State of the Market

[Pherlopolus]

you should have a nice big warchest too?

[SueEllen]

In 12 years of contracting, never been out of work for a month. Always had agents chasing me. Now been out of work since November. And calling agents not yielding anything.

It comes to every contractor.

[Big Blue Plymouth]

Keep your chin up mate & keep looking I am similar age was thinking its all over jobs wise recently due to how poor the market is then suddenly landed an interview late tomorrow afternoon in the financial services sector with a good rate. Keep any age identifying stuff from your CV as well only cover the last 10-15 years of your career max. Its helps a lot to land the interviews. Personally I would hire people in their 40s & older any day if I was in that position to do so but most recruitment agents think the opposite and want younger workers to exploit rate wise in the 25-35 range! Getting your CV past the trainee tulip on the phone is one thing then you have to get past the account manager who is usually a more experienced recruiter so think outside the box how to conceal age identifying factors from them! I know for certain as illegal as it is age discrimination is rampant in recruitment for IT.

Cheers. Good luck with your interview.

[SussexSeagull]

Hey man, Big Blue Plymouth, I am not that far behind you in terms of my age. At least, you know exactly what "full stack" web developer, and usually people are stronger in the front-end technology or stronger is the server side language and platform. It is rare to find people equally strong in both. To me, "full stack" is another way that clients are driving down costs. Instead of hiring or contracting both people, they just want one person, and usually this affords errors, because the people are not so strong. With more errors, the so-called agile process will take longer, and then they could wonder why are we not getting Time-To-Market for this project.

I have been "looking" now for almost since the start of 2017. The market is pants, man. Clients are just taking the p***, taking long to respond, cancelling interviews, changing the job requirement at last minute. I had one the other day looking for a technical "hands-on" architect, but then they changed their mind, "there's been reappraisal of the requirement, actually we need a business analyst". If the client don't know what they are looking for, what chance does a contractor have? Also I agree in the other thread about the "banking" contracts gigs. It all looks very rosy and cheerful and then fecking silence, did the budget actually exist for the hire, the head count, and also no feedback at all? Nada, zero, nothing.

I have blocked Indian companies TGCWorld, Arrows, etc those guys just won't give up. It is just a number game to them.

Anyway rant over for now, and good luck to you, keep on going. I'm sure we will get there in the end.

I have a theory that clients who take ages to make decisions, change requirement, etc. are actually that bad all the time but in a better market you tend to get a contract with a more organised client and don't think anything about it.

Hence I am still waiting to hear back from a Skype interview for a contract in Berlin from three years ago.

[SussexSeagull]

It comes to every contractor.

Sadly more often of late.

[SussexSeagull]

Offshoring is anti UK IT jobs period! Why can UK companies not be encouraged by our (in) glorious!! leaders via tax incentives to retrain, cross train & retain existing UK based staff anyway! UK graduates are not even getting the entry level IT jobs anymore are they instead they have to fight each other for retail fast food jobs & even then our own people are not usually first choice! Way too much anti UK jobs sentiment coming from UK based employers I thought they had to demonstrate a good business reason why they did not employ someone from the UK anyway or pay an extra £10K to HMRC as a penalty for not hiring UK staff?


Last time I checked the map of the globe UK was one of the smallest countries yet we appear to be no1 in NOT protecting UK jobs for UK citizens! Other countries are very pro jobs for their own workers time UK joined that gang fast!

The problem is most companies are international now and don't have any loyalty to the UK. They are also duty bound to make as much money as possible for their shareholders (although this seems to be ignored for executive pay) so if offshoring is going to save them money, they will do it.

The irony of this is that a lot of the same people who cheered Thatcher moving us to a more market driven economy are now complaining about immigration and lack of jobs for British people.

You reap what you sow.

[BoggyMcCBoggyFace]

Other issue is permies are not moving these days they are staying put as salaries are going down so most people know that they would struggle to find another role on the same £, at least in banking I'm seeing this, this means contract gigs are less as are permy. I saw the stuff on the BBC about wages going up but I don't see it, in fact this year I effectively got a pay cut and that's before you factor in inflation, it wasn't due to poor performance but was told they are reflecting the market.

[Dark Black]

Funny old market, in contrast to some of the posts here I'm finding it quite buoyant - I took a gig back end of last year, best ever rate for a longish contract (9 months) and I've since managed to negotiate working from home for the most part.

The last few weeks I've had a lot of calls about local contracts - so from my perspective it seems a decent market.

[AnthonyQuinn]

Funny old market, in contrast to some of the posts here I'm finding it quite buoyant - I took a gig back end of last year, best ever rate for a longish contract (9 months) and I've since managed to negotiate working from home for the most part.

The last few weeks I've had a lot of calls about local contracts - so from my perspective it seems a decent market.

Good to know. Keeps the spirits up at least.

[heyya99]

Good to know. Keeps the spirits up at least.

I'm finding it pretty decent in the software dev market. Not fantastic but I've had worse. Just keep applying.