Will the contract market recover? If so when?

[Paralytic]

Got to be honest though, I do feel like contracting was this nice boat sailing along in sunny weather. Then over time more people jumped on board (why not), that boat slowly starts to sink due to the weight of it. HMRC notice there's 1500 GSK workers on the upper deck sunning themselves, gets the battleship out and sinks it. There's a few life boats (outside IR35) and some life jackets (inside IR35) left, but the contracting ship as we knew it has definitely sailed

Not me wondering if this boat has a name starting with T...

[SussexSeagull]

To some degree yes, but I also have a 40k/year private school bill and a mega mortgage to contend with

I would offer you thoughts and prayers but I am not religious!

[soyoh30298]

Yeah, I'm just looking for a new gig. It's not only contracting, even perm is very bad, not much supply and lots of candidates. Maybe I'm picky to prefer remote working, but still... ( SW Dev, Rust / C / C++ )

[JustKeepSwimming]

Yeah, I'm just looking for a new gig. It's not only contracting, even perm is very bad, not much supply and lots of candidates. Maybe I'm picky to prefer remote working, but still... ( SW Dev, Rust / C / C++ )

I would widen my net. Go for 1/2 day companies and scope it out at interview what their actual attitude is. Company might mandate hybrid which is why it's on the adverts/briefs but individual managers tend to get the final say.

I've had an interview where it was stressed it was 1 day a week, interview turned into 'the expectation is 3-4 days in the office. The entire vibe just stank of stale, trying to claim to be on the cutting edge doing projects I worked on over a decade ago elsewhere.

Equally I've had an interview where 2 days was the company line but at interview it was 'We have team members who only come once a month for the team lunch so we are genuinely flexible'.

[edison]

There are 274,000 more people working in programming compared to 10 years earlier according to the 2021 census. Apparently there are more people in IT in London than work in finance which seems a little hard to believe. Clearly demand overall has risen but perhaps supply has risen even more?

https://news.sky.com/story/rise-in-c...cline-12764051

I think a mix of economic factors has been making many UK companies reluctant to invest as much as they should in technology and this has been the case since the financial crisis in the late 2000s. There are many so called 'zombie' firms who have managed to keep afloat in an era of very low interest rates when ordinarily they would have gone out of business and replaced with other companies who allocate capital better - a process known as creative destruction.

The FTSE100 is full of plodding minimal growth firms like HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds, Tesco, Vodafone, BP, BT, Rolls Royce, British Airways whose share price has hardly changed for 20 years or more. The FTSE All share index including medium and smaller companies is similar.

I think the contract market will recover but we'll probably never see a return to the lucrative old days barring some major shift in technology investment, perhaps triggered by the current AI mania. Even that might take a couple of years to translate into significantly higher IT spending and more roles.

[avonleigh]

Do YOU have the need to earn the biggest rates? Why? If you are a seasoned contractor with years and years of good rates shouldn't you be mortgage/debt free and all sorted?

All contractors who had years and years of high rates and yet are struggling now to pay mortgages, they're a bunch of failures

Stupid comment.

[DrewG]

Yeah, I'm just looking for a new gig. It's not only contracting, even perm is very bad, not much supply and lots of candidates. Maybe I'm picky to prefer remote working, but still... ( SW Dev, Rust / C / C++ )

Stop going call yourself a developer. Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice | Kalzumeus Software

You've also managed to pick niche languages. There will be far more Java role than C... Yes, more competition, but if you're following the advice above and you're good, no problem.

[PCTNN]

Stupid comment.

See it as you want.

I stand by my comment. If you've had decades of good rates combined with lower tax and still NOWADAYS you can't afford to take the going market rate and need the higher rates because you can't pay your mortgage, you're an idiot who lived beyond your means, you're a failure and deserve to get your house repossessed.

[TheDude]

There are 274,000 more people working in programming compared to 10 years earlier according to the 2021 census. Apparently there are more people in IT in London than work in finance which seems a little hard to believe. Clearly demand overall has risen but perhaps supply has risen even more?

Technology is the largest division in pretty much any bank.

[TheDude]

To some degree yes, but I also have a 40k/year private school bill and a mega mortgage to contend with

Kids fail the 11+?