State of the Market

[AndrewK]

There are plenty that can do both, certainly I can
Its not that unusual when developing BI solutions.
I've also led teams of around 10 on a couple of projects, I don't know if that makes me a project manager, also?

That is what distinguishes people from the pack, IMO, a solid mix of tech and soft skills.

Of corse you can. How they say - "Jack of all trades..."

[eek]

Of corse you can. How they say - "Jack of all trades..."

Not quite. I would go for expert (reassuringly expensive) with added value soft skills....

[northernladuk]

Of corse you can. How they say - "Jack of all trades..."

...Master of none.

Not that great when you are trying to sell specialist skills in a flooded market.

[MrMarkyMark]

Of corse you can. How they say - "Jack of all trades..."

I'm actually a professionally qualified BA, with around 20 years specialism in developing and configuring an enterprise reporting product suite.

Anyway, you can say whatever you want, my contracting client list and company finances tell a far different story

[MrMarkyMark]

Not quite. I would go for expert (reassuringly expensive) with added value soft skills....

I suspect that your rate has gone up or, at the very least, maintained over a good number of years?

You're doing it all wrong

[eek]

I suspect that your rate has gone up or, at the very least, maintained over a good number of years?

You're doing it all wrong

I'm happy with it. Could easily get more but there is a reason for why I am where I currently am.

[MrMarkyMark]

I'm happy with it. Could easily get more but there is a reason for why I am where I currently am.

Same here actually .

Almost scored scored £100 a day more recently, but considering the state of Germany's "topical" bank, maybe I dodged a rocket, or something

[ShandyDrinker]

2002 was a major turning point in the contract market. Jobserve was posting in excess of 65K jobs a day, this dropped to 20K in a couple of months.

On the other hand with near 100% employment it does seem incredible that clients are pushing down on rates - Something is very broken with the employment and contract market in the UK.

^^Spot on.

I still think the graph below from the old job stats website says it all.



I gather it could have been someone who used to post on this site who ran jobstats. It was a great site. In reality the demand dropped off a cliff after 9/11, recovered a bit then did something similar after the financial crisis.

[Cirrus]

Jobstats was a sad, sad loss.

As a general rule, the ability to get a role depends on the number of roles posted versus the number of people looking. Job stats provided one side of that equation.

I remember mapping my job hunting career against the Jobstats graph and my success pretty-well mirrored the Jobstat numbers. This rather suggested that all the brow beating about CV formats and recruitment channels etc misses the essential truth that it's mainly about supply and demand.

[munkee]

I would say BA is guy, who can't write software or be PM.
And most of the time creates documentation which is not related to underlying problem...

HAHA great post.

I used to be a developer that moved in to BA. I think its safe to say 90% of the BA's I've met during my developer and BA career have been utterly rubbish. It's ashame really as it makes the profession look pretty dire and comments such as yours are very typical. I followed the qualification route and I've put that training in to practice for the last 8 years. I see plenty of people who used to be some weird SME role and they are needed on a project so just get labelled as a BA because no other job description fits. Project managers are often ignorant of the skill set and I quite often look at the PM roles and wonder what they are actually doing. Once again I can probably only identify 10% of the PM's I've worked with as being worth the air they breathe. For many its a chance to hone their artistic powerpoint skills but for the rare few they are a good ally to have as a BA.

The comments around developer market being driven offshore and rates being hit hard is precisely why I moved out of that role. Don't get me wrong, being a developer was one of the most self satisfying jobs I've had there's definitely something great about working with code and building things but essentially the perm and contract £££ isnt there in the longer term. I moved myself out of manufacturing and in to financial services where the money improved but still not great. I naturally moved into BA work due to the frustration I had with the crap between the dev team and the project teams and it just so happened that whilst the perm salaries are terrible you can make a decent enough living as a contract BA with a consistently decent job market.

I believe that is down to the typical structure of programmes and portfolios. Often the big ticket day rates are highly specialised or for the big cheese jobs e.g. programme manager. Theres typically only 1 or 2 of them on a portfolio so the market for them is pretty narrow. Going down to the PM level theres a few of them kicking around in a programme but usually you'll find 2-5x more BA's. Due to that set up the BA market is always there but as someone mentioned earlier I dont think the offshore skills work in that type of role.