The Market is picking up..... or is it!

[BolshieBastard]

Personally I think this is utter crap. Jack of all is ok for permies as they invest in the person and these skills could be used in the organisation as a whole.

As a contractor you are brought in because you can demostrate you are a qualified expert in your field and can hit the ground running from day one and deliver exactly what the client wants. They do not want to be re-training or skilling up generics.

Put your jack of all CV next to someone that has delivered the clients needs for the last 10 years an day and I will show you a guy with more bench splinters in his arse than soft Mick.

Agree wwnluks!







































Kinell!

[HeadOfTesting]

What area is that ?

Geographically I'm concentrating on central London.

I'm looking at all sectors but am keen to focus on adding to my existing finance experience.

I'm looking at senior test management roles: head of testing (which I know is typically permie), test programme manager, test strategy consulting etc.

To be fair I'm only looking at things which add value to my CV and haven't looked at anything below £750pd.

In the meantime I'm happy to work on plan b.

Good luck to everyone who's looking.

[ChimpMaster]

Geographically I'm concentrating on central London.

I'm looking at all sectors but am keen to focus on adding to my existing finance experience.

I'm looking at senior test management roles: head of testing (which I know is typically permie), test programme manager, test strategy consulting etc.

To be fair I'm only looking at things which add value to my CV and haven't looked at anything below £750pd.

In the meantime I'm happy to work on plan b.

Good luck to everyone who's looking.

£750 seems to me a very high rate, especially for testing which has historically always paid less that development roles. A permie test programmer manager would get somewhere in the region of £60k in City, I would imagine (but testing is not my expertise I may be corrected!).

How long do your roles tend to last?

Personally I'm quite happy with the £600 mark but it is more product-based development and technical management that I do.

[HeadOfTesting]

£750 seems to me a very high rate, especially for testing which has historically always paid less that development roles. A permie test programmer manager would get somewhere in the region of £60k in City, I would imagine (but testing is not my expertise I may be corrected!).

How long do your roles tend to last?

Personally I'm quite happy with the £600 mark but it is more product-based development and technical management that I do.

My last rate was £850; most of what I've been looking at has been in the £800-£950pd range. that said I tend to specialise in troubleshooting where often the clients are slightly less price-sensitive. I also tend to get approached/recommended rather than finding work through agents.

I personally couldn't name a single competent perm test programme manager who would work for £60k in the city (or even outside of the city) and I'm very plugged in to the test management community but good luck to anyone that can find such people.

In my experience dev generally pays more than test except at the top end of the ability range where rates are often higher in test. I've managed lots of teams where the most senior testers and paid more than the most senior devs - there are a number of reasons for this which I won't go in to here - but again my experience (which is broad and deep if I say so myself) could be unusual.

My roles tend to last 6 - 18 months; most places don't want a contract/interim head of testing on the books any longer than necessary - which is fair enough.

I personally am not too fussed as I'm more interested in making my plan b my plan a but there's no doubt that opportunities for people like myself (which are never plentiful by their nature) are less common than they were last year imo.