State of the Market

[SussexSeagull]

In related news, I have concluded that Jobserve isn't get anywhere near the contracts advertised on it that it used to and, to give one example, Total Jobs seems to have a lot more.

[Dorkeaux]

In related news, I have concluded that Jobserve isn't get anywhere near the contracts advertised on it that it used to and, to give one example, Total Jobs seems to have a lot more.

Serious question, has anyone ever got a gig from Total Jobs?
Not a site in my rota, though I am aware of it.

[Snooky]

'retired' four times now.
'phone still keeps ringing though.

Nice position to be in - not desperate for the cash (I assume) so just take it the gig if you like the sound of it

[dsc]

What do you do when the US threatens 25% tariffs on imported cars from 1 April? You pull projects, investments. In fact, there's a general wait and see/malaise precipitated by the current US administration being so wild/incompetent - working with US companies, I've heard this firsthand on several occasions in recent weeks, and the impacts are global because the US economy is so massive. I expect the UK economy will be in full-blown recession before too long.... way down from, er, 1% growth

Yup exactly this, everyone seems to be in limbo land atm and automotive was fecked for a long time anyway, so no real surprises there (it was a surprise to see a contract for automotive advertised in the first place tbh).

As for the UK - yeah there's not much room for "slowing down" before we go full blown recession

[SchumiStars]

The only reason devs were getting silly money is demand and supply, there just wasn't enough people with the right skills to make...apps or do "digital transformations" for the sake of it. Now businesses seem to be more careful with money and they realised there's loads of cheap resources on the market, so I think that bum-on-seat-and-get-paid-£1kpd is gone.

Yep. I agree.

Also believe that since they have worked this out, IT projects & systems have been reduced to nothing more than just keeping the lights on, with no greenfield projects being touted.

Budgets for IT departments has reduced over the last couple of years. There will need to be a real good reason why the CTO will sign off budget for a contractor in this market.

Unless we have a major new innovation, similar to the level of an iPhone, apps, dot.com boom, we will all need face the reality of having to manage with a lot less.

[edison]

Serious question, has anyone ever got a gig from Total Jobs?
Not a site in my rota, though I am aware of it.

I've never used Total Jobs much. The site is part of a much larger group with lots of different sector specific job boards including CWJobs which is for tech roles.

CWJobs used to have a good proportion of decent roles until a few years ago but now it seems much less useful than Jobserve.

[dsc]

Yep. I agree.

Also believe that since they have worked this out, IT projects & systems have been reduced to nothing more than just keeping the lights on, with no greenfield projects being touted.

Budgets for IT departments has reduced over the last couple of years. There will need to be a real good reason why the CTO will sign off budget for a contractor in this market.

Unless we have a major new innovation, similar to the level of an iPhone, apps, dot.com boom, we will all need face the reality of having to manage with a lot less.

The lack of new projects was and still is most likely driven by high interest rates, no one wants to pay for debt for some tulipe which isn't absolutely necessary. When debt was cheap everyone was doing silly apps for no reason, doing cloud migrations for the fun of it, or some other silly thing that only pissed people off, as it was another change on top of everything that was changed already twice. Now everyone is in either wait-and-see mode or, and this seems to be the norm now, cutting costs to survive the limbo. I'm from Poland where there was an absolute boom for anything IT related, devs could find jobs within a day of getting dropped / leaving, rates were constantly going up, people were re-training from non-tech related jobs, to be junior devs as there was a huge lack of those and they were paying way more than other industries even with loads of exp. Now it's the absolute opposite, people with 5-8yrs of exp spend a significant time looking for work, seems like no one even wants junior devs and the new norm is senior with 10+ exp and companies only need a few of those to run their portfolios. You can look at it as a job market crash, but I'd say it's more of a correction, what was before was mad and definitely not normal and now we are going back to reasonable levels of demand.

[TheDude]

This site seemed to have a lot more jobs in my field than most others. It may be helpful to others. It may all be BS.

https://www.ziprecruiter.co.uk/

[sadkingbilly]

Nice position to be in - not desperate for the cash (I assume) so just take it the gig if you like the sound of it

yep. I'm not complaining (regardless of the rain in spain)
but I've never overextended myself. seen too many people do that over the years, having to downsize urgently when there's a downturn, sell flash motors etc.
I prefer the quiet, non flashy, lifestyle

[ResistanceFighter]

The lack of new projects was and still is most likely driven by high interest rates, no one wants to pay for debt for some tulipe which isn't absolutely necessary. When debt was cheap everyone was doing silly apps for now reason, doing cloud migrations for the fun of it, or some other silly thing that only pissed people off, as it was another change on top of everything that was changed already twice. Now everyone is in either wait-and-see mode or, and this seems to be the norm now, cutting costs to survive the limbo. I'm from Poland where there was an absolute boom for anything IT related, devs could find jobs within a day of getting dropped / leaving, rates were constantly going up, people were re-training from non-tech related jobs, to be junior devs as there was a huge lack of those and they were paying way more than other industries even with loads of exp. Now it's the absolute opposite, people with 5-8yrs of exp spend a significant time looking for work, seems like no one even wants junior devs and the new norm is senior with 10+ exp and companies only need a few of those to run their portfolios. You can look at it as a job market crash, but I'd say it's more of a correction, what was before was mad and definitely not normal and now we are going back to reasonable levels of demand.

Agree. Drop the interest rates to near 0 tomorrow and watch the work all come flooding back. Forget AI, forget war, forget anything else