The trend: commoditisation of I.T. and falling rates

[SussexSeagull]

I think the million dollar question is what effects the government spending cuts have next year on contracting.

[Sockpuppet]

Just work in a technology that can't be out sourced. Not all IT projects can be done from abroad.

[bobspud]

I think the million dollar question is what effects the government spending cuts have next year on contracting.

Naff all. Their rates seemed to go up. The home office was paying 550 for. TA role recently and the guys at the fco were offering 650. So as you can see there is plenty of room at the trough.

As for the downward spiral:
I think we are playing a long game at the moment. The more junior jobs go off shore then the less people will be available to take the senior roles tomorrow, while every year more and more old people are drummed out of the industry through age discrimination . sooner or later businesses will start to realise that they really have no choice but to compete for the skills that are left in the country.

Bob is already too expensive and they too have skills shortages. The co that I am working for is really flummoxed because all their bobs want to be moved up the food chain managing other bobs, instead of being well paid coders. So the pressure is on to make anyone with a few good years on projects man managers. So they are left sifting dross and trying to train new talent. So they haven't solved any issues that sent the work away in the first place. They just moved the problems to a remote and culturally different place.

[SussexSeagull]

Naff all. Their rates seemed to go up. The home office was paying 550 for. TA role recently and the guys at the fco were offering 650. So as you can see there is plenty of room at the trough.

As for the downward spiral:
I think we are playing a long game at the moment. The more junior jobs go off shore then the less people will be available to take the senior roles tomorrow, while every year more and more old people are drummed out of the industry through age discrimination . sooner or later businesses will start to realise that they really have no choice but to compete for the skills that are left in the country.

Bob is already too expensive and they too have skills shortages. The co that I am working for is really flummoxed because all their bobs want to be moved up the food chain managing other bobs, instead of being well paid coders. So the pressure is on to make anyone with a few good years on projects man managers. So they are left sifting dross and trying to train new talent. So they haven't solved any issues that sent the work away in the first place. They just moved the problems to a remote and culturally different place.

I tend to agree that public sector rates never seem to go down but as it seems to be a cosy little club (especially SC stuff) they are going after a limited pool of talent.

It was always going to be he case that Indian IT people would wanted a bigger piece of the pile. Good for us!

[yasockie]

I think it it not mentioned enough that contracting in IT has very few downsides, compared to contracts in other industries (say drilling on a remote oil rig etc).
The one downiside is that skills do become obsolete rather quickly and you need to keep up. I'm still pretty sharp with nuance of ISDN and Novell Netware, but I am rather happy to have moved on.
I'm sure there is still someone, somewhere out hter using those legacy technologies and they can pay a bit or pay a bit to migrate to sth more modern - invetabily the rate will be as low/high as the ease of migration.
On the side of the wave are the surfers riding the hot new tech, I've read an ad for an Iphone app tester paying up to 400 pd and from the description it shouldent that anyone who's downloaded Angry Birds from the app store and 'tested' them, qualifies.
You find you niche and a place in the wave. if you're niche is good, like COBOL or AS/400 then you'll be able to find work at good or even excellent rates many years after the tech's heyday.

And as other have said - even with all IT commoditised, at the intersection with business, there always needs to be a BA or PM with decent communication skills to mediate between the CEOs and the coders.

[jonathanOnshore2010]

One interesting question I keep asking.... are tech leads & business analysts becoming commodities as well? Or will these become more valuable alongside the continuing offshoring trend?

And how does a hands-on coder become a hands-off technical analyst? Any suggestions....


(btw. those talking about chaff and inferior quality, what I've been seeing is that clients no longer give a rats about the quality of people they hire. they may say so in the ad and the interview , but actually it ranks lower on the list than actual rate and availability, chemistry et al)

[bobspud]

I tend to agree that public sector rates never seem to go down but as it seems to be a cosy little club (especially SC stuff) they are going after a limited pool of talent.

Trust me when I say, that pool of talent are the best for the job. I am jumping the SC ship to a commercial contract this month and I am already piled into the books because I spent the last 3 years chewing up my technical background while waisting my time on RMADS and other non-consequencial BS that these clowns think up while the commercial sector screw them silly, and they take one year to do what I could achieve outside in 12 weeks. If you want to spend your life on ageing tech and death by non-functional requirements go ahead but the interesting stuff is outside SC roles.

One interesting question I keep asking.... are tech leads & business analysts becoming commodities as well? Or will these become more valuable alongside the continuing offshoring trend?

And how does a hands-on coder become a hands-off technical analyst? Any suggestions....


(btw. those talking about chaff and inferior quality, what I've been seeing is that clients no longer give a rats about the quality of people they hire. they may say so in the ad and the interview , but actually it ranks lower on the list than actual rate and availability, chemistry et al)

Yeah the big names are all racking down rates for lead architects to the levels that I used to get as a unix engineer. But it really is a temporary thing. As more and more people retire or Plan - B their way out of the industry the pool gets smaller and they will have to start poaching from each other.

It's far tougher in the hands off world than the engineering sector, so think twice before you jump for money reasons, there are several guys on here pulling more than I do just for fecking about with hardware in a banking environment. and most developers are only an iPhone app away from being boomed in the current markets...