State of the Market

[siddhantkumar]

Nice, that rate is incredibly high, congrats. I've only ever seen one gig offering more, which was paying £1100 inside as a DV cleared defence contract 5 days onsite in rural nowhere.

Thanks. No idea if this is good rate or bad. Just accepted it as is. TBH would have gone permi if they had offered considering seating on bench.

the role is in central london and I don’t mind travelling even daily (live near tube stop)

[JustKeepSwimming]

Thanks. No idea if this is good rate or bad. Just accepted it as is. TBH would have gone permi if they had offered considering seating on bench.

the role is in central london and I don’t mind travelling even daily (live near tube stop)

You didn't just accept their offer without countering?!?!

Obviously it depends on the field, but £600-700 outside is for most of us a very good rate. Above that and you're often looking at Director level bespoke approval.

Reality is two identical roles at different clients can have two completely different rates. Sometimes you just get lucky that your client is the higher rate.

[FIERCE TANK BATTLE]

Thanks. No idea if this is good rate or bad. Just accepted it as is. TBH would have gone permi if they had offered considering seating on bench.

the role is in central london and I don’t mind travelling even daily (live near tube stop)

In 9 years of contracting the highest rate I've had has been £550. Second highest probably around £450.

[JustKeepSwimming]

In 9 years of contracting the highest rate I've had has been £550. Second highest probably around £450.

What's your field? Hell my field are often derided as 'useless' and £450 is seen as a high mid rate.

[FIERCE TANK BATTLE]

What's your field? Hell my field are often derided as 'useless' and £450 is seen as a high mid rate.

I do C# and .NET development, nothing particularly specialist. I could do with going perm to learn Angular/React, since about half of roles seem to want one or the other but it's difficult to learn them as a contractor because any gig using them requires you to know them already to get hired. And you can't really learn them just doing youtube tutorials, need field experience.

I've been doing public sector recently which gave me a bit of a pay bump, but with IR35 now going nuts it feels like gigs are fewer and worse paid. I haven't done any inside roles in my career.

[JustKeepSwimming]

I do C# and .NET development, nothing particularly specialist. I could do with going perm to learn Angular/React, since about half of roles seem to want one or the other but it's difficult to learn them as a contractor because any gig using them requires you to know them already to get hired. And you can't really learn them just doing youtube tutorials, need field experience.

I've been doing public sector recently which gave me a bit of a pay bump, but with IR35 now going nuts it feels like gigs are fewer and worse paid. I haven't done any inside roles in my career.

I think the cold hard reality is that many people lie. They claim skills they do not have and if they get the role they fake it till they make it.

With risk of being banned, Certain demographics do not hold the same opinions as Britons. Ie, certain group subscribe to the whole 'its not a lie unless you can prove it'.

I've been a hiring manager. I seen who tries to claim skills they clearly don't have despite what they claim.

[Fraidycat]

I could do with going perm to learn Angular/React .. And you can't really learn them just doing youtube tutorials, need field experience.

You core skill is C sharp. So you wont be expected to be an expert in Angular/React, just enough experience to modify an existing codebase with extra features and bug fixes.

You need to read up on them, understand what the fundamental problem they are trying to solve, best practice for using them and then spend a few days playing with them using your IDE. You can either write a demo app from scratch but easier to download someone else's existing project from Github and modify it. Then Google the 30 most asked React/Angular interview questions, although as a C sharp dev you probably never going to be asked anything detailed about them

Then put the skill on your CV.

[sreed]

Also with the inside the rates at some clients, particularly gov has plummeted. When DWP are putting out £390 a day inside gigs when market rate is 450 outside (I tulip you not) then the number of decent gigs further reduces.

I can second this for PS contracts based on my hunt for Project Manager roles back in autumn 2022 and a few weeks ago.

Contracts that were paying a standard £550-600/day inside last year are now all over the place for PS contracts, even as low as £250-300! The work is the same.

They see the volumes of applications they're getting and the PS client simply dials down the equivalent-grade as simply put, in most cases they can get the kind of PM skills they need at a much lower cost than a year ago.

[BigDataPro]

Being inconspicuous!

As in your don't want to say publicly? Or you mask dates on your CV? Like doing skill based.

I've been a hiring manager. I seen who tries to claim skills they clearly don't have despite what they claim.

Now you know why I didn't give the specifics!

[ResistanceFighter]

In 9 years of contracting the highest rate I've had has been £550. Second highest probably around £450.

I was in the same situation a few years back, and I took a very low paying React contract for 6 months and just treated it as a paid learning experience. Knowledge from that has paid back dividends in the years since