Reply to: State of the Market

[DrewG]

Just for once, read what was written and try to understand it. It shouldn't be beyond your competence.

A senior manager, technical or not, will have a team to do the work under his direction. That's why he's a senior manager. Giving him the task to deliver something the company needs doing is perfectly straightforward. If that's beneath him then he won't be a senior manager for very long.

I love your attitude that you are senior therefore above such things as actually doing productive work. If you want to talk seniority, I've been Head of IT, a lead architect for some very big integrators and delivered programmes up to £72m with teams so of up to 200 people, on rates up to £1500 a day. You come across as just a jumped up coder using a joke methodology with no business knowledge.

HTH. BIDI.

I assumed everyone on this board would have similar experience, are you telling me that your experience is so remarkable that it needs highlighting?

When someone needs to crawl around under the floorboards to lay some ethernet, I'll know who to call.

[TheDude]

Because the city seems to be something of a closed shop which is difficult to get into if your CV shows experience elsewhere and to an extent people who work in the City don't work elsewhere if they can help it. Again I am only going on people I know who work there and what I read on here but it does seem to be something of a macho culture where long hours are expected and some very extreme background checking.

Let me add I have nothing against the City as I am sure the work can be fascinating. In my Permanent days I worked for a Share Registrar and I can see how you could quite get into it.

That really is not the case. Everywhere I have worked has been very open to lateral hires although it is more common to see CVs from candidates with experience at financial services firms.

The interview process can be a little intimidating at some firms and you will probably be expected to write some code and solve some algorithmic problems. My first role at a well known US bank involved a superday where I had eight back to back interviews and still had to return the next week to speak to the MD. The interview for my current role involved nothing more than an informal chat with the hiring manager.

Regarding long hours it depends who you work for. The first bank I worked for was notorious for having a long hours culture which I feel penalises those with families. I took the unhealthy view that my bonus was my overtime payment. Great when you get 50%. Not so great when you get 2% through no fault of your own. At present I get away with working 9-5 but may work extra hours as required.

As for macho culture - sure in certain parts of the bank but this has been very much cracked down upon and in my experience never existed in technology.

Background checks - they are basically looking for any previous incidents regarding dishonesty however they will perform credit checks and validate your claimed qualifications and previous employment. Company directorships (excluding any Ltd Co you may provide services through) will also be scrutinised. Nothing too bad and a lot less intrusive than for some government roles.

The quality of techies at banks is hugely variable. Some are absolutely amazing. Some are pony and don't last long. The rest, including many contractors are solid but unspectacular.

The work is quite often tedious and getting things done often takes priority over getting things done property. As a consequence many codebases are full of poorly structured code and years of tactical hacks which never get refactored.

[dx4100]

Rule 1 of leadership (a good one) - Never ask someone to do something you wouldn’t do yourself

Its an old one, but a good one...

[sadkingbilly]

[malvolio]

Senior technologist ----- re-cabling an office because of your competence....

If you're senior, you'd be the one making key decisions around acquisition of the office, no laying the cables.

Let's put this in scrum terms, if you're a true principal, you are setting the technology strategy, not picking up tickets to write Java with some scrum master breathing down your neck.

Just for once, read what was written and try to understand it. It shouldn't be beyond your competence.

A senior manager, technical or not, will have a team to do the work under his direction. That's why he's a senior manager. Giving him the task to deliver something the company needs doing is perfectly straightforward. If that's beneath him then he won't be a senior manager for very long.

I love your attitude that you are senior therefore above such things as actually doing productive work. If you want to talk seniority, I've been Head of IT, a lead architect for some very big integrators and delivered programmes up to £72m with teams so of up to 200 people, on rates up to £1500 a day. You come across as just a jumped up coder using a joke methodology with no business knowledge.

HTH. BIDI.

[DrewG]

Bollocks.

Putting this is Service Management terms, tickets are raised to request some sort of action, be it a password change or re-cabling an office suite. They are assigned to whoever is most capable of performing the task under their own direction, using subordinates if necessary. Seniority isn't a concern, competence in the required discipline is.

In development/Scrum terms, people take the tickets, rather than have them assigned explicitly, but that should be driven again by competence not rank (or even perceived rank...). The weakness of that approach is people can cherry pick the easy/interesting/high value tasks. Which is one reason - there are others - I don't like agile as an approach to anything other than discrete application builds.

Senior technologist ----- re-cabling an office because of your competence....

If you're senior, you'd be the one making key decisions around acquisition of the office, no laying the cables.

Let's put this in scrum terms, if you're a true principal, you are setting the technology strategy, not picking up tickets to write Java with some scrum master breathing down your neck.

[SussexSeagull]

Genuine question - why do you working in the city is different to the rest of the IT industry?

*I have worked my entire career in the city bar my first job in defence with Logica and two years at a US healthcare technology and clinical trials company.

Because the city seems to be something of a closed shop which is difficult to get into if your CV shows experience elsewhere and to an extent people who work in the City don't work elsewhere if they can help it. Again I am only going on people I know who work there and what I read on here but it does seem to be something of a macho culture where long hours are expected and some very extreme background checking.

Let me add I have nothing against the City as I am sure the work can be fascinating. In my Permanent days I worked for a Share Registrar and I can see how you could quite get into it.

[TheDude]

Why are we discussing job titles in a contractor forum?

The market has flatlined so people are passing time by seeing who can piss the furthest

[malvolio]

Tell me you think senior engineers are senior when they're actually just junior with a senior title.

Bollocks.

Putting this is Service Management terms, tickets are raised to request some sort of action, be it a password change or re-cabling an office suite. They are assigned to whoever is most capable of performing the task under their own direction, using subordinates if necessary. Seniority isn't a concern, competence in the required discipline is.

In development/Scrum terms, people take the tickets, rather than have them assigned explicitly, but that should be driven again by competence not rank (or even perceived rank...). The weakness of that approach is people can cherry pick the easy/interesting/high value tasks. Which is one reason - there are others - I don't like agile as an approach to anything other than discrete application builds.

[Guy Incognito]

Why are we discussing job titles in a contractor forum?

[TheDude]

Tell me you think senior engineers are senior when they're actually just junior with a senior title.

Out of interest what qualifies you to define the skillset of a senior engineer?

[DrewG]

Tell me you don't know how different companies use JIRA without telling me you don't know how different companies use JIRA.

Clue: JIRA is not just used to track junior development tasks

Tell me you think senior engineers are senior when they're actually just junior with a senior title.

[TheDude]

I'm probably missing some slang here but what does this mean?

I took it to be something racist.

[DrewG]

I'm probably missing some slang here but what does this mean?

Probably racism.

[TheDude]

I don't know any senior technologist picking up Jira tickets in a sprint. You may have a few years under your belt, you're not senior though.

I don't really think you know what you are talking about.

If you want to remain technical then you have to align with the methodology the firm uses to deliver new capability and my present client chooses this particular approach.