Reply to: State of the Market

[hungry_hog]

hungry_hog Just curious, are these London-hybrid contracts generally? If so, how many days pw in the office is expected at your client?

London. Current client is 2pw, quite a lot of people do 1pw (or even zero)
Worked at another client (FS, not banking), again was 2pw

[sreed]

The rates are actually good, even though market is slow, which I know seems anomalous.
I'm at an FS client and there are plenty of people on 1000+ Umbrella rate (not me I hasten to add). The posh coffee shops (coffee 4 to 15 quid!) are doing a roaring trade.

it depends hugely on previous experience specific to that client, if you have it they pay top dollar. Worth more than 20 years at the fabled "top tier" IBs

hungry_hog Just curious, are these London-hybrid contracts generally? If so, how many days pw in the office is expected at your client?

[hungry_hog]

The rates are actually good, even though market is slow, which I know seems anomalous.
I'm at an FS client and there are plenty of people on 1000+ Umbrella rate (not me I hasten to add). The posh coffee shops (coffee 4 to 15 quid!) are doing a roaring trade.

it depends hugely on previous experience specific to that client, if you have it they pay top dollar. Worth more than 20 years at the fabled "top tier" IBs

[Fraidycat]

Also the days of floors full of contractors delivering projects seems to have passed. They seem to be well and truly offshored.

My guess is the demand for contractors will return at some point. But inflation adjusted rates will not return to 2021 levels.

When the surge in demand returns is anyones guess.. A year ago i was confident the full recovery will be in 2025. Now i'm not as sure..

[BlueSharp]

6 weeks to the end of the contract for me, but I have a sizable holiday in July and a family property to renovate over the summer and plan to get some AI certs so won't be looking until the end of August.

I'm hoping things have picked up by September! From conversations with agents the market is awful still so may have no option but to plough on with plan B until the cash runs out (or it becomes a real business) then back to perm. I think there are a lot of projects on hold at the moment waiting for the next election and also for interest rates to start dropping.

Speaking to a commercial banker friend no one is borrowing cash at the moment to expand as it's too expensive and there are a lot of over-leveraged companies out there caught paying down debt due to the high rates. There seems to be more appetite for getting SaaS solutions in and integrated than building in-house/offshore development at the moment. A lot of macro factors are at play.

[edison]

funny and a little arrogant , recruiter asked my why I was out of work from Nov to Jan - 3 months, I said ill and market was pretty quite, I then asked him how many placements he did in the same period...........

The truth.

Only one recruiter I've spoken to out of maybe 25-30 in the last 5-6 months has said that business is really good. Many of these are big players in the contract and interim market.

[barely_pointless]

funny and a little arrogant , recruiter asked my why I was out of work from Nov to Jan - 3 months, I said ill and market was pretty quite, I then asked him how many placements he did in the same period...........

[sreed]

I think we are in the process of a fairly major adjustment in the IT contracting industry. Once the City decided that inside IR35 was the way to go then the argument for remaining a contractor was weakened, although there is seemingly still enough contractors willing to do it.

Also the days of floors full of contractors delivering projects seems to have passed. They seem to be well and truly offshored.

This is an observation based on who I have worked with over recent years and not a political or social one, but we have had a lot of IT talent come in from India. I suspect the change in immigration rules will reduce that but they are now able to stay permanently and are competing with the rest of us.

That all said the work I have got post Covid reminds me of what I got 15 years ago where you went into a small or medium setup either on your own or in a small group and used your expertise to help them over a few months before moving on.

I probably don’t have as much contracting experience as you, given that I’ve never been pure IT and moved from operations permie to consulting outside to now a generalist PM contractor (mostly inside post covid) over a 20 year period, but there is definitely a trend over the time I have been in the market that matches what you’ve said.

I don’t believe that there will be a significant let up in experienced IT people moving here from India, there continue to be too many low effort visa routes and an inexhaustible (compared to the UK job market) high volume of highly incentivised people looking to permanently immigrate.

IR35 and a move towards inside roles is here to stay. To me personally, it’s all a means to an end and since I’ve started sal sacrificing large proportions and the allowance has gone up to 60k, I’m increasingly fine with inside contracts as monetarily it works out about even compared to if I earned a similar day rate on an outside contract. Obviously that wouldn’t be the case for every single contractor out there but it will for a large number of one man bands and especially those who started contracting fairly recently so aren’t comparing it to the era that was.

[edison]

I've seen and heard some conflicting things in the last two weeks. Multiple recruiter sources have told me that companies may have plans but there isn't the same appetite any more for kicking off transformation programmes or large projects. M&A and PE activity is down and there's no big business driver to start kicking off major change for many companies.

On the plus side, I have seen quite a lot of new contract and perm PMO roles advertised which is normally a sign that better things are on the way. I just think programmes and projects will be on a smaller scale than before and there will be fewer opportunities overall for some time to come.

[SussexSeagull]

I think we are in the process of a fairly major adjustment in the IT contracting industry. Once the City decided that inside IR35 was the way to go then the argument for remaining a contractor was weakened, although there is seemingly still enough contractors willing to do it.

Also the days of floors full of contractors delivering projects seems to have passed. They seem to be well and truly offshored.

This is an observation based on who I have worked with over recent years and not a political or social one, but we have had a lot of IT talent come in from India. I suspect the change in immigration rules will reduce that but they are now able to stay permanently and are competing with the rest of us.

That all said the work I have got post Covid reminds me of what I got 15 years ago where you went into a small or medium setup either on your own or in a small group and used your expertise to help them over a few months before moving on.

[northernladuk]

Lady reckons IR35 changes means an extra 90,000 people now competing for perm jobs

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nadin...member_desktop

Must admit I'm not keen on that article. Dunno why Amazon not paying tax is relevant or the argument IR35 affects the perms as she's put it but her end message seems welcome.

[tsmith]

Lady reckons IR35 changes means an extra 90,000 people now competing for perm jobs

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nadin...member_desktop

[Fraidycat]

I would guess Minimum wage rises effecting other job salaries is going be like some sort of inverse square law.

Nearby rates are going to effected most, but the effect is going to diminish the further away you get from £11.50 an hour.

[sreed]

Every article I read about rising min wage said that it will cause overall wages to grow as well as suddenly people on lower wages realise they earn minimum wage and so want a raise. Min wage only kicked in beginning of April, so surely it's too quick to be saying that it doesn't affect overall wage growth?

I have no idea about all this works. The way I see it, non-statutorily-required wage growth can only happen if there’s the money to fund it so if companies aren’t doing well, or aren’t investing, I don’t know where the money will come from for salary hikes. Doesn’t apply in the same way to the public sector but even they don’t have the money and in any case that happens in a slow manner as it involves unions, government, etc.

[dsc]

[...]rapidly slowing wage growth outside of the minimum wage increase (self inflicted inflation).[...]

Every article I read about rising min wage said that it will cause overall wages to grow as well as suddenly people on lower wages realise they earn minimum wage and so want a raise. Min wage only kicked in beginning of April, so surely it's too quick to be saying that it doesn't affect overall wage growth?