WebSphere, what's happened?

**northernladuk** · 8 November 2011, 14:23

Its less than 2 months before xmas. We are in the quietest time of year. Dont fret it, well you might want to cause getting a gig might be hard but it is expected and will pick up again next year. It is what your warchest is for.

You should have your eye on the market at all times, not just when you come to the end of a contract. What would you have done if your technology had disappeared down a plug hole since you last looked? Too late to think about re-skilling etc...

**hatter** · 8 November 2011, 14:31

There are the usual bunch of jobs in London and Edinburgh but if you are looking for somehwere else then it is just a case of waiting. I am leaving for a new gig in a few weeks so you can always replace me

And of course there are always a few roles advertised at ridiculously low rates by two bit agencies

In terms of skills Process server / BPM are worth having on top of the other websphere products

**malvolio** · 8 November 2011, 15:36

Originally posted by hatter View Post

And of course there are always a few roles advertised at ridiculously low rates by two bit agencies trying to prove there's no local resources so they can bring in the Bobs

FTFY

**minestrone** · 8 November 2011, 16:05

I have seen a shift away from websphere, I think people have got wise to it's poor return on cost and needless over complexity.

**doesNotCompute** · 8 November 2011, 16:19

Originally posted by northernladuk View Post

Its less than 2 months before xmas. We are in the quietest time of year. Dont fret it, well you might want to cause getting a gig might be hard but it is expected and will pick up again next year. It is what your warchest is for.

You should have your eye on the market at all times, not just when you come to the end of a contract. What would you have done if your technology had disappeared down a plug hole since you last looked? Too late to think about re-skilling etc...

Agreed, got too comfortable I think!

**doesNotCompute** · 8 November 2011, 16:23

Originally posted by hatter View Post

There are the usual bunch of jobs in London and Edinburgh but if you are looking for somehwere else then it is just a case of waiting. I am leaving for a new gig in a few weeks so you can always replace me

And of course there are always a few roles advertised at ridiculously low rates by two bit agencies

In terms of skills Process server / BPM are worth having on top of the other websphere products

Thanks hatter. Already well versed in BPM and WPS. Jobserve seems to be awash with Commerce roles though. Maybe I should start looking into that?

Originally posted by minestrone View Post

I have seen a shift away from websphere, I think people have got wise to it's poor return on cost and needless over complexity.

Jboss / Weblogic per chance? Have you observed this trend in large multinationals?

**nomadd** · 8 November 2011, 18:48

Originally posted by doesNotCompute View Post

Currently on contract (18months to date) at a large financial services company undertaking general build and support work using WebSphere Application Server, Portal and MQ. Recently descovered i'll not be renewed post January so i've started to look around and i'm shocked, quite frankly, at the lack of decent (£400pd +) roles around. Is this just a blip or do I need to seriously think about reskilling?

Re-skill. Period.

I rode the WebSphere gravy-train for 7 years or more, from WebSphere 2 (rubbish, and 1 was never officially released outside IBM), through 3, 3.5 (better), 4 (better still) and 5 (finally caught up with WebLogic.) I did years of Portal, WebSphere MQ, yada, yada on top of that too. Cluster builds, Admin, Architecture, Programming, the whole lot.

Finally saw the downturn when I was at Barclays. WebSphere was just another commodity from their perspective and they were off-shoring fast. I found decent roles - £500+/day - were getting very difficult to achieve even 4 years ago. And now, well, let's just say I'm glad to be out of it. The only roles that do seem to be left are high-pressure, low pay support type jobbies.

Others may disagree. But, hey, I moved on (low-latency, Grid-based, Java Architecture & Programming, FWIW. EDIT: And that new line of work is "worth" about twice what agents are offering these days when they phone up about WebSphere roles.)

**doesNotCompute** · 8 November 2011, 20:02

Originally posted by nomadd View Post

Re-skill. Period.

I rode the WebSphere gravy-train for 7 years or more, from WebSphere 2 (rubbish, and 1 was never officially released outside IBM), through 3, 3.5 (better), 4 (better still) and 5 (finally caught up with WebLogic.) I did years of Portal, WebSphere MQ, yada, yada on top of that too. Cluster builds, Admin, Architecture, Programming, the whole lot.

Finally saw the downturn when I was at Barclays. WebSphere was just another commodity from their perspective and they were off-shoring fast. I found decent roles - £500+/day - were getting very difficult to achieve even 4 years ago. And now, well, let's just say I'm glad to be out of it. The only roles that do seem to be left are high-pressure, low pay support type jobbies.

Others may disagree. But, hey, I moved on (low-latency, Grid-based, Java Architecture & Programming, FWIW. EDIT: And that new line of work is "worth" about twice what agents are offering these days when they phone up about WebSphere roles.)

Thanks for the response nomadd.

Thats the feeling i've had for a while now (in my 4th year contracting) and is somewhat the reason for my OP. I guess the more difficult question is then, which direction do I go next?

I suppose the logical one is Java, but isnt that bobbed up to the eyeballs now? My current client co has thousands of em' in Hydrabad and Pune churning out the garbage I have to work with day in day out. The onsite Java bods are just really paper pushers, no real hands on coding but a bit of tuning and optimisation work when the bobs have really screwed up the code. I'm more than comfortable with Java EE from the nuts and bolts up... but the low-latency, grid-based stuff I havent had exposue to yet. Heck, current client only just moved onto JSR168 and is trumpeting the benefits of JNDI, which is only 15 ish years old now

If you dont mind me asking, how did you get into it?

**nomadd** · 9 November 2011, 11:11

Originally posted by doesNotCompute View Post

Thanks for the response nomadd.

If you dont mind me asking, how did you get into it?

Migrated away step-by-step, contract-by-contract. Got back into programming doing a lot of WebSphere automation in Jython, then started pluging bits of Java into it. Broke out the books and updated my Java skills in my spare time. Took a contract for a client who had a Portal, but it was very reliant on a flaky external system, so ended up putting in a caching tier. From there I got a job with a client who wanted distributed caching, but also distributed processing, hence the push towards Grid stuff and highly threaded systems. Again, broke out the books in my spare time to bone up.

The whole migrate away from WebSphere has taken me about 3 years and 3 contracts in total, I guess. I'd still happily do some WAS work for a client as part of a bigger project, but not as a stand-alone, and not at the expense of what I'm doing now.

I posted on a couple of other threads we've had about rates, as I've been offered my old WAS job back at Barclays many times - at anywhere from 20-60% less than I was earning there 4 years ago. Like I say, glad I got out of it.

WebSphere, what's happened?