Market downturn

[SueEllen]

Quite a few pimps getting in touch with DBA roles (granted some permy, but quite a few contract) surprising for January.

qh

I've had some as well just due to having various databases on my CV.

[PrestonChris]

I am an Oracle Developer, have 20 years experience in Database, PL/SQL , Forms , Reports , APEX , ADF , Portal and 11G Application Server. Also have SQL Server skills and a few other databases and a couple of years .NET and VB / VBA but that was ten years ago

Have been contracting for 16 months and have been out of work for 7 months

World's biggest Database company and hardly any dev jobs pop up since Oct 16

Oracle seem to have done a great job in selling all the other products like OIBEE and no one wants to do development anymore

Getting concerned is an understatement .......

Its ok saying get skilled up in other areas but you arent going to get the job if you've done an online course , I've been learning java , xcode and SSIS and SSRS , to be honest they are very similar to products i've used previously, once you learn the syntax and interface

[Cirrus]

World's biggest Database company and hardly any dev jobs pop up since Oct 16

Have you applied for every relevant job on Jobserve, or have you got some constraints - location, rate etc?

[quackhandle]

I've had some as well just due to having various databases on my CV.

"But it says here you've used Foxpro - that's the same as Oracle right? Yeah, you're a perfect fit!"

qh

[SueEllen]

"But it says here you've used Foxpro - that's the same as Oracle right? Yeah, you're a perfect fit!"

qh

Never used Foxpro as by the time I got into IT it was Oracle and SQL Server plus the ones that were open source and the ones that are still open source that were flavour of the day.

Oh I've forgotten the tulip that is DB2, though I'm sure I've removed all references on my CV...

[MrMarkyMark]

"But it says here you've used Foxpro - that's the same as Oracle right? Yeah, you're a perfect fit!"

qh

[squarepeg]

It's surely the worst IT contract market for a long time. What do others think? I haven't had a contract all last year (last one finished late 2015) so it's the worst period for me since 2012 certainly. It depends what you do, of course, but the market for testers is definitely saturated, you certainly need strong automation skills (Selenium/UFT etc.) I don't have much of that so I'm considering doing a course but self training never seem to do you much good. The market for developers of all kinds seems good, but won't these projects ever go into UAT or something (or are people not bothering with that anymore)?
What's happening?

I don't know what you are talking about. The longest I have been on the bench in the last five years was 6 weeks. I usually finish on a Friday, start the next Monday. Mean contract time - 6 months. You are either unlucky or tulip. Skill up and learn to sell yourself.

[SussexSeagull]

Also being a tester I have been out since June. Nothing much happened over the Summer, which is sort of expected, but it didn't improve in the Autumn.

I found things began to pickup at the end of November with clients looking for people for the new year and am waiting to hear back from a couple of interviews at the moment.

Before NLUK does his party piece, I am perfectly aware that contracts only appear when clients have a need but from my perspective it went from a practically silent market to relatively busy and I am still none the wiser why.

[munkee]

Getting concerned is an understatement .......

My most resent role has involved a lot more work with non relational databases. Redis, mongodb, cassandra and even when we discussed relational it moved towards postgres. In my opinion oracle is definitely a dieing market right now, saying that obiee seems to get a lot of love.

[PrestonChris]

Have you applied for every relevant job on Jobserve, or have you got some constraints - location, rate etc?

I've applied for every job in london as I would have no problem moving there

Have also applied for every job that has been within 2 hours commute of me , I live in Preston , twice I have been overlooked for someone more local than me , this was for jobs in Yorkshire

I think there has been about 12 jobs advertised since October , which is when I started looking seriously , so granted not the best time to look !

but you also have to think there are a lot of oracle contractors about !

Both of my first 2 contracts were from my network so I don't really have any experience of recruitment agencies