Reply to: State of the Market

[willendure]

Has to be £99/hour. £99/day is £12.50/hour. Thats what working at the checkout in Lidl pays outside of London.

[avonleigh]

That's £99 per hour not per day. DV clearance so it's kinda inline with usual rates.

[Manic]

Another decent opportunity via a LinkedIn approach.

Trouble is, I'm awaiting sign-off on another one for a client that is known to me. Sod's law eh? Buses coming along two at once!

On the back of last week's flurry of activity on the same platform, it does give me some renewed hope for the market, and for all those on here that are looking.

I'm actually wondering whether it's the hourly rate rather than the daily rate, and someone messed up the advert.

Got to be surely.

[hobnob]

That's below minimum wage before April's increase..

I'm actually wondering whether it's the hourly rate rather than the daily rate, and someone messed up the advert.

[willendure]

Maybe spend some time learning Python AI/ML/LLM APIs and frameworks.

Look at job ads and see what skills people looking for in AI eg, LangChain, VertexAI (I have no idea what these are, just saw them in job spec and a quick search they did sound interesting)

Tech Layoffs are down considerably from peak 2023 levels, but still happening and not back to the normal almost non existent levels we see in a healthy market. Rates are still near 5%. So companies are still paying high interest rates on Corporate debt. Less money to invest on new projects and less desire to take on more debt for new projects as well.

I agree - seeing more ads asking for these skills. I am learning Python and Mojo currently, and dusting off my AI skills. Last time I coded up a neural network was in 1996, after reading a paper on backpropagation. It was quite daunting with all those partial differentials. Nowadays its a piece of cake since the compute graph builders all have auto differentiation and the boffins figured out what activation functions work best.

LangChain has become a sort of defacto for working with LLMs. Shame as its not very well designed - easy to build a pipeline that is not correct as it makes too much use of stringly named parameters. But whatever, its still learnable and in demand.

I think the exciting new tech is here, its just the money that isn't. Still sticking to my expectations of some kind of crash to clear out the dead wood and then the money printer will be switched back on, as it always is.

[eek]

A new low ??

The following email from an agent appeared in my in-box today. I'm not quite sure if it's genuine requirement or a very subtle p*ss-take - the ad is looking for a Programme Manager at < £100 per day (inside IR35).

============================================
Hi - I hope this message finds you well.

Could this job opportunity be of interest to you?

Job title:Programme Manager
Industry: Defence (Company name can be disclosed upon request)
Day Rate: £99.90 (inside IR35)
Location: Aldermaston 100% on site requirement, travel to London approx. once per week & occasional ad hoc travel
Contract length: 12 month (extension likely)

DV clearance is required for this role

Job Description:

Role:
• the job is a programme leadership role on a GMMP programme (Government Major Projects Portfolio).
• This is a programme categorised by government as being of national significance, large scale and highly complex.
• It’s a large-scale infrastructure programme covering design, construction, commissioning of a complex facilities in the nuclear environment.
• We would be looking for candidates with this type of background in large scale infrastructure delivery in complex environments.

Top essential criteria:
1. Strong all-round knowledge across several Industry sectors
2. Well-rounded experience of project lifecycle preferred, but open to development or construction delivery phase Programme Managers.
3. Strong background across both change control and base line management
============================================

That's below minimum wage before April's increase..

[squarepeg]

A new low ??

The following email from an agent appeared in my in-box today. I'm not quite sure if it's genuine requirement or a very subtle p*ss-take - the ad is looking for a Programme Manager at < £100 per day (inside IR35).

============================================
Hi - I hope this message finds you well.

Could this job opportunity be of interest to you?

Job title:Programme Manager
Industry: Defence (Company name can be disclosed upon request)
Day Rate: £99.90 (inside IR35)
Location: Aldermaston 100% on site requirement, travel to London approx. once per week & occasional ad hoc travel
============================================

Since you cannot claim travel you'd be paying to work. Hard pass.

[dangerouswhensober]

A new low ??

The following email from an agent appeared in my in-box today. I'm not quite sure if it's genuine requirement or a very subtle p*ss-take - the ad is looking for a Programme Manager at < £100 per day (inside IR35).

============================================
Hi - I hope this message finds you well.

Could this job opportunity be of interest to you?

Job title:Programme Manager
Industry: Defence (Company name can be disclosed upon request)
Day Rate: £99.90 (inside IR35)
Location: Aldermaston 100% on site requirement, travel to London approx. once per week & occasional ad hoc travel
Contract length: 12 month (extension likely)

DV clearance is required for this role

Job Description:

Role:
• the job is a programme leadership role on a GMMP programme (Government Major Projects Portfolio).
• This is a programme categorised by government as being of national significance, large scale and highly complex.
• It’s a large-scale infrastructure programme covering design, construction, commissioning of a complex facilities in the nuclear environment.
• We would be looking for candidates with this type of background in large scale infrastructure delivery in complex environments.

Top essential criteria:
1. Strong all-round knowledge across several Industry sectors
2. Well-rounded experience of project lifecycle preferred, but open to development or construction delivery phase Programme Managers.
3. Strong background across both change control and base line management
============================================

[SussexSeagull]

Has anyone got the latest stats and graphs? I am not smart enough to understand the underpinnings of the job market in all honesty.

Learning new tech is great however, I am not usually one for learning stuff without application. I find it more beneficial and absorbing to learn when I have to, if that makes sense.

TBH, I have always been like this, working directly on the problem and technology in hand to understand and learn how to get the most from it, rather than read beforehand.

I also don't think AI is going anywhere tbh.

I did have talks about a contract where they were planning to use AI to deal with what would have been telephone calls and would have needed testing on various platforms. I think integrating AI elements will become more of a thing in the next few years but it is a bit early to go further than that.

[SchumiStars]

Has anyone got the latest stats and graphs? I am not smart enough to understand the underpinnings of the job market in all honesty.

Learning new tech is great however, I am not usually one for learning stuff without application. I find it more beneficial and absorbing to learn when I have to, if that makes sense.

TBH, I have always been like this, working directly on the problem and technology in hand to understand and learn how to get the most from it, rather than read beforehand.

I also don't think AI is going anywhere tbh.

[SussexSeagull]

Maybe spend some time learning Python AI/ML/LLM APIs and frameworks.

Look at job ads and see what skills people looking for in AI eg, LangChain, VertexAI (I have no idea what these are, just saw them in job spec and a quick search they did sound interesting)

Tech Layoffs are down considerably from peak 2023 levels, but still happening and not back to the normal almost non existent levels we see in a healthy market. Rates are still near 5%. So companies are still paying high interest rates on Corporate debt. Less money to invest on new projects and less desire to take on more debt for new projects as well.

I am a tester and not a developer but there is so much fragmentation with platforms it is very difficult to keep up. Plus a lot of clients are only interested in workplace experience.

[Fraidycat]

Maybe the next WhatsApp, Mobile Phone Advancement or tech boom.

Maybe spend some time learning Python AI/ML/LLM APIs and frameworks.

Look at job ads and see what skills people looking for in AI eg, LangChain, VertexAI (I have no idea what these are, just saw them in job spec and a quick search they did sound interesting)

Tech Layoffs are down considerably from peak 2023 levels, but still happening and not back to the normal almost non existent levels we see in a healthy market. Rates are still near 5%. So companies are still paying high interest rates on Corporate debt. Less money to invest on new projects and less desire to take on more debt for new projects as well.

[SchumiStars]

Market is dead. It's been 2yrs.

I think it's going to require some sort of magical IT product to get it all going again and get the tech companies to wake up.

Maybe the next WhatsApp, Mobile Phone Advancement or tech boom.

The way it's going at the moment, it looks another 12mths of this tulip at least.

I do wonder sometimes if the entire universe has conspired to work against me. And yes, I do take it personally

[willendure]

For sure, but I'd argue (like ascender has already above) that you need to somehow stand out from all the others, either be a superb match, or perhaps worked with the client before etc.

Yes - being pushy on its own is just going to annoy people. But having great skills and not promoting yourself is also not going to help you. So I would say that I also am only tracking agents down and getting them on the phone in cases where I can see that I am an obvious match to the job.

I also agree it can be helpful for them too. Cold calling like this often starts out with them being a little cautious or skeptical. 90% of the time when I call they have not even seen my CV yet, even if its 1 or 2 days after sending it. Since I know this is frequently the case, I usually start with that as the reason for calling. Things tend start with them mumbling as they hunt around in their inbox to find my CV. Then once they open it and I point to some of my experience which happens to be highly relevant to the current JD, they mostly warm up pretty quickly.

Occasionally I get knocked back immediately - often because there is some important piece of experience that the client wants that I do not have. But that is ok and still helpful to call and find that out, because a typical JD may not make clear what the red line is. Sometimes "essential experience" turns out to only be "desirable", there is some degree of flexibility in most JDs and it takes the human element in the form of a good recruiter to know. If I get knocked back, I will politely accept that, and ask the agent to file my CV in case something that better matches me should come up.

Often agents have a short list of 3 or 5 CVs that they are allowed to submit to the client. Seems like today they are getting 300 or 500 CVs for each position, so you need the right skills and a bit of gentle pursuasion to get onto the short list.

Also a reason why I despise LinkedIn - no-one gives out a phone number on LI. Too much reliance on algorithms to find and filter candidates. That might be different if the social/chat features of that site were better, there might be some chance of developing a more genuine sense of community there. On the whole I don't see how LI fosters social connections the whole thing just feels a bit off to me.

[dsc]

At worst it wouldn't have done them any harm.

For sure, but I'd argue (like ascender has already above) that you need to somehow stand out from all the others, either be a superb match, or perhaps worked with the client before etc.