) to get the 25 years experience to make it into the top level consultancy roles within say, BCG and McKinsey. The HR reach-around drives fake scarcity of these people and therefore the rates have disconnected from the rest of the market. It's one of the reasons why some companies are looking to relax their HR rules around having a degree.

[dsc]

You cannot compare the rates at which consultancies bill out their consultants (often to gov't) with rates charged by contractors - they've always been miles apart (the usual suspects famously charge north of £1k per day for a bog-standard, mid-ranking consultant). But there are plenty of contractors earning far north of £1k per day too, just not that many in IT (until you get to very senior positions).

Sure thing, but I was assuming perhaps incorrectly that we are talking individual contractor rates and not consultancy rates. I'm also aware no bum-on-seat is going to be on £1k+.

[jamesbrown]

Sure thing, but I was assuming perhaps incorrectly that we are talking individual contractor rates and not consultancy rates. I'm also aware no bum-on-seat is going to be on £1k+.

I assume by "outsourced bods", Bluenose meant the latter and that gov't were looking to replace these with regular contractors - could be wrong.