Reply to: State of the Market

[fatJock]

I was out for 17 months over covid then back in the game for 3.5 years. I don't think it's anything to do with 'me, my skills', just for most people, getting noticed in a world where there are hundreds of applicants, suitable or not, for every role within hours, and AI vetting CV's and auto-rejecting them based on some algorithm. Then there's ageism. I've only had two or three face-to-face (zoom) interviews in almost 6 years now but even so, when that zoom session starts and there's a bunch of 30 year old kids on my screen, looking at me almost double their age, certainly a similar age to their father, I have to ask myself.."would I want to work with my own father?!". So, whilst I can't even get a sniff of an interview at the moment, even if I were, well, you get the picture.

As for the market I operate, yes that's changed. The old world was London banking/finance but that was a while back now, in fact its over 10 years since I left my last such contract at a very well known asset management firm, and the chances of cracking that market again are miniscule. Out of the 'magic circle' way too long. I do have a good contracting friend who's gone back to a bank he previously had a couple of stints at. His rate is north of £ 800 inside. Now something like that would be worth considering, but for me not so, not that I could get back in there mind. Nah, personal circumstances, age, life, etc. means that ship has sailed. Away from that sector I'm seeing inside day rates lucky to get over half that mark, as I've posted recently.

I was out for a month during Covid so you being out for 17 is definitely a you and your skills problem - namely that they weren't in demand for that period.

I'm 52 so suspect ageism will kick in at some point but I'd day that 80% of my work in the last eight years has come from my wider network of people I have worked with / for in the past so perhaps this is a bit less relevant.

Back to rates again - 50% of £0 is £0 - my point is, if you need an income something is better than nothing. Sitting on the sidelines moaning that the glory days are gone won't pay the bills.

[SussexSeagull]

The thing that no one wants to consider is that no government of any persuasion can sort this out as places like India and Chins have risen and taken their piece of the pie.

Plus for the last few hundred years this countries prosperity was built on international alliances. Up until World War 2 it was the British Empire and more recently the EU. We haven't got that anymore.

[sadkingbilly]

Agree malvolio, and they have more experienced people and Reform don't.

Farage will be the next PM; hopefully he has time to get some experienced operators to support him who have real life experience and some nous.

[sadkingbilly]

what's a Primark??

[SussexSeagull]

3 years on the bench, just take anything surely that has to be better than nothing.

Have you done any work SchumiStars at all?

Yodel deliveries,shelf stacking anything to not run down savings.

Getting such work isn't as easy as it was. Your local Tesco is going to employ an 18 year old to stack shelves ahead of a 50 something with dodgy knees who will leave when something better appears.

[Cookielove]

Agree malvolio, and they have more experienced people and Reform don't.

Farage will be the next PM; hopefully he has time to get some experienced operators to support him who have real life experience and some nous.

[Cookielove]

Just watched an interview with a senior Indian minister in Mumbai talking about the UK as our PM is currently there and how the highest number of those leaving are now in the UK, how wonderful it is for Indians lifting themselves out of poverty and now middle class in the UK was his line.

Back patting and how great it is for India; yeah mate but the flip side is it is not good for the UK we are going down the tubes due to cheap labour being imported.

It is not is just in the IT sector so many other jobs coffee shops, Primark, McD's youngsters can't get a shop while they study/at school as so much competition and once they get in they tend to only employ their own. My local Primark is a prime example it is 99% staffed by Indians. It is very noticeable no getting away from it.

[malvolio]

....

Tory conference and Badenoch talking tough but too little too late...the are following Reform's policies. Deportations, no benefits or housing if you haven't paid in...scrap stamp duty. Their goose may well be cooked though as no one trusts them now as they failed when in office....she did a good speech though on balance.

The difference, she is saying how they will do it, as opposed to Nigel saying what they want to do. Still won't work, of course, since people are firmly decided the Tories are dead and nobody wants Labour and we all vote for the leader with the most appeal, not the one that might actually be good at the job. Hands up those who remeber Nick Clegg and is promises...

Farage will be PM, let's hope he has enough wit to acquire some experienced politicians to drive his agenda.

[rocktronAMP]

Agree!

Just seen on the 1 o'clock news Starmer is in Mumbai i is an utter joke no doubt trying to bring more cheap workers over while the UK is on its knees...and getting worse by the day.

He's secured some Bollywood movies going to be made here next year .

He is abroad more that he is in the UK, total tosser! !

Tory conference and Badenoch talking tough but too little too late...the are following Reform's policies. Deportations, no benefits or housing if you haven't paid in...scrap stamp duty. Their goose may well be cooked though as no one trusts them now as they failed when in office....she did a good speech though on balance.

Just heard Badenoch's speech on the BBC Spounds Five Live app. Stamp Duty?! jfc. How about removing the entire IR35 or sending the Loan Charge back to oblivion? No. But I heard about The Post Office masters and mistresses are incredibly still fighting onward beyond their 14%, 15%, 19% compensation claims - loss of future income. GOV.UK does not have the money or won't pay.

They could remove the restrictions for workers, freelancers and contractors and allow people to hire, but they won't. Is it not meant to be the called "the post credit crunch" era? People are struggling to get loans and incomes. That's why we have 39.5% APR Crazy Ocean Credit Cards advertised on TV. We are heading for more debt in lots of areas: car purchase, credit cards, loans and what not. Just Apply the grease, the oil to make the economy wheel to turn around, especially for the middle-classes, instead of trying to tax and tax them. Come on. I don't think any politician has a clue.

[Cookielove]

3 years on the bench, just take anything surely that has to be better than nothing.

Have you done any work SchumiStars at all?

Yodel deliveries,shelf stacking anything to not run down savings.

[Cookielove]

IMHO, this is the new norm. Until we get a government that priorities the people already living here, outsourcing, offshoring, nearshoring and so on will continue to dominate.

In addition to this the pledge of the Conservatives to now review IR35 again, they've got balls, I'll give them that.

Agree!

Just seen on the 1 o'clock news Starmer is in Mumbai i is an utter joke no doubt trying to bring more cheap workers over while the UK is on its knees...and getting worse by the day.

He's secured some Bollywood movies going to be made here next year .

He is abroad more that he is in the UK, total tosser! !

Tory conference and Badenoch talking tough but too little too late...the are following Reform's policies. Deportations, no benefits or housing if you haven't paid in...scrap stamp duty. Their goose may well be cooked though as no one trusts them now as they failed when in office....she did a good speech though on balance.

[oliverson]

Snap - I can't imagine not having had work for three years yet still waiting for something to happen. If it wasn't happening after 3, 6 or 12 months I'd accept that it's me, my skills or my priorities that are the problem.

If you can afford it - fair enough but that money being burnt on the bench could be better used IMO.

I was out for 17 months over covid then back in the game for 3.5 years. I don't think it's anything to do with 'me, my skills', just for most people, getting noticed in a world where there are hundreds of applicants, suitable or not, for every role within hours, and AI vetting CV's and auto-rejecting them based on some algorithm. Then there's ageism. I've only had two or three face-to-face (zoom) interviews in almost 6 years now but even so, when that zoom session starts and there's a bunch of 30 year old kids on my screen, looking at me almost double their age, certainly a similar age to their father, I have to ask myself.."would I want to work with my own father?!". So, whilst I can't even get a sniff of an interview at the moment, even if I were, well, you get the picture.

As for the market I operate, yes that's changed. The old world was London banking/finance but that was a while back now, in fact its over 10 years since I left my last such contract at a very well known asset management firm, and the chances of cracking that market again are miniscule. Out of the 'magic circle' way too long. I do have a good contracting friend who's gone back to a bank he previously had a couple of stints at. His rate is north of £ 800 inside. Now something like that would be worth considering, but for me not so, not that I could get back in there mind. Nah, personal circumstances, age, life, etc. means that ship has sailed. Away from that sector I'm seeing inside day rates lucky to get over half that mark, as I've posted recently.

[rocktronAMP]

Snap - I can't imagine not having had work for three years yet still waiting for something to happen. If it wasn't happening after 3, 6 or 12 months I'd accept that it's me, my skills or my priorities that are the problem.

If you can afford it - fair enough but that money being burnt on the bench could be better used IMO.

I think of the LOSS INCOME -- 12 months == ( 220 working days * from £500 to £750 per day )

[rocktronAMP]

Must be silly season, here's another cracker. 10+ years .....

//====================

AI/ML Engineer

Cambridge - £350 - 400 per day
ContractPosted by: Opus Recruitment Solutions Ltd
Posted: Tuesday, 7 October 2025
Apply




//====================

It actually gets to the point where you stop being angry doesn't it? Your anger turns to dismay then to laughter. I'm actually grinning as I type this. Probably 4 'interactions' today with each one trying to outdo the other in a race to the bottom.

What gets me about OpusRS was the recruiters who go missing and distant. I get angry and dismayed. I wonder if the fella Freddie Short is still operating about Opus. He was a bit of character during the investment banking days circa 2012 - 2015.

[fargaman]

I don't post much here, but I follow this thread a lot.
I had about 2 decades worth of contracting behind my belt (in london financial services, software dev and architecting) before I took the permie plunge back in 2020 when they offered me a deal I couldn't refuse....and I've been stuck there ever since.

Its been good in the sense that I have upskilled, taken on more responsibility and learned what life is like for decision makers on the other side of the fence.
but its also been utterly miserable in many ways. when you reach certain levels of seniority, permie work becomes almost exclusively about politics.
the bureaucracy is mind numbing and most of your time is navigating your way around various entrenched little empires run by sinecured jobsworths.

So, I've reached the end of my tether and am planning a jump back into the contracting market to glide my way to retirement....except it appears that market has disappeared...at least over the last several years. I've been trying to understand why.

Some would argue that much generic IT work is now being outsourced to foreign lands. That has been going on for decades though, but in recent years it has certainly accelerated. In my current job, I manage and work with loads of contractors (from big outsourcing companies) from eastern europe doing exactly the same stuff I used to do and still do. They are generally very good - far better than what you would get from the usual outsourcing suspects from India. But even then, they lack finance domain knowledge and that can cause problems. We have started to recruit again from the local market as a result.

But I dont think this is the main cause of the current slowdown. The offshorers are suffering too. TCS is laying off thousands, so is Accenture from their Indian operations.
So I think something more is going on.

Some say it is AI. I have been increasingly involved with this myself and am rapidly upgrading my skills in this direction. But the truth is, while massive spending is being made on the infrastructure around this, most big corporates (including where I am) have just been dipping their toes in this space. small scale experimental projects are happening, but given the speed with which the tech is developing, many are reluctant to go full throttle apart from rolling out co-pilots across their organizations.

Economic conditions (high interest rates, sluggish growth and higher taxes) are a huge part of this, but I also think we are in a kind of transition phase as we figure out exactly what this AI revolution actually means...so many firms have put big IT investments on ice while they try to figure things out.

I think the contract market will bounce back - but it will be very very different from what it was. If you have made your living as a kind of generic C#, or Java, or Javascript dev, I think you need to retrain very quickly if you want to take advantage of any bounce back. Those sorts of jobs have been offshored for now, and soon they will be automated - at least at the junior or mid level. Someone posted a thread the other day from 20 years ago which had some contractor moaning about their lot because no-one wanted to hire vb6 devs anymore and they didnt want to upskill to this new shiny .net thing that was about then. Well, we are at that place again.

Good contractors are paid well when they are able to exploit demand/supply discrepancies. When a new skill or technology emerges, there is always a gap between those who want it and those who know it. So in order to survive, you need to be constantly learning and adapting. Its very easy to become complacent, as I have, when the money keeps rolling in and your attention is focused mainly on family, life etc.

whats happening with generative AI is a massive opportunity - and will potentially revolutionize not only how software is delivered but the applications of it. So it would be wise to throw yourself in to the deep end here. It might well be a bubble - just like the .com era - but there will be a lot of incoming investment in the coming years. No-ones quite sure how it will all play out, and the kinds of jobs being offered in this field seem quite scattered and confused, so its difficult to know where to focus.

So, who knows....but if you're a dev, its probably worth your while spending time with coding agents....and python.