State of the Market

[mattfx]

You are about to find out more bad news when you start looking at permie roles : Everyone else has already thought of that and there is just as much competition. And nobody wants to consider a contractor who will just run off as soon as the market turns around again. Also, things are sooooo sloooow when you are looking at permie roles you'll go bananas.

Funnily enough, I've had the opposite experience to you. November and December were very dead for me, but things have picked up a bit lately. I've recently had a gig that's a real possibility and forgot what it's like to have an agent actually working the deal and calling every two hours just to make sure you are still alive and keen.

I have a really funny way of scouring JS to make sure I don't miss anything; I just look at every job in "IT" posted "today" and sort by latest.. Seems a bit crazy but some of the job titles recruiters use are stupid and I'm not great at searches. Anyway, you get a feel for what's around and about; loads of Devops and Agile dev work around, so I guess if you're in that arena then you're probably alright. People in Infra, PMO, PM, etc. seem to be in less demand.

[DevUK]

I am having to push the button and have just sent my CV off to a perm role. I don't like the situation at all but I can only make the most of it. As I said, market's incredibly quiet. I can only watch it and hope for so long before the bills need paying!

[GhostofTarbera]

Mate called me today it’s his 1 year anniversary of his last contact




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[jamesbrown]

Mate called me today it’s his 1 year anniversary of his last contact

TBF, he probably figures that once a year is enough.

[Bluenose]

What's not workable? Do you not think the consultancies can get permanent staff to replace the contractors they use today?



There won't be bills. Some projects will be delayed, some will go over budget, but the world will keep going around.

capex versus opex - exhibit A - IBMs new contract with TSB. IBM do not have the money to retain all the specialists they will need for only 2-4 years to do the transformation, the contract would have been signed in the basis of a resource mix to run the programme, specialists will come and go off the programme.

what they gonna do? go out and find 20 odd staff and pay them £130-160k basics and then they are redundant after two years or less? it can’t work that way.

[eek]

capex versus opex - exhibit A - IBMs new contract with TSB. IBM do not have the money to retain all the specialists they will need for only 2-4 years to do the transformation, the contract would have been signed in the basis of a resource mix to run the programme, specialists will come and go off the programme.

what they gonna do? go out and find 20 odd staff and pay them £130-160k basics and then they are redundant after two years or less? it can’t work that way.

For one of the core deliverables they will have no choice but to do that and even then they will screw it up in the way they've done on other European banking projects.

[GigiBronz]

capex versus opex - exhibit A - IBMs new contract with TSB. IBM do not have the money to retain all the specialists they will need for only 2-4 years to do the transformation, the contract would have been signed in the basis of a resource mix to run the programme, specialists will come and go off the programme.

what they gonna do? go out and find 20 odd staff and pay them £130-160k basics and then they are redundant after two years or less? it can’t work that way.

The resource will still exist, unless they leave the country they will still be here.
If they have kids, mortgage, family they will be less likely to move abroad.
Bills will start to erode the warchest, wifey will be more frustrated that hubby is around so she can't see much the other one, she'll maybe shop more. Sooner or later they'll(actually she) decide that for the good of the family ( actually hers) he'll better go do something.
Not even 100k, probably 70-80k will do the job.
It is a well engineered system.

[krytonsheep]

go out and find 20 odd staff and pay them £130-160k basics and then they are redundant after two years or less? it can’t work that way.

They've still got the option of fixed term employment contracts, but you're right it's hard to see how it can work.

[Paralytic]

capex versus opex - exhibit A - IBMs new contract with TSB. IBM do not have the money to retain all the specialists they will need for only 2-4 years to do the transformation, the contract would have been signed in the basis of a resource mix to run the programme, specialists will come and go off the programme.

what they gonna do? go out and find 20 odd staff and pay them £130-160k basics and then they are redundant after two years or less? it can’t work that way.

Oh, existing contracts. Yeah, I agree it’ll be harder for the banks to dictate “no consultancy PSCs”, but will look to do so for renewals. The client could also terminate if they think they can continue with another service provider.

I guess the consultancy will either have to eat the extra costs or try pass that into the client and risk being undercut elsewhere.

[Bluenose]

for me, the way to diffuse this problem so both sides can claim victory is to simply apply the 24 month rule across the whole thing. That means, if you are at a company or subsidiary for longer than that period you will need to be individually assessed for IR35.

That way, the people that HMRC really want to go after are ‘sorted out’ and the interim specialists who hop from
client to client are not thrown under the bus.