My Bench Time

[Sid Lines]

I have finished a contract in Nov and have not had any luck finding my next contract gig.

I am a .NET/C# Developer with 6 yrs exp, ASP.NET, winforms, WCF, T-SQL ... usual stuff ... mainly worked in finance.

Since I may be on the bench for a few months, what new skills are worth learning??
(been considering maybe WPF, ASP MVC, Silverlight, iPhone ...)

Any suggestions appreciated ...

[FSM with Cheddar]

I maybe completely wrong on this one, but I reckon F# is going to be very lucrative in a few years time. It's not a skill set that many people will have, but the finance and power industries will be crying out for it. These industries are also the sort that will prefer to bring in contractors, than permies.

Probably a few years away though.

[Archangel]

Cobol, CICS, Db2 is the future.

[pmeswani]

Cobol, CICS, Db2 is the future.

I thought the future was QBasic.

[FSM with Cheddar]

personally I don't see why we can't do everything with excel and macros

[pmeswani]

personally I don't see why we can't do everything with excel and macros

That's discrimination... what's wrong with Word Macros or even Access flat-file tables?

[d000hg]

I have finished a contract in Nov and have not had any luck finding my next contract gig.

I am a .NET/C# Developer with 6 yrs exp, ASP.NET, winforms, WCF, T-SQL ... usual stuff ... mainly worked in finance.

Since I may be on the bench for a few months, what new skills are worth learning??
(been considering maybe WPF, ASP MVC, Silverlight, iPhone ...)

Any suggestions appreciated ...

I reckon Silverlight could be big if MS continue to aggressively push it. iPhone certainly has lots of people making stuff, but probably smaller companies with smaller budgets.

[spud]

Seems your problem, and indeed mine, is the 'mainly worked in finance' bit.

20+ years in insurance, even as a contractor, isn't get me many interviews these days, so diversification of industries is the key rather than digging the very deep well of technical expertise.

just my 2 cents worth...

[norrahe]

Seems your problem, and indeed mine, is the 'mainly worked in finance' bit.

20+ years in insurance, even as a contractor, isn't get me many interviews these days, so diversification of industries is the key rather than digging the very deep well of technical expertise.

just my 2 cents worth...

WHS

you may have to consider a hell of a cut in your rate to get into another industry

[tim123]

WHS

you may have to consider a hell of a cut in your rate to get into another industry

I've been telling agents that I'm prepared to do this, for years, (even to the extent of cutting it to zero for a trial)

None of them are the slightest bit interested in trying. Spending 2 minutes looking for the round peg, to fit into the round hole and then moving on to try to fill the next round hole is the MO that (they think) gives them the best return for their effort.

tim