Back on the Bench

[SBK1972]

Hi all

After 9 months, just been told I cant extended, seems like the crunch has now effected the policing services too now.

Been looking on jobserver and others, and not much going for the old Sun / Solaris contractor, who's based in Sussex/ Surrey / Hampshire.

Looks like Im off for Christmas then, and fingers crossed, market will come alive in Jan / Feb 2010. Nov / Dec / Jan are always dead months. Going to learn up on SUSE over the hols though.

How you guys found it ?

Time to buy a few lottery tickets.

SBK

[cojak]

<makes room for SBK1972>

[Ruse]

Welcome. Been keeping the bench warm myself for 6.5 months now. You think it's bad now, it's positively buzzing, should have seen it 3 months ago, it was deader than a dead thing.

[SBK1972]

I havent taken a day off since starting here 9 months ago, Ive tried to build up the old war chest. Will be nice having a week off or so though. However, I know that Dec / Jan are dead months, so will be off for a minium of two / three months, and bills seem to drop on my mat, the moment they know Im not working.

Budgets / Projects seem to come out in Feb/ Mar, so fingers crossed, as the market, from all searches Ive done, on the numerous web sites, cold calls, is poor.

Many people here on the bench ?

SBK

[northernladuk]

Sorry to hear but at least you get to sit next to cojak!!

Keep positive. Yes they are quiet months but not impossible months. There are still openings to be had and you only need one of them.

Stick at it.

[Soled73]

I know it's tough out there, but I would say it's turning - keep positive.

[nomadd]

Hi all

After 9 months, just been told I cant extended, seems like the crunch has now effected the policing services too now.

Last Dec./Jan/Feb was the first time I'd worked that period in 3 years. It seems I always find myself out of contract in the Winter time. Mind you, never bothered me too much as I ride a motorbike to work, and they are always the coldest months!

I think you are doing the right thing in taking a couple of weeks to chill and then reskilling. Used to do a huge amount of UNIX (Aix, Solaris, HP-UX, Linux) admin. myself, but just like the WebSphere infrastructure side of things, it's gone pretty dead in that line of work.

I'm back programming now - thank god I never stopped using the Java skills I had. I'd say next time you pump out your cv, make sure it has a decent spread of scripting (Shell, Python, Perl) on it as well as some Java (even if only mentioned in passing.)

Best of luck on finding something new. Things are slowly getting better, and I think next year won't be quite as bad as the one just gone (I was benched for 7 months...)

Nomadd

[norrahe]

Market seems to be picking up for Jan, have had 6 calls in the last two days, simply by posting that I'm looking in Linkedin.

[kaiser78]

Have a break, enjoy Christmas and worry about it in the New Year.
Keep smiling

[SBK1972]

Cheers for your comments guys. SBK is always smiling ! :-)

Im working down my last 1.5wk here and I must admit, Im so bored. Ive done all my projects, docs, tasks, and if Im honest, Im so tired of the public sector morons who hate change, who call themselves Technical but dont know what ftp is and a few of them who've tried ot get me out from day one, the anti - contractors.

Whilst being here, Ive re-designed the future strategy for thier Unix estate, design a new DR, built 6 high end M series servers and installed numurous zones / virtual servers, running legacy applications within them, clearing the data centre.

Ive fixed endless amounts of scripts, backup issues, performance problems, and managed to get everyone individual accounts, as opposed to everyone logging in as root ( yes 100 odd techs / developers all using root to do things ), you should of seen what the crontabs looked like ! This site is truely the worst IVe even seen in regards to setup/ control and management of the Unix estate.

Whilst doing all this, Ive had one permy unix sa constantly challenge me, putting the knife in, and trying his hardest to put everything I said, or do, down as rubbish. If he could, he would still be running Sparc Lx's, on Solaris 8 ! :-) He's managed to take credit for 90% of my work and told everyone he can do it, aka Zones / Solaris 10, despite not knowing what zones were or what SMF is ! :-) Well, time to step up.

Managed to get SC cleared though whilst here and IVe enjoyed working with M5000's, Zones / Containers and playign with Oracle 11g. Also, being 20 mins from home, Ive had quite a good work / life balance, especially good as Ive got a 9 month old son.

I'll miss having a weekly wage, miss the great work hours, but I must admit, I am glad to get out of here.

How do you guys find public sector contracts ?
SBK