State of the Market

[Fraidycat]

when you were writing applications in COBOL???

I was reading a thread on another forum the other day and people were joking that some times when someone says 30 years ago they think: 1970s. But 30 years ago was 1993 and 20 years ago was 2003. And i feel old.

[The_Equalizer]

I was reading a thread on another forum the other day and people were joking that some times when someone says 30 years ago they think: 1970s. But 30 years ago was 1993 and 20 years ago was 2003. And i feel old.

Must be a common thing. I find myself doing this more and more. 2003 doesn't sound that long ago at all. The rub is when you calculate how old you'll be projecting forward the same period.

[Fraidycat]

FTSE 250 falls back into the 17,000s this morning.

A few weeks ago when it was around 19,500, back then I was looking for a rally to 21,000 as a sign the worst might be behind us. But the market went south instead.

Was reading over the weekend that the market is now pricing that the BOE rate might be 6.25% in six months, with no rate cuts until 2025.

We need a miracle with the UK inflation numbers otherwise things are not looking good for the next 12 to 18 months.

[dsc]

[...]Was reading over the weekend that the market is now pricing that the BOE rate might be 6.25% in six months, with no rate cuts until 2025.
[...]

They most likely will, from what they were saying recently straight after the 0.5% increase they are only focused on bringing down inflation and don't really care much about anything else. I think they are worried that inflation gets sticky and at that stage it will be right pain to lower it.

[edison]

FTSE 250 falls back into the 17,000s this morning.

A few weeks ago when it was around 19,500, back then I was looking for a rally to 21,000 as a sign the worst might be behind us. But the market went south instead.

Was reading over the weekend that the market is now pricing that the BOE rate might be 6.25% in six months, with no rate cuts until 2025.

We need a miracle with the UK inflation numbers otherwise things are not looking good for the next 12 to 18 months.

FTSE250 lagging is not really a surprise given it's much heavier UK domestic orientation compared to the FTSE100 and it's proportionately higher exposure to financials, property etc.

It's still significantly outperformed the FTSE100 over a long period though.

[rocktronAMP]

Software developers also invented and embraced writing open source software. I said decades ago that open source devalues software development and our worth. It is even worse now, it will be the end of development because the AI is trained on all the open source that is out there, and sometime in the next 5 to 15 years the AI will be good enough to make development so easy that it pays just half of what it pays today. I will be retired by then, but i would not want to be a young software developer today.

Linus Torvaldts with deliberate decision made publicly available his source code to the Linux Operating System. I'd argue many a contractor on this forum will doff their cap in his direction, because he made money for them, even if Mr Torwaldts is recent years personally showed signs of being a twat.
The alternative is closed source code. Where art thou? Digital and VAX operating system, Santa Cruz Organisation: the dustbin of the computer history museum. Even Microsoft has open sourced some of the Windows Kernel. There are different metrics to what is open source or not. Can a contributer make changes back? Who own the repository?


It is the majority business model, power and influence, human culture and the economy that has devalued a technical career ladder. Does open source control the recruitment agency market and the business of intermediatories and multiple level suppy chains? I'd argue no way Jose. Look at the recruitment agency free job platforms like Cord.io, Hired.com and Hackajob. They are not really good ways to find a job for a lot of us, they are aimed at youthful permanent employees over hired guns contractor, but they will keep plugging away.

Sorry about this, because it is not really State of the Market material.

[swamp]

If we didn't have open source software, IT budgets would be eaten up by software licenses. The few of us working in the field would be working with bloated rubbish from the likes of IBM, and the field of software would be 20 years behind where we are today.

[SussexSeagull]

Can only speak for the UK but in the 25 years or so since I started working in Testing I have seen development skills go from something that was almost mystical to the outside world to just being another slightly more expensive than normal resource to be constantly assessed on it's worth to the organisation. Also the thought of outsourcing to India would have been virtually unheard of, although it soon began to creep in.

On top of this the UK is absolutely terrible at investing to make money and companies don't think further than the next quarter's figures.

[JustKeepSwimming]

Summer shutdown is upon us. I've had couple of 'Manager on leave so won't be any update for a couple of weeks' last few days.

[TheDude]

Summer shutdown is upon us. I've had couple of 'Manager on leave so won't be any update for a couple of weeks' last few days.

Me too.

It could of course be BS.