State of the Market

[Protagoras]

With us all getting older, securing a permi position is not as simple as it sounds. In this market, it might be prudent to land the first one that is available.

Just so.

Horrible position to find oneself in, too old to get a permie job and contract jobs scarce, so that what's left is 'opportunities' like this. That said, this sort of role risks being filled by someone who won't stop looking and will jump if something better comes along, so it's a risk for the client.

And of course this position is only likely to appeal to someone in affordable commuting distance.

Caught up with an old mate recently. Degree in electrical and electronic engineering, but worked in software development for small firms and some freelance so probably in all honesty 'wasted' the degree. He's now doing Amazon deliveries. Yep, there's undoubtedly a skills shortage in the UK. The 'skill' he lacks is to be under 55.

At the end of the day, some income is better than none ...

[TheDude]

Infrastructure BA, £280/day Inside IR35

http://www.jobserve.com/diI4J

If it was remote I would be tempted to take such a low rate just to reduce the attrition on my savings.

I wonder however if among recruiters and hiring managers you are 'only as good as your last role'.

After a long run at high profile banks I took a role in the public sector for six months and wonder if that is going to hurt my chances in the long run.

[TheDude]

With us all getting older, securing a permi position is not as simple as it sounds. In this market, it might be prudent to land the first one that is available.

I don't think taking the first perm role is a great move unless you really need the money. At least with a poorly paid contract you can decline a renewal offer if the market picks up. It's not a great look to flip perm positions too frequently.

[oliverson]

If it was remote I would be tempted to take such a low rate just to reduce the attrition on my savings.

I wonder however if among recruiters and hiring managers you are 'only as good as your last role'.

After a long run at high profile banks I took a role in the public sector for six months and wonder if that is going to hurt my chances in the long run.

Similar story here recently. I did about 10 years in that sector but that was several years ago and I've worked with different kind of clients (insurance, one of the big 4, etc) since.

I have a mate still in investment banking and a role came up in a neighbouring team, so he asked for my CV and I sent him it. The feedback that he got was that they wanted somebody who'd worked in the sector more recently.

On the plus side, I don't have to go back to London and to a sector that I never really understood or liked, and the role was inside IR35, though a pretty good day rate.

Have a meeting on Friday regarding some potential work. Fingers crossed.

[TheScheduler]

What do you consider to be the key IT skills?

As mentioned, Java, C# .NET and any that was in the top 5 of hires.

[Bluenose]

I have a mate still in investment banking and a role came up in a neighbouring team, so he asked for my CV and I sent him it. The feedback that he got was that they wanted somebody who'd worked in the sector more recently.

It is funny when one industry vertical consider themselves to be moving and changing technology in any way different to other industry verticals.

[TheDude]

It is funny when one industry vertical consider themselves to be moving and changing technology in any way different to other industry verticals.

Investment banking is following rather moving and changing technology.

[Fraidycat]

I don't think taking the first perm role is a great move unless you really need the money. At least with a poorly paid contract you can decline a renewal offer if the market picks up. It's not a great look to flip perm positions too frequently.

I flipped a perm role in 2023. Lasted 7 months. From now and until the end of time that role has been expunged from my CV.

This permie co worker had been there 10 years. He was responsible for some of the worst spaghetti code I had ever seen. And not just a a little bit of spaghetti, 100 thousand+ lines of spaghetti. His Cyclomatic complexity scores were off the charts.

• Score 1 - 10: Simple procedure, little risk
• Score 11 - 20: More complex, moderate risk
• Score 21 - 50: Complex, high risk
• Score > 50: Untestable code, very high risk

Some of his code had complexity scores, higher than 500!

It had got to the point that even he could not fix bugs in his own code and was under pressure every day from managers.

So he quit under the stress, and they gave his code to me, no way was I going to hang around there and maintain his mess.

Luckily I moved into another permie role pretty quickly, im doing 3D modelling, fully remote, still working there and enjoying it.

I have not had problems finding perm roles even being aged a bit above 50. Although I know it will get harder as I approach 60 and above.

[oliverson]

I flipped a perm role in 2023. Lasted 7 months. From now and until the end of time that role has been expunged from my CV.

This permie co worker had been there 10 years. He was responsible for some of the worst spaghetti code I had ever seen. And not just a a little bit of spaghetti, 100 thousand+ lines of spaghetti. His Cyclomatic complexity scores were off the charts.

• Score 1 - 10: Simple procedure, little risk
• Score 11 - 20: More complex, moderate risk
• Score 21 - 50: Complex, high risk
• Score > 50: Untestable code, very high risk

Some of his code had complexity scores, higher than 500!

It had got to the point that even he could not fix bugs in his own code and was under pressure every day from managers.

So he quit under the stress, and they gave his code to me, no way was I going to hang around there and maintain his mess.

Luckily I moved into another permie role pretty quickly, im doing 3D modelling, fully remote, still working there and enjoying it.

I have not had problems finding perm roles even being aged a bit above 50. Although I know it will get harder as I approach 60 and above.

Horrendous when you come across something like that and tbh, it's very common.

Recent contract I had was just massively over-engineered piece of junk. I had to rearchitect it from a legacy monolith 'architecture' to something more modern and I got to a point where some of it was just completely unusable. Zero chance of refactoring that tightly coupled pile of dung. Better to rewrite it.

Nowadays I've moved away from pure development roles to DevOps and platform engineering roles, which enjoy a different kind of 'friction'.

[TheDude]

I flipped a perm role in 2023. Lasted 7 months. From now and until the end of time that role has been expunged from my CV.

This permie co worker had been there 10 years. He was responsible for some of the worst spaghetti code I had ever seen. And not just a a little bit of spaghetti, 100 thousand+ lines of spaghetti. His Cyclomatic complexity scores were off the charts.

• Score 1 - 10: Simple procedure, little risk
• Score 11 - 20: More complex, moderate risk
• Score 21 - 50: Complex, high risk
• Score > 50: Untestable code, very high risk

Some of his code had complexity scores, higher than 500!

It had got to the point that even he could not fix bugs in his own code and was under pressure every day from managers.

So he quit under the stress, and they gave his code to me, no way was I going to hang around there and maintain his mess.

Luckily I moved into another permie role pretty quickly, im doing 3D modelling, fully remote, still working there and enjoying it.

I have not had problems finding perm roles even being aged a bit above 50. Although I know it will get harder as I approach 60 and above.

Just as bad are those who introduce unnecessary architectural complexity by applying microservices to everything.