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Recent content by swamp
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State of the Market
Some good news from the government: https://www.ft.com/content/b8d4fba5-63b4-46ef-95fb-182d21eb08e0- swamp
- Post #11,264
- Forum: Business / Contracts
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State of the Market
That's a small list ;) You forgot about all the front-end stuff too, like typescript, node.js etc.- swamp
- Post #9,527
- Forum: Business / Contracts
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State of the Market
DevOps was always a niche, and it seems to be getting smaller these days. Software engineers are expected to do a lot of that work themselves these days.- swamp
- Post #9,524
- Forum: Business / Contracts
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Has anyone pin pointed why the contract has gone tits up - been a while
Is the market particularly bad for software testers? I ask because in my last two gigs the client has refused to hire testers. We just have to manage without them. And I'm wondering if this is a trend that other people have seen?- swamp
- Post #22
- Forum: Business / Contracts
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State of the Market
SC is attached to both, a bit like car insurance. If you change job the SC needs to be transferred from your previous role. It stays active for up to 1 year, unless it expires (usually 5 years). However in reality many places can't or won't let it be transferred, which makes a mockery of the...- swamp
- Post #9,312
- Forum: Business / Contracts
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Tories scrapping IR35
When Phillip Hammond was a backbencher in 2007 he wanted to scrap IR35. When he became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 2018 he did the opposite. Why would David Davis behave any different?- swamp
- Post #12
- Forum: Business / Contracts
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State of the Market
If we didn't have open source software, IT budgets would be eaten up by software licenses. The few of us working in the field would be working with bloated rubbish from the likes of IBM, and the field of software would be 20 years behind where we are today.- swamp
- Post #8,657
- Forum: Business / Contracts
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State of the Market
I also think some more peripheral IT roles are in decline. For example, in my last two gigs we've had no testers. I also see fewer devops engineers -- the developers are expected to write their own kubernetes config etc. Cyber security roles are the exception to this, of course.- swamp
- Post #8,630
- Forum: Business / Contracts
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State of the Market
You need to be careful not to mistake the current IT job market, which seems to be in the toilet, with the wider job market, which is doing rather well: https://www.ft.com/content/0ec5e354-f0aa-4af8-915f-3f9500dc4d59 Maybe there was a lot of over-hiring in IT during the pandemic, and what...- swamp
- Post #8,626
- Forum: Business / Contracts
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State of the Market
Sign the extension, then you can always give notice if you find a better role. Remember that even in a good market a new contract can be pulled at (or even after) the last minute.- swamp
- Post #8,603
- Forum: Business / Contracts
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Will the contract market recover? If so when?
I'm optimistic: * Things aren't as bad as 2001-2003 * If Labour win the next election they might kick off a whole bunch of public sector projects * We could have an "AI boom" * Plenty IT failures -- British Airways and Home Office in last week alone -- indicate a lack of investment- swamp
- Post #6
- Forum: Business / Contracts
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State of the Market
AI will produce 1,000s of lines of lovely code, tests, and config. And none of it will work. The real developers won't be "tweaking" this code; they'll need to spend weeks and months effectively re-writing it.- swamp
- Post #8,271
- Forum: Business / Contracts
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State of the Market
People have been saying for years that software engineers' jobs would be under threat, from various automations and what we now call low-code. But it's never really come to pass. I just see AI -- these large language models -- as another bandwagon. I can't see it replacing any proper software...- swamp
- Post #8,267
- Forum: Business / Contracts
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What would you do with ones years income?
It's usually worth overpaying (vs savings) if doing so will bring the LTV < 60%. The next mortgage renewal should then be cheaper.
