State of the Market

[MrMarkyMark]

Considering the time you've had on the bench I think you should be spending it building up your dev skills. Unless you're doing anything else to increase your skill set or value to your business then it's time wasted.

This +1.

I had a lean time once and decided to hit the books and the forums.
In a following interview they were impressed with what I knew and subsequently I then got working knowledge of that technology on my CV.

Haven't done jack all with it since but got 8 months work out of it.

[SussexSeagull]

Considering the time you've had on the bench I think you should be spending it building up your dev skills. Unless you're doing anything else to increase your skill set or value to your business then it's time wasted.

Ultimately if I had dev skills I would be a developer! I last did any serious coding about 20 years ago at college so it isn't a case of just self teaching as the technology and methods have moved on so much.

[SueEllen]

Ultimately if I had dev skills I would be a developer! I last did any serious coding about 20 years ago at college so it isn't a case of just self teaching as the technology and methods have moved on so much.

I've known other contractors without dev skills who when they found themselves on the bench for a long time started to learn something.

There are free courses all over the web and/or you can buy a book.

Yes it will be hard at first but no pain no gain.

[squarepeg]

Ultimately if I had dev skills I would be a developer! I last did any serious coding about 20 years ago at college so it isn't a case of just self teaching as the technology and methods have moved on so much.

It's a DevOps world now. The first three letters should give you the clue. I never stop learning. I wish I had the time to learn even more as I can see a lot of niches where there is good money to be made (IoT, ML). If you stop learning, you get outsourced.

[northernladyuk]

And spend all day in useless meetings, fill Jira for bobs and rest time spend planning project and writing emails? For less money? Sounds like a plan.

If you are dev and you enjoy what you do, that is not an option

Why don't you just spin up some code to automate the tasks in your first paragraph?

[meridian]

SE means Test Management.

Still a very viable game to be in and commands good money.

It's not too bad, but the offshore crowd is starting to edge in on it now.

The downside is that that is putting pressure on headline rates (e.g. I was contacted earlier this week about an SAP Test Manager role in GSK that Tech Mahindra are managing, £300pd! Should be closer to twice that).

The upside is that they tend to manage by numbers on a spreadsheet, so anyone with decent planning or soft skills is still in demand.

[meridian]

Near Brighton.

How "involved" are you in the test community?

You might want to check out Ministry of Testing / Software Testing Club (they're based in Brighton, there was a TestBash there last week). Their "dojo" has a few video courses, maybe get yourself to a few meetups and network through them.

Maybe also check out the testersio slack channel for a bit of support from fellow testers.

[MrMarkyMark]

It's not too bad, but the offshore crowd is starting to edge in on it now.

The downside is that that is putting pressure on headline rates (e.g. I was contacted earlier this week about an SAP Test Manager role in GSK that Tech Mahindra are managing, £300pd! Should be closer to twice that).

The upside is that they tend to manage by numbers on a spreadsheet, so anyone with decent planning or soft skills is still in demand.

Its what my Mrs. contracts in, when she isn't working on her test software start up.

[VillageContractor]

Ultimately if I had dev skills I would be a developer! I last did any serious coding about 20 years ago at college so it isn't a case of just self teaching as the technology and methods have moved on so much.

Sorry to be harsh but that's a permie mentality. The industry has moved away from your skill set - you need to move on or shut up shop.

[SussexSeagull]

Everyone is assuming I haven't been picking up new stuff on my 'sabbatical'. In my experience people who do the heavy duty test automation (beyond record and replay and basic editing) are from a development background (hence the rise of the Developer In Test) so there is a limit to what can be gained from investing time into that.