Reply to: State of the Market

[hobnob]

DevOps has only existed since 2010/2011, The Phoenix Book, Gene Kim et al.

Depending on how you define it, I think the concept has been around for longer than the name. Early in my career, I used to work for small companies, where I'd be developing in-house apps, doing sysadmin work to deploy them, and taking support calls from end users.

[SchumiStars]

In reality as bad as the market is, we are all very fortunate with where we live.

Always be grateful as we could always be much worse off.

[JustKeepSwimming]

There is also a certain amount of I need £x000 a week to live on, it takes a long time to accept that £300 is better than nothing.

equally £300 may pay for food but it probably doesn’t solve other debts continuing to build up

£300 isn't food though, that's food for 6-8 weeks.

I agree that many people won't or can't sit down and run the numbers objectively. Most people in financial distress wouldn't be able to tell you how bad it is, just that it is bad, many don't even open their letters because they know it is a bill.

[dx4100]

Not one call this week from any agency or recuriter. Time to relax and not stress too much, TBF it's about the only thing we can all do.

Market is tulip
Economy is tulip
Weather is also tulip

I found my last contract before this one over Christmas! Keep going and don't buy into this nothing happens at Christmas idea. If anything, what little there is probably goes unnoticed by a lot of people not paying attention.

[dx4100]

There is also a certain amount of I need £x000 a week to live on, it takes a long time to accept that £300 is better than nothing.

equally £300 may pay for food but it probably doesn’t solve other debts continuing to build up

The key is to call you situation early enough to do something about it.

Hopefully any contractor out of work is starting from the healthy position of having 6 months warchest built up (hopefully better). Soon as you are out of contract you cut right back and turn that 6 months into 12 months. Then after a month of being out of contract you start picking up whatever work you can to extend that warchest further.

I think in reality some people don't cut back until its too late and probably didn't have that 6 month warchest they should have had. So I guess the idea of swallowing your pride, stop being a snob and picking up some NMW work is probably too far fetched.

I want to be sympathetic but it should take a lot more the six months out of work to floor you to the point where you are posting these begging posts on Linkedin.

I do find it some what offensive that someone thinks they should get selected for a contract over the next guy because they probably didn't do any of the above. Its business, leave the sob stories for x factor contestants.

[SchumiStars]

Not one call this week from any agency or recuriter. Time to relax and not stress too much, TBF it's about the only thing we can all do.

Market is tulip
Economy is tulip
Weather is also tulip

[eek]

In other news - someone who knows the recruitment market is saying that Contract work is doing way better than permanent recruitment

I think it doesn't occur to many people. I've seen it before where someone has done X for many years and it just doesn't occur to them to adapt and try something different. You get a lot of 'Why bother, they will just dismiss me because i'm overqualified'. Ironically, I think pride plays a role too.

There is also a certain amount of I need £x000 a week to live on, it takes a long time to accept that £300 is better than nothing.

equally £300 may pay for food but it probably doesn’t solve other debts continuing to build up

[JustKeepSwimming]

What I don't understand is how this person hasn't picked up some temp work at Royal Mail, some shifts a Asda or started doing some UberEats delivering. Something to get the money in. Maybe they have but sometimes you can become a bit blinkered on what you need to be doing to survive. If things are really this bad you need to be doing a bit more surely than just hoping on landing another golden nugget.

I think it doesn't occur to many people. I've seen it before where someone has done X for many years and it just doesn't occur to them to adapt and try something different. You get a lot of 'Why bother, they will just dismiss me because i'm overqualified'. Ironically, I think pride plays a role too.

[jamesbrown]

Call me a miserable cynic but, begging aside, wouldn't you want to show some basic attention to detail in a begging post, avoiding typos etc., as well as keeping it somewhat professional (no matter how desperate)?

[dx4100]

Seen this today, even without Scala, devops + SC should be enough to land something. Strange, but you have no idea how he comes through in interviews, also it seems the market is dead for devops now, so the SC probably doesn't make much of a difference.

On the other hand, half or more of his post might simply be a lie, I mean there's some proper mental people in tech, so don't believe everything you see...

What I don't understand is how this person hasn't picked up some temp work at Royal Mail, some shifts a Asda or started doing some UberEats delivering. Something to get the money in. Maybe they have but sometimes you can become a bit blinkered on what you need to be doing to survive. If things are really this bad you need to be doing a bit more surely than just hoping on landing another golden nugget.

[JustKeepSwimming]

Seen this today, even without Scala, devops + SC should be enough to land something. Strange, but you have no idea how he comes through in interviews, also it seems the market is dead for devops now, so the SC probably doesn't make much of a difference.

On the other hand, half or more of his post might simply be a lie, I mean there's some proper mental people in tech, so don't believe everything you see...

Especially as he is having personal issues beyond out of work. I've known great workers go to absolute tulip when their personal life hit the rocks. When it's your team, you all rally round and share the load and hope they steady their ship. If that came across in an interview? It's going to be a hard pass.

Waiting 3 weeks on outcome from an interview for a role I really want, perfect step in a new career trajectory. HR is adamant it's just HM dragging their feet and no decision has been made.

[dsc]

I thought Scala, DevOps/SRE and being SC cleared would make some one 'most wanted' in the industry. But Alas,

Seen this today, even without Scala, devops + SC should be enough to land something. Strange, but you have no idea how he comes through in interviews, also it seems the market is dead for devops now, so the SC probably doesn't make much of a difference.

On the other hand, half or more of his post might simply be a lie, I mean there's some proper mental people in tech, so don't believe everything you see...

[rocktronAMP]

I thought Scala, DevOps/SRE and being SC cleared would make some one 'most wanted' in the industry. But Alas,

I immediately wanted to delve deeper in his/her Linkedin profile as a nosey parker and then I caught myself, because I felt sad. Kicking sb when they are down in the dumps is not cool.

• DevOps has only existed since 2010/2011, The Phoenix Book, Gene Kim et al.
• Scala is one those skills that I replied back to [ToDude?] about in another CUK thread, can't remember which one though. The fractious in-fighting inside Scala eco-system has led to its demise and reputation within the global developer community as well as new competition from Kotlin and a resurgent Java.
• SRE (site reliability engineer) is still a very much needed skill: monitoring cloud, systems, website and also security platform-ops are still required.

I don't know, but maybe it is , as many already opined, the case with the Price of Bentley cars / the mythical Skills Shortage - paying pennies to your dedicated SecDevOps / senior PlatOps is corporate organisation suicide; just look at HSBC's mobile app outage - 10 days ago; the news just got buried., only because the World, luckily for HSBC's sake, is more concerned with the outcome of the Middle East; in another regular time, it would have been serious damage and reputational risk.

I also think that a lot of people lie about their skill set; they increase the number of years of knowing C++, SCRUM or Kotlin ("I had 15 years of Kotlin"). Go figure.

Thanks BigDataPro for your evidence of a Begging Post. I went looking for examples in my feed and my connection and I couldn't find one. Maybe I killed enough LinkedIn notifications so it is a flat pulse. Yes. The State of the Market is utter tulip (contract or FTC or perm). Shambolic. It is quite literally stunning.

[BigDataPro]

I thought Scala, DevOps/SRE and being SC cleared would make some one 'most wanted' in the industry. But Alas,

[tsmith]

I'm a member of a fractional community, mainly aimed at CxOs and other senior management levels, although it's not exclusive to IT. I've been struck by just how many CTOs have joined in the last few weeks who appear to have come from perm or contract roles and startups. It's a different niche in the market but another sign that there are too many people chasing too few roles.

Its definitely a trend.

Reasons - numerous Im sure

1) The number of bespoke builds is dropping with rise of SAAS is one

"Organizations use 371 SaaS applications on average, meaning SaaS usage has grown by 32% since 2021. The average department in an organization uses about 87 SaaS applications"

With all these supposed turn key SAAS solutions for everything- do you actually need so many full time senior people

Back in the day there was much more in house bespoke building of software= more people needed. Now its more stacks of SAAS software

2) Also with offshoring assuming outside UK resources will be cheaper = UK people compete by working less hours

This article was 2008 - I remember the contracting market for work in agencies was quite good 10 years ago. I had a couple of gigs. Now very rarely see any roles in agencies

https://www.clickz.com/agencies-cut-...shoring/88286/

"According to the WSJ, agency execs pay 20 percent to 50 percent less using overseas firms for this production, compared to what they would pay in the U.S.

Publicis Groupe’s Digitas has even created a dedicated digital-production company, Prodigious Worldwide, responsible for overseeing offshore production. The unit’s providers include avVenta, with offices in South America and Eastern Europe, and Kiev-based DDM among others."