State of the Market

[SchumiStars]

Not having any personal projects or a history in open source is also kind of prejudice against people with a life and commitments outside of work as well and is another example of the ageism that is prevalent in the industry.

I remember when the only way that work used to intrude in my private life was making me go down the pub on a Friday.

Formula1 teams are very much, do you like F1? I mean do you really, really like F1, to the extent they pay less and make you work like a dog because you love being there right?

Except for the fact that children, wife and hobbies also need addressing for.

[SussexSeagull]

Formula1 teams are very much, do you like F1? I mean do you really, really like F1, to the extent they pay less and make you work like a dog because you love being there right?

Except for the fact that children, wife and hobbies also need addressing for.

Funnily enough I was looking at one of the Jobs boards and did a search on jobs near me and I found some for the Brighton and Hove Albion training ground, which is about 5 miles from me, Coaching jobs that required a UEFA B license, which is a course that costs £1200 and takes 4 days to study for and you have to spent a year being a Head or Assistant Coach before you can even apply were minimum wage.

Unless you are at the top of the tree, sport does tend to trade off the fact a lot of people want to work in it and pays people less than the going rate.

[TheDude]

Formula1 teams are very much, do you like F1? I mean do you really, really like F1, to the extent they pay less and make you work like a dog because you love being there right?

I got knocked back by Williams because they couldn't meet my salary requirements and I specified 50% of what I was earning in my previous role.

[SchumiStars]

I got knocked back by Williams because they couldn't meet my salary requirements and I specified 50% of what I was earning in my previous role.

Mark Webber was a driver for BMW Williams. He was on IIRC ~£2.5m. The renewal came round and Frank said he was going to pay him half of that for the following year.

Mark then scouted the teams and could not find another manufacturer with a decent engine so agreed. To which Frank then said he was going to pay him half of the half.

Mark then left, joined RedBull and started winning races and came very close to beating Vetal to the championship.

IIRC Frank then reported he had made a mistake letting Mark Webber go

But in essence that's how they work, there is no money in F1. The Tobacco and banks pulled sponsorship out on 2002/2008 and left a massive void.

Bit of sports trivia as I wait for the outcome of a defence interview requiring DV. I have SC but will help to upgrade to the relevant level, should I have the skills (I do) to do the work.

[CoolCat]

I got knocked back by Williams because they couldn't meet my salary requirements and I specified 50% of what I was earning in my previous role.

bit like charities, there have been a few roles I quite fancied in charities, would have been happy to help them for well under market rates, but when you look at the money being paid to the senior execs is well above market rates...

[willendure]

Bit of sports trivia as I wait for the outcome of a defence interview requiring DV. I have SC but will help to upgrade to the relevant level, should I have the skills (I do) to do the work.

Well, good luck. Be nice if you got it and we didn't have to listen to your whinging any more!! (just kidding!)

[Fraidycat]

Indian recruiter called, said 'Enforces' are asking if i'm still available.

('Enforces' is what the speech to text transcriber in my phone incorrectly transcribed for the client name in the voice mail transcript, but it should be easy to guess who they were really referring to )

I tried to throw him off my scent by saying Im currently only available on a months notice but that didn't seem to discourage him. Hopefully it will put Enforces off.

300K+ plus employees and they are sniffing around me?

I think I know why, the role is asking for a niche framework that is tricky to get right. Requires some thread synchronisation to make the code reliable. Not many examples on stack overflow or for the AI chatbots to train on.

If I did end up there, my guess is once I did put the correct code plumbing and patterns in place they will be probably dispose of me (or not renew me) and put their own bodies on the project.

Luckily I am not desperate for work at the moment. But would do an interview out of curiosity.

[TheScheduler]

In that situation you put Java 17 on your CV and spend 1/2 hour mugging up on whats new in 17 before the interview.

But yes, I get your point, everyone is being highly highly specific about what they want and any application that doesn't tick ALL the boxes is binned. Hardly surprising when you know they are getting 500 applications.

Unfortunately it means that genuine talent is finding it hard to get through - or being forced to outright lie just to get a foot in the door. If you don't you get nothing, so what is there to lose beyond the embarassment of getting caught in the act?

One of the solution architects I worked with currently is a complete blagger and not very good at his job. I think I see how he got it though - told a good story on his CV then blagged the interview. The interview process was not thorough at all.

Yep we're in a strange situation right now. Job Ads being very specific and you feel the only person suitable for the role is the one who's just walked out the door to either retire or move on to something better. Only 10 years ago you were hired because you knew Java, Typescript or C# well enough and could easily learn and contribute from the get-go. It didn't matter whether it was Java 8 or 11, so long as you were intelligent enough to get going. Then there's these ridiculous lists of side-skills that are just laughable, stuff that takes 2 days to learn to be good enough level for implementation, but need to be on a CV. How does anyone get all these skills is beyond me.

I'm wondering if they do get the EXACT person they are looking for, because how they describe the skills is a unicorn developer, which doesn't exist.

My stats show that the overall job number (all skills, all trades) is actually rising, however key IT skills are conversely decreasing. I'm assuming companies are slowing their investment generally and all the factors are mentioned over and over again (Brexit/COL/NIC contribs/AI) are all affecting what companies do.

[Dorkeaux]

Yep we're in a strange situation right now. Job Ads being very specific and you feel the only person suitable for the role is the one who's just walked out the door to either retire or move on to something better. Only 10 years ago you were hired because you knew Java, Typescript or C# well enough and could easily learn and contribute from the get-go. It didn't matter whether it was Java 8 or 11, so long as you were intelligent enough to get going. Then there's these ridiculous lists of side-skills that are just laughable, stuff that takes 2 days to learn to be good enough level for implementation, but need to be on a CV. How does anyone get all these skills is beyond me.

I'm wondering if they do get the EXACT person they are looking for, because how they describe the skills is a unicorn developer, which doesn't exist.

My stats show that the overall job number (all skills, all trades) is actually rising, however key IT skills are conversely decreasing. I'm assuming companies are slowing their investment generally and all the factors are mentioned over and over again (Brexit/COL/NIC contribs/AI) are all affecting what companies do.

Yeah, this happens a lot.
Particularly when the job spec is written (added to) by committee, none of whom will actually be working with the person.
Or even in the same field..

Again, it's the lack of correlation between.. ah, never mind.

But I wonder if this is a new phenom. I remember in the mid-90's Java was very much in demand.
Job specs were asking for 5 years of Java experience, but it had only been released in 1995...

We often joked about who got those roles, liars, time-travellers or amnesiacs.

[dsc]

Yep we're in a strange situation right now. Job Ads being very specific and you feel the only person suitable for the role is the one who's just walked out the door to either retire or move on to something better. Only 10 years ago you were hired because you knew Java, Typescript or C# well enough and could easily learn and contribute from the get-go. It didn't matter whether it was Java 8 or 11, so long as you were intelligent enough to get going. Then there's these ridiculous lists of side-skills that are just laughable, stuff that takes 2 days to learn to be good enough level for implementation, but need to be on a CV. How does anyone get all these skills is beyond me.

I'm wondering if they do get the EXACT person they are looking for, because how they describe the skills is a unicorn developer, which doesn't exist.

My stats show that the overall job number (all skills, all trades) is actually rising, however key IT skills are conversely decreasing. I'm assuming companies are slowing their investment generally and all the factors are mentioned over and over again (Brexit/COL/NIC contribs/AI) are all affecting what companies do.

Job specs are either written to replace someone with veeeeery specific skills (like you say either retiree or someone who simply left to a different position) or they are written with a specific person in mind ie. for internal hires (but the job needs to be announced officially to tick boxes).