State of the Market

[Dorkeaux]

My wife (also a contractor) did a long stint with TCS. She was the only non-Indian on the team.
The rest of the team were extremely well presented, but it wasn't a software development effort. More about pitching for new business.

They seemed quite good to work for, but this a decade ago.

There was a handbook for new arrivals to the UK that was hilarious.
One gem, it advised against wearing the colour brown as that was considered a female colour in the UK.

[SchumiStars]

IMV just a confirmation bias as per standard stereotype.
I had one role with TCS 7 years ago paying around £1000/day (finance, travel was involved) and another one 3 years ago (for UK client in energy sector).
and I'm in no way Indian.

Yes of course you did.

Unless you have some unique skills, that noone else in IT can do, I can't imagine TCS paying even half of that.

Any would they? They can just get 10 TCS techies to work on the whatever the problem is and get it solved.

There are some utter bulltulipters on this site, it makes me laugh.

[Cookielove]

Absolute twaddle Yuri F !

7 years ago TCS were paying you £1k per day yeah right

[Yuri F]

yes, very narrow field IT expertise (currently that tech is sadly defunct) for largest banking client project, helped them to pull out the project from some drama, therefore it wasn't like they had huge supply of cheaper alternatives, but I will let it be with your opinion.
btw - if you check this Interpath admin report (not TCS/IT related) dated 22-Jan-2025 you may find out on page 16 (rates) what some do get £1K+ per hour! not per day, anomalies do happen all around.

On a topic subject: although my last rate was around £700 outside - currently max I can find is all below £550 (which feels like I will have to accept after some fight as you can't really go against the market), so generally it does look like material slowdown (or perhaps it hasn't warmed up yet which is normal for first two months of the year).

[sadkingbilly]

Yes of course you did.

Unless you have some unique skills, that noone else in IT can do, I can't imagine TCS paying even half of that.

Any would they? They can just get 10 TCS techies to work on the whatever the problem is and get it solved.

There are some utter bulltulipters on this site, it makes me laugh.

Absolute twaddle Yuri F !

7 years ago TCS were paying you £1k per day yeah right

not everyone in IT is a web app coder.

[Bluenose]

The Indian based outsourcers do play the game with Visas but I don't blame them, I blame the UK government for 20 years of not getting it right.

As for rates, yes, I have seen people being paid in the 1k-1.4k per day range for TCS but that would be in the context of a mid to large sized team for a transformation programme.

Seen bigger rates but only for very short 1-3 month specialist engagements for really niche areas for people with PHDs,.knighthoods or other rare attributes.

[sadkingbilly]

Yes of course you did.

Unless you have some unique skills, that noone else in IT can do, I can't imagine TCS paying even half of that.

Any would they? They can just get 10 TCS techies to work on the whatever the problem is and get it solved.

There are some utter bulltulipters on this site, it makes me laugh.

I suppose you think you can produce a baby in a month if you put 9 women on the job, too?

[dsc]

Yes of course you did.

Unless you have some unique skills, that noone else in IT can do, I can't imagine TCS paying even half of that.

Any would they? They can just get 10 TCS techies to work on the whatever the problem is and get it solved.

There are some utter bulltulipters on this site, it makes me laugh.

This should be pinned as the most ridiculous post on here, "it's impossible cause you'd need niche skills and everyone knows niche skills are impossible"

[jamesbrown]

This should be pinned as the most ridiculous post on here, "it's impossible cause you'd need niche skills and everyone knows niche skills are impossible"

There is a tendency to assume everyone around here is a code monkey, even if there's a preponderance of such roles. Fees > £1k per day (or fixed price equivalent) are totally vanilla in a whole range of industries, like financial auditing, law (although they operate as LLPs), interims, many high-end engineering roles. The niche British attitude applies here too where being on a high rate or salary is considered something to hide or an "obvious" brag or lie. Bollocks. There will be 2-5% of people around here on those rates, I suspect... or at least were. Current market is more uniformly pants than it has been in recent years.

[dsc]

There is a tendency to assume everyone around here is a code monkey, even if there's a preponderance of such roles. Fees > £1k per day (or fixed price equivalent) are totally vanilla in a whole range of industries, like financial auditing, law (although they operate as LLPs), interims, many high-end engineering roles. The niche British attitude applies here too where being on a high rate or salary is considered something to hide or an "obvious" brag or lie. Bollocks. There will be 2-5% of people around here on those rates, I suspect... or at least were. Current market is more uniformly pants than it has been in recent years.

Also lets not forget those rates are not really for bums-on-seats kind of guys, it's often specialised / niche positions and people are hired as consultants, more for their knowledge on the subject rather than for being "implementators". If you take on someone to design some one-of-a-kind system and they are there for 3 months, on a 2yr long project, £1k per day isn't a lot if it guarantees the project will be a success. It's a totally different ball game imho and perhaps this is why some people here simply cannot grasp the idea of such rates.