Market really this bad?

[dude69]

Rates in finance have obviously dropped, plus this is in insurance which is finance's little brother. Also note the role doesn't exactly have a big skill list; "ajax", "CSS", "HTML" points to a front-end pixel jockey rather than a proper developer.

Take it for what it is: a cheeky low offer for a newbie contractor. I'd even say the rate was about right.

Pixel jockeys are not required to have latest version .NET and SQL experience.

And asking for Linq as well? No way.

I fit the profile well apart from Telerik, my last rate was >£500, in a back office banking role, I was looking to increase, but that's not going to happening now - the reverse in fact - so I'm pursuing other endeavours and not looking.

Made the mistake of speaking to permanent recruiters, and went to a couple of interviews, they were offering £70k max, realistically £60k, i.e. £40k net. My company's 2008 income after CT was £105k (which all goes to me without paying any more tax, sooner or later). I'm not even going to consider it.

[jim2406]

LINQ has been around for a while now - it's not anything special

If that's just a code monkey job i would say 300 a day sounds about right

Telerik protects you from having to do a lot of the difficult stuff (at the expense of performance a lot of the time) so again it's not really a niche skill... if anything i'd expect a role using telerik to pay less!

[MPwannadecentincome]

That's what they would pay for an Indian IT worker for those skills to sit in London (the Indian wouldn't get the £300 / day though).

It just aint worth it, leave IT like I'm doing and set something else up, don't piss your life away begging money off others living on a drip-feed if you can help it.

Plumbers get £50 per hour! And even in these hard economic times its still difficult to get one.

[MPwannadecentincome]

Are you honestly telling me you couldn't live on 300 per day?

That's 1500 per week. So even with the worst tax provision that would be a grand a week in your bin.

If I couldn't live on a grand a week something is very very wrong.

Depends on:
* do you have a family to support?
* is OH working?
* how big is the mortgage?
* do you want to go on holiday?
* do the kids need extra lessons and activities to be paid for?
* etc

If you are young and single your choices are much simpler!

[MPwannadecentincome]

WHS

[MPwannadecentincome]

Week

That's less than Job Seekers Allowance!

[tim123]

I sure hope the people complaining that £300/day is low are either living down south or have some kind of major ongoing financial commitment.

Now that the banking industry is not going to be ramping up rates for some relatively easy skills (yes I know some of them are not easy) I think that even people down south are going to have to get used to 300 pd as a normal rate in the future.

It's the rate that I've seen as normal for what I do (embedded engineering) and as (IME) it's now impossible as a contractor to jump sectors, you simply have to get used to it.

yim

[expat]

My little spreadsheet* tells me that £300/day corresponds to £38869 salary, or £2793/month net.

If you have no expenses , it's £47703 salary, £3272/month net.
If you also work a full 11 months of the year, £53004, £3536/month net.

BTW 320€/day in mainland EU --> £26601 salary, £1980/month net.

Now £39k is not bad, relatively; but it's not great either. I'd have to think about cutting back, selling my house ...

* assumptions:
10 months/year in contract
10 days off over Christmas/New Year
10 days off otherwise (holidays + public holidays + everything else)
Expenses 1k/month UK, 2k/month EU.
Straight Salary.

[NickNick]

It's the rate that I've seen as normal for what I do (embedded engineering) and as (IME) it's now impossible as a contractor to jump sectors, you simply have to get used to it.

yim

Nah, I've jumped sectors after 10 years in telecoms, I jumped ship to a charity and then after a year, into Defence.

[The Agents View]

Just to go back to one of the earlier posts. Why do you guys include meals in your calculations?? Surely you'd be eating at home? Expenses are for costs that would not usually be incurred (ie entertaining your client, or paying for 5 rounds at the bar to keep your suppliers/team happy). Crikey if I claimed expenses for every meal I ate away from home because I was working I'd be worth a fortune!!

As for the £300 pd argument - I think you'll find the very high calibre individuals becoming worth their weight in gold over the next 12 months, especially the leaders who can implement efficiencies in the operation of a business. What you might find is the IT market goes into freefall, and those who think that they deserve to be on a contract because they're in IT may suddenly become very mistaken.

For too long, the IT sector (which is not my industry fyi) has been driven by so called specialists jumping on the contract bandwagon. If Contracting/consultancy remained as it should (ie a call off resource, or to bring strategic direction to a failing co./project/job) then the better off we'll all be. Take the developer situation for example - it's not a rare skill, it's just everyone that is a developer jumps on the contract bandwagon - permies go down because everyone "wants" contract, and we end up with a skills shortage - driving clients to take contractors. This is fine in economic boom, but during recession, people will soon get desperate and start taking perm jobs again - the contract model, in my opinion only, will soon exist purely to bring in senior, experienced resources.

But that's just the way I see the IT market from an outside perspective. I'm not even going to get started on my market (which has taken a fairly major dip across the board) because it's got to the point where it's totally unpredictable.

Rant over

TAV