State of the Market

[eek]

Well interest rates are increased to tame spending, so if we see less spending then it means it's working. At the moment, I can't really see much taming happening.

And how much of those 600k people are going to spend heavily if a lot are in low paid jobs?

In the UK you have loads of people with excess cash it seems. Yes there's 2-3mil relying on food banks but in wealthy areas you have heaps of people with cash to spend and the cost of living crisis isn't really affecting them much.

Regardless of the above, the main question is what will big companies do in this climate, there's not much investment in the UK atm anyway, so if interest rates slow things down more, then I'm sure everyone will be looking to save money and cut excess spending ie. contractors. Maybe we are already in this stage.

Businesses in this Country will continue to do what they've done for the last 20+ years, avoid investing unless absolutely necessary and sweat the assets to death.

Heck the only projects I've seen for months have been contracts to replace out of date tech with newer versions.

[TheDude]

People with integrity?

In finance it was fairly standard to work 120% of contracted hours.

When I was a permie at Goldman it was more like 150%

[The Gibson Troubadour]

Everything is basically a scam and i]nflation has been created by the government[/B].
"People don't want to work anymore" - no, people want to work, people are purpose driven, people do not want to work for nothing while everything costs an arm and a leg. And the best benefit that came out of the pandemic (thanks China and Fauci) was WFH now is being taken away.

Largely as a result of the money printing during the covid pandemic I would say but then again, other countries must have adopted similar measures and aren't experiencing such eye watering levels. One thing's for sure, that dark period was the death knell for many struggling businesses. The pubs that have gone under within a 5 mile radius of my home in the uk is like a roll call.

But back to the market - it is my opinion that we are witnessing a sea change. I no longer get any calls whatsoever, no emails and tap all approaches on Linked in. I don't know if it is just the economy or a combination of things but looking at the company that I currently work for (yes, I'm thankful for that!) it has a lot to do with onshoring from India and elsewhere. Not a critic of that in itself because it shows we have a flexible workforce that should encourage companies to relocate here and I won't complain because it was an Indian guy who hired me but my observation is that the company (a UK multinational) is being run top down by people from (and still located in) India as opposed to just the folks at the coal face. So if this is being repeated elsewhere and I don't know how typical this is, it would certainly answer a lot of questions.

[DrewG]

People with integrity?

In finance it was fairly standard to work 120% of contracted hours.

That's what you do when you're a perm trying to make director/partner, NOT when you're part of a contingent workforce.

[TheDude]

That's what you do when you're a perm trying to make director/partner, NOT when you're part of a contingent workforce.

Hardly anyone in technology makes director/partner.

99% of the time you are made redundant as a senior VP.

[DrewG]

Hardly anyone in technology makes director/partner.

99% of the time you are made redundant as a senior VP.

Hardly anyone at all makes partner, it's that way by design.

Plenty of tech consulting people in the BIG 4 make director, and some partner, though. I would imagine your statement is more correlated with finance than consulting. Not sure why you'd be a perm in finance though as a techie though, you're a second class citizen at best.

[JustKeepSwimming]

At the moment, I can't really see much taming happening.

I don't think you actually can see a short term drop in demand. A 10% drop in revenue will be crippling for many companies but if everyone is still going out but just spending 90% of what they did previously you're not going to notice that walking down the highstreet.

I'm absolutely certain we are in a recession.

[SussexSeagull]

Some people are really precious over the notion that they work their full contracted hours at 100% effort. IME the only people who do that are permies who are unable to set boundaries and grossly underestimate their worth. Literally working twice as hard and long for an extra 1 or 2 %point on their bonus.

If you're doing what is reasonably asked of you in 10-20 hours a week then you're not going to get burnt out doing another 10-20 hours at another gig. I can see burnout happening if you have awkward schedules and constantly having to juggle everything, especially if you have the 'honest mentality' of not wanting to be seen as a rogue.

I might have other reservations about doing two contracts at once such as availability for meetings but I have certainly previously had contracts where I hardly broke sweat and doing two at once was eminently achievable.

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

I don't think you actually can see a short term drop in demand. A 10% drop in revenue will be crippling for many companies but if everyone is still going out but just spending 90% of what they did previously you're not going to notice that walking down the highstreet.

I'm absolutely certain we are in a recession.

I for one reigned in my spending a couple of months ago. Now I'm really tighting my belt.... And I'm still in contract for a few more weeks and have an additional income. You can almost smell the recession in the air. It's going to be a rough next 12 months or so.

[JustKeepSwimming]

I might have other reservations about doing two contracts at once such as availability for meetings but I have certainly previously had contracts where I hardly broke sweat and doing two at once was eminently achievable.

Exactly, roles and clients are all different. I've had roles with minimal work and no meetings and others where there was copious work and managers who had a fetish for meetings and an inability to maintain a consistent schedule. So there are probably people who work in a role that isn't double dipping friendly.

Considering most of us get paid well because of our knowledge doesn't it make sense that the better we get the less man hours it takes? Companies/clients as a whole don't care how long something takes you, they have assigned a £ value to output X.

Google any CEO and look how many jobs they are holding down at the same time, yet it's shady/unprofessional if us plebs do it?