State of the Market

[FIERCE TANK BATTLE]

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.

It's tempting, main worries are if I get canned finances are tight atm and the market is bad. Also it would probably shaft me royally for future gigs in the public sector.

[wettowel]

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.

[Destiny2]

It's tempting, main worries are if I get canned finances are tight atm and the market is bad. Also it would probably shaft me royally for future gigs in the public sector.

If you get discovered, e.g. Nord's VPN servers went down while you were connected, you could always say that your younger brother was using VPN to download Playstation games from said country and the broadband is in his name. If they want you to come in, take a flight and show up at work

[Destiny2]

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.

I have applied but not rang the agencies immediately to get to the front of the queue. I will start actively looking from next week.

[Destiny2]

Cycling, running, gym. Downtime usually means I keep the body fit and healthy.

I have loads of hobbies to keep me busy TBH.

Same here. Sitting at a desk at work or home has caused my neck and thereby my height to shrink couple of inches and I have neck pains every single day. I can feel early RSI on my wrist and fingers.

[FIERCE TANK BATTLE]

If you get discovered, e.g. Nord's VPN servers went down while you were connected, you could always say that your younger brother was using VPN to download Playstation games from said country and the broadband is in his name. If they want you to come in, take a flight and show up at work

The easiest way to do it would be to leave the laptop with a trusted friend within the UK, and remote into it from abroad via an intermediate pc. Give em the password in case anything goes wrong and they need to reboot it or whatever. If you're on holiday for a week, worst case you pull a sickie.

This is hypothetical I'd never actually do any of this.

[SchumiStars]

The easiest way to do it would be to leave the laptop with a trusted friend within the UK, and remote into it from abroad via an intermediate pc. Give em the password in case anything goes wrong and they need to reboot it or whatever. If you're on holiday for a week, worst case you pull a sickie.

This is hypothetical I'd never actually do any of this.

Or could, just take a holiday? Seriously life is too short to worry about just collecting your day rate. Once you work out that the money is not real, life becomes less stressful.

[Destiny2]

You've got to be careful with these sweeping statements. You've made three that are highly questionable.

I find it highly unlikely you've never met a good pm in 16 years. If that's the case then you've either (a) been incredibly unlucky (b) you don't work in circles where you come across the good guys (c) you are so far up your own bum no one meets your standards. Granted they are few and far between but they are there. I can name at least 4 who I believe were epic, spanning back a decade. You just don't forget the good ones that are head and shoulders over the MS Project shufflers. Same with a quality BA. There aren't many but not meeting one in 16 years is a bit hard to swallow.

Contractors will remain contractors until you retire is a bit short sighted. The idea of a contractor is to be in business for yourself which includes considering all opportunities. You might go perm for family reasons, re-train, a break or whatever. There are many situations where a perm role could be a serious consideration. There are plenty of very active, quality contractors on this site who have gone perm, usually on equivalent money. To be a contractor just to be a contractor isn't the smartest thing to do. Having such a blinkered approach means you are going to miss quality opportunities.

Generally yes perm employment tends to have more interviews but it's not strictly true. I had three for the gig I'm on now and I've had three before. In both cases it was via a small consultancy delivering a managed service to a large client. One interview with the company owner/recruiter, another with the senior programme leads for the work you'll be doing and one with the client as a courtesy. I can say in both cases the consultancy team were top notch so as annoying as the process was it worked. No half arsed bum on seat contractors. Telling everyone that contractors never have three interview tells me you aren't senior/experienced enough to work on large complex programmes through consultancies and you are used to a one shot bum on seat interviews. I'm probably wrong as we've chatted plenty before but that's what it looks like a you've written it. You don't know what you don't know if you get me.

All your comments are generally right and up for discussion but are certainly not a hard fact as you have presented them.

The easiest way to do it would be to leave the laptop with a trusted friend within the UK, and remote into it from abroad via an intermediate pc. Give em the password in case anything goes wrong and they need to reboot it or whatever. If you're on holiday for a week, worst case you pull a sickie.

This is hypothetical I'd never actually do any of this.

I would not give work login details to any friend. That is a serious security breach and IMO worse than working abroad.

[northernladuk]

I would not give work login details to any friend. That is a serious security breach and IMO worse than working abroad.

I'm not so sure about that. Worked at a Gov agency and one contractor buggered of to France on the quiet, got found out, instant termination, he mailed laptop back which went missing with Gov data on it. Legal process started but I left before I could find out what happened.

Losing a laptop with company data on could be quite a bit more serious than breaching a security policy and just getting canned.

Either way, IMO, chatting about how you can by pass a companys security policies, particularly Gov is just stupid. If you get caught you deserve everything coming your way.

[FIERCE TANK BATTLE]

Or could, just take a holiday? Seriously life is too short to worry about just collecting your day rate. Once you work out that the money is not real, life becomes less stressful.

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.

I'm not so sure about that. Worked at a Gov agency and one contractor buggered of to France on the quiet, got found out, instant termination, he mailed laptop back which went missing with Gov data on it. Legal process started but I left before I could find out what happened.

Losing a laptop with company data on could be quite a bit more serious than breaching a security policy and just getting canned.

Either way, IMO, chatting about how you can by pass a companys security policies, particularly Gov is just stupid. If you get caught you deserve everything coming your way.

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