Testing market...dead & buried..??

[SillyMilly]

It's horrible at the moment.

I've been out 8 weeks this time and last year I only worked 6 months. But until the end of 2007 I'd hardly had any time benched for the previous 5 years.

I found I was getting quite a few calls about work up until Easter week, but only 1 interview came out of it. Since then the market has curled up and died.

I agree with Grey Lady about the skills required, and I didn't know about Selenium so thanks for that - will look at that immediately!

Things can only get better ......... oops, wrong song......

[Not So Wise]

Not my market so not go a clue about overall market conditions but where i am they let go their whole in house testing team (5 peeps, mix of permi and contract) at start of year.

To cut costs any corner that can be cut, is cut, to hell with quality

[slockyer]

I too have been benched for 3 months - and agree with Grey_Lady about automated tools. There is a lot of stuff available on the internet: tutorials, apps - some trial some not. I have just been usning the time to gen up on as much as I can.

[grey_lady]

Somehow missed HeadOfTesting's post earlier - great insight thanks, sounds like you see this as lasting for 3 or 4 years...I can see more of us going perm and taking the drop in income if thats the case, ideally somewhere where they're not too keen on agile :-)

Anyone else around who was contracting back then experience the same as HeadOfTesting e.g was it really that much tougher back than and do you see this going on into 2012?

[SillyMilly]

I was contracting last time round - on good money until end of 2001. Then in November 2001 I was out of work, but picked up a contract to start in December which carried me through until March 2003. The rate was two-thirds what I'd been on before, but I didn't mind that too much! Then I had a few weeks out until July after which I had a couple of contracts with the same people with a few weeks' break in the Autumn. Early in 2004 I started a non-stop run of contracts right through until December 2007. But it took until 2005 to get back up to the rate I'd been on in 2000-2001.

Since December 2007 I've worked for only 9 months.

So I don't really agree that it was worse then - this has been far worse from my point of view!

Also I think that a major problem for testers is the large number of off-shorers who are being brought into this country by the likes of EDS, IBM etc. to do System Integration and UAT. I can see that they could do unit and system testing reasonably well, but they don't have the business knowledge or the communication skills to do UAT and the end result is shoddy systems and people like us on the bench. I bet not many of them have been sent home over the last year.

[HeadOfTesting]

Somehow missed HeadOfTesting's post earlier - great insight thanks, sounds like you see this as lasting for 3 or 4 years...I can see more of us going perm and taking the drop in income if thats the case, ideally somewhere where they're not too keen on agile :-)

Anyone else around who was contracting back then experience the same as HeadOfTesting e.g was it really that much tougher back than and do you see this going on into 2012?

Thanks

It was my first ever post so it was delayed by pre-moderation. This one may be too.

A few follow-up points:

- Going perm is hard if you're an unemployed contractor because you look like a big flight risk (I know having spent years on the hirer's side of the desk). I got away with it because I had gone straight into contracting from uni and was able to say that I had just fallen into it by accident and got swept along (100% true infact) - nowhere on my CV was there evidence that I had conciously left perm work to go contract. This was key and I'm very grateful to the agent who pointed it out to me because it would never have occured to me to spin it that way. It's hard to confront the reality, but it's a switch in strategy that needs to be made quickly and decisively, otherwise you get that big CV gap that just makes you look like it's a move of desperation (which let's face it is a true reflection for most people on this board). Since leaving my last contract in Dec, I've played up the fact that I did a 5yr perm stint and would have stayed had there been a decent career path (less than 100% true). I focus on saying that I'm indifferent as to whether I am perm or contract but that I favour contract because the selection processes are quicker/more down-to-earth. This spin seems to work well; I would say it's more credible to claim indifference rather than a sudden "I've seen the light and want to be permie" moment which is hard to pull off unless you are an exceptionally good liar which I am definitely not. Just my 2p's worth.

- For what it's worth I think this will go beyond 2012

- As for whether it's better/worse than last time, I would say last time was definitely worse at the nadir point; we're not at the nadir point with this one so we won't know until we're past it. Last time was very sector-specific so this time may prove easier, but this one is more general across the economy which could make things better or worse for IT; nobody knows yet.

- I don't think avoiding agile environments is advisabe or even sustainable. Better to get in there and learn how to leverage it. The attitudes I've highlighted would not be those shown by leading proponents of agile or anyone you would actually respect and/or want to work with so it's not something to worry about - but it is there - i.e. some people are selling agile as a way to ditch testers on the basis that pair programming catches everything (laughable really but there you go).

- I can see why the poster above disagrees that last time was worse - inevitably we all have different experiences. One thing I do remember was that there was a total dichotomy in the market; lots of people in work, often on pre-crash rates and those who fell out of work and had no route back in because there was simply nothing to apply to. I'm seeing some of that now and it's painful if you're on the outside looking in - it's also a good reason to be very flexible on rate cuts - even those of the -30% variety dished out at BT recently as was discussed on this forum.

HeadOfTesting

[mossman]

Dire Market

Interesting post by HeadOfTesting. I guess I was luckier than some in the last one. I landed a contract in Jan 2000 which went on for nearly 3 years until Sep 2002 (and was a good rate). After that I was unemployed for 6 months, but luckily, like HeadOfTesting I am a saver, so was able to carry on living normally. The worrying thing is that you don't know, when you're in it, that it's only going to be for 6 months.

When I did get another contract it was for peanuts. My rate gradually crept back up over the years, until finally in 2008 I landed a contract at the same rate I had been on in the 2000 contract. Sadly this one ended after 7 months, and I am now without work. I still have a war chest, though not quite like that of HoT (15 years - wow!).

The difference is, whereas last time the recession seemed to be just in IT (I don't recall the word recession being used in the media at that time - just talk of the dot com bubble bursting) this time we have had the collapse of the banking system, the property market, the stock market and a massive worlwide recession.

I spoke to an agent this morning. He said when they post on Jobserve these days they get 500 - 600 responses. I think we may be in for some lean times ahead!

[HeadOfTesting]

The difference is, whereas last time the recession seemed to be just in IT (I don't recall the word recession being used in the media at that time - just talk of the dot com bubble bursting) this time we have had the collapse of the banking system, the property market, the stock market and a massive worlwide recession.

I spoke to an agent this morning. He said when they post on Jobserve these days they get 500 - 600 responses. I think we may be in for some lean times ahead!

Finance got hit hard last time but as you say it was mainly IT.

You have to admire the way the government kept it off the 6 o'clock news. I'm very interested in the financial markets and spent a lot of my bench time with bloomberg on the TV. All day every day the news ticker was reporting job cuts - 20,000 here, 50,000 there...I reckon the economy lost a couple of million jobs (all outside of the job seeking stats of course).

As for responses to adverts, Last time 'round one agent joked to me that he could place an advert on the moon and he would still get 200 CVs.

HeadOfTesting

[swamp]

No mainstream development means no testers needed.

Developers can move to maintenance work, bug fixing, 3rd line support. There may be some role for testers in these activities, but usually very little.

On my current site there are five testers who are working to justify their existence. If I correct a spelling mistake they insist on a full manual regression test, which can take over a week. The (clueless) management are buying these tactics for now, but the writing is on the wall for the test team.

Personally I'm not sure that being a contract tester is viable long term unless you work really hard to ride out the market storms.

[BolshieBastard]

Im a senior test analyst. Been in regular contracts since I returned to contract work in 2005.

Just been extended to November 09 too!