how low can I go?

[gingerjedi]

Have you heard of 'Asda Smart Price' and the 'Oops' stickers they put on nearly out of date goods?

If not you have a little way before you hit rock bottom.

[expat]

expat,

when I do a search on jobserve for siebel oracle migration

i get returned 700 contracts...

http://www.jobserve.com/JobListing.a...436A0EA1ED4B45


seems like a good area

Milan.

Milan, I think that you misunderstand the Google search, and before doing a 5-second search and then snootily advising someone who has spent 4 months doing this more thoughtfully, you should engage the brain.

It is not "a good area", it is 3 areas: anything with any one of those keywords in it. I'm no nearer to qualifying for most of those than Gordon Brown is.

That search does return 759 contracts. The search "siebel and oracle and migration" returns 6, including duplicates: 3 contracts in all.

One is for a tester using a package that I have no knowledge of whatever.
The second is for a test Team Lead. No experience there.
The third is for a BI PM. No PM experience, never seen Oracle BI.
Blag it, you say? Not in this market, against 100 real candidates.

That's how it goes: Yes, I know Oracle. Oracle BI, no. Oracle Financials, no. Oracle CRM, no. Oracle Forms & Reports, no. "Oracle" as an isolated keyword is near totally useless for my search.

Better would be "siebel and PL/SQL and migration". That returns 0 contracts.

But thanks anyway.

[expat]

Have you heard of 'Asda Smart Price' and the 'Oops' stickers they put on nearly out of date goods?

If not you have a little way before you hit rock bottom.

A little way. How many of these do I need in order to cut the grocery bill by the amount of the mortgage payment? Er.....

No, that's why I am looking at selling the house: the mortgage payment dwarfs all other calculations.

[lukemg]

Nice wake up call expat, few people looking at their own futures I reckon !
'Do IT, it's the future blah blah'. Rapidly changing, simplifying and globalising technology is churning increasing numbers back into the pile.
You can wake up and find all you know is now worth buttons. I ended up in a perm job meeting about 80% of my actual outgoings, have had to build out from there but now looking on dodgy ground again.
Are there any other professions like this ? Not the mature ones, law, accounts, medicine etc. A few bean counters I know have been on a steady climb for 20 years, more experience, more responsibility, more money.
Transferrable skills ? Yeah a few but nothing to push you up from an entry level position you won't get offered.
Everyone needs to be thinking about exit strategy right now. If you are contract, don't even think about spending more than the equiv perm and get the rest stashed or working for you.
Good luck...

[TykeMerc]

Everyone needs to be thinking about exit strategy right now. If you are contract, don't even think about spending more than the equiv perm and get the rest stashed or working for you.
Good luck...

I've been working towards an exit strategy ever since I started PM work and stopped being a techie, I've diversified away from pure IT projects far more into the business arena. Fortunately PM skills are fairly transferable away from IT, the tricky bit is to avoid Clients looking at me as a pure IT PM and that's far from easy.

I wish I could help Expat, but your skillset is a bit out of my arena, I'll certainly drop you a message if I spot something that I suspect is up your street.

[gingerjedi]

A little way. How many of these do I need in order to cut the grocery bill by the amount of the mortgage payment? Er.....

No, that's why I am looking at selling the house: the mortgage payment dwarfs all other calculations.

Every Little Helps™ ... oh hang on that's Tesco, a premium store to the less well off.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/ will be your friend for the foreseeable future, it's all very depressing if you used to search AVforums for advice on £3k home cinema kit.

[Fred Bloggs]

Nice wake up call expat, few people looking at their own futures I reckon !

Yes, perhaps I'm fortunate after all. For most of my long career in engineering I've regarded it as a dead duck industry. However, having been able to stay in work (so far) for the last 36 years I guess I haven't dobne too badly. I have had reinvent myself several times (the last Bloggs reinvention was 2008) but in nuclear now I see a bright (if boring and mind numbingly slow) future. There has been such a miserable uptake of engineering as a career for the last 25 years that the oldies really do seem to be in demand and age is apparently not a bar in process engineering. I think I now would recommend process engineering to a youngster as a career. I've changed my mind the last 18 months or so. The only caveat is that I see a lot of the future opportunities being overseas from here onwards.