State of the Market

[dsc]

I don't know what the squiggly lines mean, and the commas/decimals seem to be in the wrong places, but still looks like 1/3-1/4 of UK tech salaries. [...]

That's how it's supposed to be if you want to get loads of tech people for not a lot of money, say you offer everyone 1/2 of the UK tech salary, that's more than back in India for the same position, but half of what you'd normally pay locally (especially with contractors), so it's a win-win for both sides (besides on a visa scheme, you can do pretty much whatever you want with the salary as you have a fairly massive bargaining chip). The only thing you need is people's interest, which considering the fact that at least some young people in India want to get to Europe, shouldn't be too hard.

So yeah, best of luck

[edison]

Would be interesting to compare the contractor markets between the UK and USA which also has a lot of Indians. India now makes up the second largest immigrant group in the US.

A lot of Indians granted visas stay on and it appears that they reach senior and executive levels in tech and other companies or create startups in a way that I don't see in the UK.

Does the US get the best Indian talent? It seems so compared to us.

[jamesbrown]

Would be interesting to compare the contractor markets between the UK and USA which also has a lot of Indians. India now makes up the second largest immigrant group in the US.

A lot of Indians granted visas stay on and it appears that they reach senior and executive levels in tech and other companies or create startups in a way that I don't see in the UK.

Does the US get the best Indian talent? It seems so compared to us.

I mainly work with US clients and there’s relatively little comparison. The US market is broad and deep and talent is paid far more than in the UK, but there is little market for contractors as they’re understood in the UK, partly because of federal and state law that works against it and partly because it’s easier to hire/fire employees, including on specialist work visas. For B2B work, it’s all direct, no agencies involved, and, therefore, not easy to solicit without contacts for direct work or joint bids. I don’t work in IT, but I would expect that many IT workers from overseas are on specialist work visas as temporary/fixed-term employees, such as H-1B or L-1 visas, possibly moving to GC later.

[sreed]

Would be interesting to compare the contractor markets between the UK and USA which also has a lot of Indians. India now makes up the second largest immigrant group in the US.

A lot of Indians granted visas stay on and it appears that they reach senior and executive levels in tech and other companies or create startups in a way that I don't see in the UK.

Does the US get the best Indian talent? It seems so compared to us.

Talent-wise, I'm pretty sure the US ranks far higher on attractiveness for skilled immigrants than most other western countries. And the salaries are definitely much higher with lower income taxes.

Indians now make up the largest source of immigrants to the UK, Australia and Canada. Not too high up the charts in the EU yet, probably because of the large internal labour market, language barriers and tougher visa hurdles. The fact is that given their 1.4b population, even if UK were 21st (it isn't) on the list of 'most-attractive-countries-to-migrate-to', that would still mean tens of millions of aspiring immigrants. When you talk numbers like 1.5 billion, tiny fractions of their working-age population is enough to significantly distort labour markets in most Western countries in the developed world.

I want to stress that none of the above is a criticism of the immigrants themselves, be they from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal or any other developing country in that region or the world. It's entirely logical to want to emigrate to countries with higher standards of living, higher income, better public services, etc. and find the best paid work that they can. They are simply doing what is best for them, and I might do the very same in their place.

[edison]

I mainly work with US clients and there’s relatively little comparison. The US market is broad and deep and talent is paid far more than in the UK, but there is little market for contractors as they’re understood in the UK, partly because of federal and state law that works against it and partly because it’s easier to hire/fire employees, including on specialist work visas. For B2B work, it’s all direct, no agencies involved, and, therefore, not easy to solicit without contacts for direct work or joint bids. I don’t work in IT, but I would expect that many IT workers from overseas are on specialist work visas as temporary/fixed-term employees, such as H-1B or L-1 visas, possibly moving to GC later.

Interesting, I had no idea the USA was that different in terms of contracting.

The Green Card is apparently a very long process for many Indians and a lot of H1-B visa holders have been affected by layoffs in the tech sector this year. But I imagine the Indian IT talent is superior in the US.

I have an Indian friend in the UK who worked for me many years ago. I can't remember exactly what visa he had at the time but I remember thinking he wasn't anything out of the ordinary. In the years since, he's studied hard, got lots of certs and pivoted into more technical areas and made a good living as a contractor. But I do wonder, how low the bar is set for the 'extraordinary talent' who are now coming here to do masters degrees or get jobs.

[PCTNN]

My contract (Public Sector) ends in January 2024 but client has let all contractors know that everyone is getting extended until the end of March 2024 for budget reasons. Meaning the department doesn't know if they will be given enough money in the new financial year to cover the cost for all contractors.

So yeah, I'm covered for the next 4 months, then who knows. I better start looking for a contract comes the new year

[siddhantkumar]

Being Indian born (now british, living here for past 18 yr) I can vouch that India is not cheap anymore. People with skills and experience of 6-10 yrs are paid 3/4 million inr which makes them top 1%. There are relatively very few IT experts (may be 8-10 million out of 1400 million). However not many of these would like to come to uk if they are experienced in their field due to them being low-middle earning (at £45/50k as permi or £300 rates). For comparison, houses are 3 times annual salary (not including spouse salary). That said, quality of life for them may be low (pollution etc) but they have lots of spending power.

[dsc]

[...]There are relatively very few IT experts (may be 8-10 million out of 1400 million). However not many of these would like to come to uk if they are experienced in their field due to them being low-middle earning (at £45/50k as permi or £300 rates). For comparison, houses are 3 times annual salary (not including spouse salary). That said, quality of life for them may be low (pollution etc) but they have lots of spending power.

"relatively very few IT experts" vs "may be 8-10 million" now this is what I'd call scaling up but even if you look at non-experts that have less spending power, say anyone with 3-5yrs, they might be interested right? I'd say this will be enough to plug the gaps in the UK job market.

[sreed]

"relatively very few IT experts" vs "may be 8-10 million" now this is what I'd call scaling up but even if you look at non-experts that have less spending power, say anyone with 3-5yrs, they might be interested right? I'd say this will be enough to plug the gaps in the UK job market.

This is exactly it. The numbers might be tiny in the Indian context but are absolutely huge in the UK context.

Even a tiny fraction of the working age population in India being incentivised to migrate overseas is enough to cause significant change. And they are incentivised and they are migrating, there’s no doubt about that as you can see from the huge climb in numbers in the UK (lots of different kinds of visas and routes) and India being the biggest source of migrants to Canada, Australia, etc.

[BigDataPro]

This is exactly it. The numbers might be tiny in the Indian context but are absolutely huge in the UK context.

Even a tiny fraction of the working age population in India being incentivised to migrate overseas is enough to cause significant change. And they are incentivised and they are migrating, there’s no doubt about that as you can see from the huge climb in numbers in the UK (lots of different kinds of visas and routes) and India being the biggest source of migrants to Canada, Australia, etc.

I disagree. When an Indian want to come to UK, the reasons would be

1. Good free education to his/her kids (Expensive in India).
2. Free medical (It's expensive in India)

Both of those things cannot be achieved if they come to the UK just for 2 years.

Having said that, it is a good opportunity for the IT companies like Infosys (Father-in-law), TCS, Wipro, Accenture, TechMahindra etc to send people constantly and continuously where by one guy will be here and the other experienced will shadow (Buy one get one free kind of schemes).

These schemes are towards enabling bigger companies to enable them to send their low-skilled resource that will be billed as high as they can.

If some one want to settle in the UK, they can't even get a sim (albeit lyca), they can't get their family here because of no credit score (therefore forced to live with 10 other guys) happen.