State of the Market

[Fraidycat]

I don’t get it. Are they really able to hire a sw dev (I imagine it will require some experience at least) on an FTC for 25-28k a year (not sure how many hrs/week)? And not just that, one that is 100% on-site in the SE which somewhat limits the candidate pool.

Given the continued mass immigration from countries like India over the past few years, I would expect there to be a lot more experienced applicants for entry level sw dev roles but find it hard to accept that it’s got to this level.

They have got to be looking for recent graduates at that price. Lots of under graduates use Node and Javascript and Mongo for hobby projects and they get taught Java at uni. Code quality will likely be rubbish if no proper code review system is in place, but you get what you pay for.

[eek]

DWP IT degree apprenticeships earn £28,000 a year get a civil service pension and 1 day off for university.

Just want to show how bad the pay being offered is

[Bluenose]

in previous good years, when should the market start "heating up" to get ready for the new financial year? about now?

January.

[Fraidycat]

Did the interview. The interviewer said he had another 8 people to see for the role but I am clearly over qualified.

I think you will have better luck with roles paying 45K to 65K. The pay is still low so they will struggle to find anyone good, but they will be looking for someone with a bit more experience than if they are paying below 40.

[sreed]

DWP IT degree apprenticeships earn £28,000 a year get a civil service pension and 1 day off for university.

Just want to show how bad the pay being offered is

In general, PS jobs are underrated at the entry level. As an employee you get brilliant earn-and-learn bang for the buck, even more so if you’re outside the SE. So much better than a student loan.

It can be a bit tulip beyond that but with the right skill set you can always use that experience to land yourself a much better role in the private sector.

[edison]

I think you will have better luck with roles paying 45K to 65K. The pay is still low so they will struggle to find anyone good, but they will be looking for someone with a bit more experience than if they are paying below 40.

I agree. At the 25-30k level, it's just a race to the bottom.

Back in 21/22 I was working for a public sector organisation offering about 40k for a junior dev and 50k ish for a senior. Unsurprisingly they couldn't find any good candidates for the senior roles in that market.

I persuaded them to consider less experienced candidates for the senior roles. Lo and behold, they showed a bit less experience but had a lot of potential and they hired a couple.

[SchumiStars]

This is crazy
Not being funny but seems like you are being paid an offshore rate for an onshore job.

Have you looked at companies like Detica / BAE systems? They are chock full of technical people from top unis.

....and there it is....

[dsc]

I don’t get it. Are they really able to hire a sw dev (I imagine it will require some experience at least) on an FTC for 25-28k a year (not sure how many hrs/week)? And not just that, one that is 100% on-site in the SE which somewhat limits the candidate pool.

Given the continued mass immigration from countries like India over the past few years, I would expect there to be a lot more experienced applicants for entry level sw dev roles but find it hard to accept that it’s got to this level.

Entry level jobs for people on the new visa scheme can pay 80% of the "market" rate and I used quotes around market as it couldn't be further from the actual market rate. If you assume lowest market rate for sw dev is 35k, 80% of that is...28k so yeah, doable and most likely offered and on top of this, taken :/

[dsc]

Did the interview. The interviewer said he had another 8 people to see for the role but I am clearly over qualified. He wants someone who will do the job for 12mths.

Said, I would be bored tulipless. Did give me a couple of contracts I could ask that the company use for software development.

He asked a couple of times, why I wanted the job and without seeming desperate, I said I needed a job at his company and was hoping that the oppuntunity may lend itself to other possibilities.

He said he was surprised that I turned up and there was a note on the file, saying I was over qualified for the role.

Frustrated, dishearted and generally wondering when the universe will lend me a hand.

8 people able to get SC? that's a fair bit, I'm actually surprised, SC reqs typically cut the amount of people asked for an interview in half or more.

I was always under the impression that sw dev typically walk into jobs, but this example shows how that's maybe no longer the case. I'd focus on why, is it the sw skills? companies use other languages? I thought Java is still a good skill to have, especially with Docker, Node etc. Is it just the UK market, or is Europe as fecked as here?

[Fraidycat]

Five days in the office, hard interview, virtually minimum wage pay. Probably expect you to work your ass off. It sounds like a sweat shop.
Java Node Javascript, I can guarantee the code base is a huge mess as well, if it has been written by entry level grads on that kind of pay and that tech stack.
Still desperate times call for desperate measures.. But if they don't offer it because you are over qualified it was probably a lucky escape.

I posted the above above last week.

The 'overqualifed and you will be bored', translates to our code base and processes are a complete mess and you wont like working here.. we need someone who who doesn't know any better. And cheap as well because the productivity on the project has ground to an almost halt (its a 'big ball of mud') and paying someone with experience proper money will be an even bigger waste of money than paying someone 27K to produce almost nothing.