job market

[courtg9000]

Its not just the contracting or IT markets, lots of permies in "more traditional stuff" finding it hard to get new roles/move on or are have been laid off.

[eek]

I've been playing around with the new MiniMax LLM coding tool and being frank i've been scarily surprised at how good it is..

It really is a good junior dev on speed and it's allowed me to do a 1 month hobby project in about 2 days.

I will add that my opinion here does depend on what you are trying to do, LLMs are appalling at giving accurate information about Dynamics 365...

[Fraidycat]

So what I am trying to say is people who stay in work during downtimes are one of these three a) have specialist skills (which probably 90% of us don't) b) are just lucky enough to have a long contract c) aren't too proud to take a rubbish rate or work away from home.

d) Have some one in your network that can get you in or an interview on recommendation.

Thats I how got a role during past down turns.

[Fraidycat]

Its not just the contracting or IT markets, lots of permies in "more traditional stuff" finding it hard to get new roles/move on or are have been laid off.

And its not just the UK, workers in the US are having a hard time as well.

There do seem to be countries that are not having it as bad, but this UK slow down seems to highly correlated to the US.

US GDP growth was 4% on the back of massive spending on AI data centre buildouts. But this has helped construction workers and electricians and not as many IT workers, at least not yet.

[sadkingbilly]

I've been playing around with the new MiniMax LLM coding tool and being frank i've been scarily surprised at how good it is..

It really is a good junior dev on speed and it's allowed me to do a 1 month hobby project in about 2 days.

I will add that my opinion here does depend on what you are trying to do, LLMs are appalling at giving accurate information about Dynamics 365...

even worse at anything mainframe

[SussexSeagull]

Finished my last (and, weirdly, best paid ever) contract in March 2024 and couldn’t find anything until I saw the writing on the wall and moved out of IT to do something else in June this year.

There are some contractors who have kept working, of which there are a couple of examples here, but I think IT contracting, especially outside IR35, as a mass industry is over.

[ensignia]

I had my best ever year 24/25 (the corp tax hit was sobering...) and am still in an Outside contract on a good rate until March.

I am not so optimistic about future prospects, but I've managed to navigate the past couple of years worth of tulipshows, so here's hoping that 2026 isn't an absolute car crash.

[courtg9000]

I've been playing around with the new MiniMax LLM coding tool and being frank i've been scarily surprised at how good it is..

It really is a good junior dev on speed and it's allowed me to do a 1 month hobby project in about 2 days.

I will add that my opinion here does depend on what you are trying to do, LLMs are appalling at giving accurate information about Dynamics 365...

just having a little play with this myself, you are not wrong, it is a good junior dev on speed, thanks for tip off! Happy New Year to You too!

[SussexSeagull]

I had my best ever year 24/25 (the corp tax hit was sobering...) and am still in an Outside contract on a good rate until March.

I am not so optimistic about future prospects, but I've managed to navigate the past couple of years worth of tulipshows, so here's hoping that 2026 isn't an absolute car crash.

I finished on a really high note. I had my joint second best paid contrast and found my best paid within a fortnight (although it ended up taking longer to actually start).

Again, you very well might be different, certainly not having a gap after your last contract seems to count for something, but it is a different world to when you last had to look for something.

[RobLeeds]

Hi all, my two cents, on a bench first time since COVID, last contract ended mid Dec 2025, as I'm based in the north UK, outside ir35 market is dead here, I applied for a few inside ir35 gigs (lower p/d than usual) but still nothing. Just started applying for a perm roles this week so we'll see how it goes.

Good news is that I got some free time now to look in more detail into Azure AI Foundry/LLM/AI and add more certs to my resume related to AI

Like someone already said in here: ...as a Contractors we need to be flexible and look out for all opportunities out there...