State of the Market

[northernladuk]

It would be nice if more companies just provided a VM to remote into, there's no more security risk working from abroad than the UK in that instance, especially with a VPN and MFA

There is a lot more to it than that. All contracts are based on UK law, HR, risk assessments, pay and so on. You've seen how difficult it is on here for contractors to understand internation tax law and the employers have to look at contractual law etc. Then there is insurances, death in service if you are in a different country yada yada. It's hardly surprising they don't want to know.

[FIERCE TANK BATTLE]

There is a lot more to it than that. All contracts are based on UK law, HR, risk assessments, pay and so on. You've seen how difficult it is on here for contractors to understand internation tax law and the employers have to look at contractual law etc. Then there is insurances, death in service if you are in a different country yada yada. It's hardly surprising they don't want to know.

If you're a contractor I really doubt there is anything significant, all my other contracts I've worked abroad even some gov ones, this is the first I've encountered that has forbidden working overseas. Provided you're doing a normal contract in the UK as a UK citizen, remoting in from overseas has little to no consequence other than the obvious, e.g. remoting in from moscow

I've even worked on holiday while doing SC roles after checking it was permissible, although I've never taken a work laptop out of the UK and I wouldn't dare.

[rocktronAMP]

Asus VPN router £200
NordVPN subscription ~ £25 from ebuyer for 6 months
Configure Asus router and ensure your work laptop's IP address / MAC address is set to use the UK VPN server.
Your work Azure servers will see that you have a UK IP address and will allow you in.

Been there, done that from the other side of the world for a year and never got caught.

I think you need to have Edward Snowden++ level of security operations knowledge to also get it work.
The sec ops only need to know a weakness in your VPN, firmware and hardware connection and some advance linux tracing techniques to beyond your approach. There are so many CVE and CWE in existance and a zero day will bring you bad day in the office. You are not responsible for upgrade / update Nord in terms of security, and as for Asus you need to ensure your firmware is updated from the manufacturer, if they even do it. It is a breach of your legal day-to-day working contract (and the consultancy that you contract through), if you decide to take your BOYD or supplied machine out of the country and then connect to GOV.UK system. You signed a working contract? You did, didn't you? This you?

(Plus, it will not work if said gov dept is using a USB-C / USB-A dongle with hardware crypto keys that require unknown raw Internet (non-VPN) checks. There firmware on the stick that sends IP packets that hit a certain DNS server using Unix Datagram Protocols. You will get caught connecting to a production system. Simple as.)

[reddog]

Asus VPN router £200
NordVPN subscription ~ £25 from ebuyer for 6 months
Configure Asus router and ensure your work laptop's IP address / MAC address is set to use the UK VPN server.
Your work Azure servers will see that you have a UK IP address and will allow you in.

Been there, done that from the other side of the world for a year and never got caught.

I worked with a dodgy contractor that was talking about doing this. Not sure if he ever did it or not because he left fairly shortly after I started.

I came to the conclusion the best way to do it would be to leave the laptop in the country it was supposed to be in and then just VPN into the home network. You'd have to have a "trusted" person to reboot the router / laptop when necessary. But if you seriously contemplated doing this, you wouldn't be a very trustable person yourself, and therefore the chances of having trustable friends would be diminished.

I told this guy I didn't really think it was worth it. I imagine he thought I was a bit of a sapp.

[SussexSeagull]

My mortgage and credit card debt is real unfortunately and the war chest is completely tapped out, given the state of the market I want to get as much money as I can. Once things are back to normal, then I'd absolutely be more relaxed.





Yeah ultimately it'd not be worth it. It is a bit of a silly policy though IMO, 95% of staff are from abroad and none of them can go home to work during the duration of the contract which could be extended to years.

I spoke to one guy from Germany who said he'd like to go back and stay with his parents for a few weeks and just work from there, but can't.

I can forsee come renewal time a lot of people saying I'd love to stay but I really don't want to spend another 6 months tied to living in the UK, myself included, which will be interesting for the project.

It would be nice if more companies just provided a VM to remote into, there's no more security risk working from abroad than the UK in that instance, especially with a VPN and MFA

Weren't you aware of this when you signed on?

[malvolio]

I worked with a dodgy contractor that was talking about doing this. Not sure if he ever did it or not because he left fairly shortly after I started.

I came to the conclusion the best way to do it would be to leave the laptop in the country it was supposed to be in and then just VPN into the home network. You'd have to have a "trusted" person to reboot the router / laptop when necessary. But if you seriously contemplated doing this, you wouldn't be a very trustable person yourself, and therefore the chances of having trustable friends would be diminished.

I told this guy I didn't really think it was worth it. I imagine he thought I was a bit of a sapp.

Lovely discussion and all total bollocks. Break the rules about overseas working after getting cleared and accepting the OSA conditions and that's a criminal offence. No hope of getting another job after that outside Mc Donald's...

[sreed]

If you're a contractor I really doubt there is anything significant, all my other contracts I've worked abroad even some gov ones, this is the first I've encountered that has forbidden working overseas. Provided you're doing a normal contract in the UK as a UK citizen, remoting in from overseas has little to no consequence other than the obvious, e.g. remoting in from moscow

I've even worked on holiday while doing SC roles after checking it was permissible, although I've never taken a work laptop out of the UK and I wouldn't dare.

Except for a PS client, the last few cos that I've contracted with allowed working overseas for a limited period of time/year. The current one is up to 60 days/year. And these are all regulated FS firms handling UK customer data, etc. My partner's employer has an up to 4 weeks/year policy. For employers that are largely remote (or allow a flexible hybrid policy), since Covid it's pretty common for there to be some sort of temp overseas working policy. At least in the FS sector.

[eek]

Except for a PS client, the last few cos that I've contracted with allowed working overseas for a limited period of time/year. The current one is up to 60 days/year. And these are all regulated FS firms handling UK customer data, etc. My partner's employer has an up to 4 weeks/year policy. For employers that are largely remote (or allow a flexible hybrid policy), since Covid it's pretty common for there to be some sort of temp overseas working policy. At least in the FS sector.

It's very hard for a client to say - No overseas work when you continually work with people from Spain / India.... and those Indian workers are working from their home and not the office.

[ResistanceFighter]

More updates to follow...

Applied for dozens of jobs over the past 4 weeks, the rejection e-mails keep coming in. At this point I'm 100% certain nobody even reads the CVs. All roles, be it perm or contract, get over 100 applicants within minutes from posting. Today I got a rejection e-mail for a job, for which I am a 101% match, and my rate I think was reasonable (£450 per day), so they probably either didn't even read my CV because they found an guy off-shore that'd "do it" for £30, or they read my CV and decided they'd rather find a guy off-shore that'll "do it" for £30.

I just hope I can last long enough to see the time when the flood gates open and all those businesses come begging for help. I predict the amount of "migrating to the new framework version" or plain refactoring projects will go through the roof.

Yeah seeing the same thing. Last week there was a noticeable uptick in stuff to apply to, and my phone rang a bit more - but it's not materialising into anything real yet

[Fraidycat]

Yeah seeing the same thing. Last week there was a noticeable uptick in stuff to apply to, and my phone rang a bit more - but it's not materialising into anything real yet

The number of roles at the moment is double compared to Q4 2023. But only back to the kind of levels seen in the first 3 quarters of 2023 (excluding mid March when the market came to a stop due the Silicon Bank/Credit Sussie failures, which was luckily short lived and now a distant memory...)