Reply to: Major Blue chip...6 month contract..20/hr

[BradNeedsYourHelp]

They are definately not s3 agencies. Thanks.

[abc]

If multiple agencies are advertising the same job at similar rates I would expect that your agency is not ripping you off silly (unless all these different agencies under owned by the same group).

As oraclesmith said it's prolly a junior role

Might be two S3 agencies perhaps?

[BradNeedsYourHelp]

Thanks, and also thanks to everybody else who offered advice.

[Mordac]

Sadly, I have no other opportunities. So I must take.

Good luck. Let us know how it goes.

[BradNeedsYourHelp]

Sadly, I have no other opportunities. So I must take.

[Ardesco]

15-20 an hour

If multiple agencies are advertising the same job at similar rates I would expect that your agency is not ripping you off silly (unless all these different agencies under owned by the same group).

As oraclesmith said it's prolly a junior role

[oraclesmith]

If it's who I think it is, they are also advertising for Access developers at £9 per hour !

There is, of course, the possibility that you are simply over-qualified for the role. The client may only want a junior developer to do simple work, hence the rate and the easy technical test, but the agent may have upped the job spec to filter out the hordes of college Microsoft VB/VBA/Access programmers which will apply.

From the contract search, it seems that if you have specific sector experience, you could command up to £500 or more per day. But the rates do vary a lot. The average seems to be about £250. You can do the search yourself to see of you're being ripped off.

[BradNeedsYourHelp]

15-20 an hour

[Ardesco]

and the rate is.....

[BradNeedsYourHelp]

hmmm..I have just seen the role advertised again in the last few days by another agency.

[AtW]

Good thing I told KPMG to **** *** in 2000, after seeing how Assenture "worked" on our site I am ready to believe every word Mordac posted above - the only thing to add is that the client will be screwed in process big time, so you would not want that to be mentioned on your CV, like which contract would like to say that he had to work on (say) Child Credits contract for the Govt? Or anything to do with iSoft? They will wash their reputation white because they got big fund for it, but yours will be in tutters.

[Mordac]

Is it worth it?

Blue Chip is a well known consultancy.

Large consultancy = it's bound to be tulip. They'll be under-resourced, many of the bodies they do have will be exactly that - bodies. Cheap but useless. PM will be under pressure, so anyone who actually knows what they're doing is going to be looking at a shedload of work. They'll have one eye on completing the project as cheaply as possible, and one eye on extracting more work (and therefore more cash) from the client. They will happily sacrifice you if anything goes wrong (they'd lose face if they were forced to blame one of their inept permies). If there's any dev work involved, some of it (the easy stuff) will be done in India, and it'll be late and won't work properly. They'll blame the clients infrastructure for this, and the client will believe them. They're really good at this (years of practice have honed this particular skill down to a fine art). They'll cut corners on any testing required, mainly due to time constraints. Someone will say "It looks fine to me" and the PM will interpret this as "I've tested it fully and it works exactly as the spec says". Even if he doesn't, they don't have any more time to do any proper testing, so they'll roll it out and some poor f*cker (you - it certainly won't be one of the permies) will spend 3 days and nights trying to fix the problem, which you will, and then they'll blame you (see above) and you'll be out on your arse, and you won't even have a reference because you'll feel too humiliated to ask them for one. And all for the princely sum of £20 per hour. I know what I'd do. I'd save myself a whole load of hassle and tell the to shove the ******* job up their ******* arse.

[BoredBloke]

"Has anybody else worked in a role? were they know (for sure) they were being raped on the rate?"

Yes a couple of times. I had one a while ago which was subbed through a second agency. Between the two they were making £100 per day from me, or 26% of the total bill to the client - I only found this out after I had signed and because agency 1 kept sending me the payment amounts for agency 2. I was OK with the rate I was on and would have looked to regegotiate their cut at extension time. As it was, I did the 6 months and left because the job itself was cr@p.

The way I look at it is to pick a rate you are happy with and a bottom line which you are prepared to work for. Never tell the agencies your true bottom line as that allows them to work out how much they can cream off you, or sell you into roles where you would normally be over qualified.

It is also worth noting that the client may well have expectations as to your abilities based on the amount they are paying. If the agency fee is massively high you might find it reflects badly at extension time.

Finally, there are a load of agencies who simply go after green newbie contractors. Their business plan is to rip everybody off once as there will be another mug along some time soon.

[BradNeedsYourHelp]

Oraclesmith, I think you have it right.

All that is required is advanced VBA (development and support).

"Technical test" consisted of (and they brought in a specialist for this):

Them : "Do you know loops?"
My answer : "yes"
Them : "great stuff"

Huge consultancy at a huge client too.

[oraclesmith]

If you posted a rough idea of the skills and experience the contract requires, then maybe people could assess whether you're getting stitched. Some contracts are actually at this level because they're for perma-temps doing something relatively straightforward or there is lots of skilled staff about. Make sure you anonymise it properly though as the agencies cruise this site.