Reply to: State of the Market

[Fraidycat]

I know the market has been tough for a long time but If you're making 500, 1000 or god forbid, 3000 job applications without success then surely you must question your whole approach as that many applications must be a huge waste of time if you're not getting a good number of interviews?

3000 sounds like a lot, but its only 12 per day. Could do that in just one hour a day or even less.

At the end of the day sending 1000s of applications costs zero out of pocket. Luckily we don't have to post CVs anymore, 3000 stamps aren't cheap. The last time i posted my CV by snail mail was in 1996

[sspt27]

I know the market has been tough for a long time but If you're making 500, 1000 or god forbid, 3000 job applications without success then surely you must question your whole approach as that many applications must be a huge waste of time if you're not getting a good number of interviews?

After being on the bench since autumn, I decided to start applying for perm roles and applied for a grand total of 11 since March. Got through to the next round of screening (i.e. by a human) once. And that was it. Decided to concentrate looking solely at contract roles.

I did this too: folded and applied for plenty of jobs on the Dark Side (meaning, of course, perm). Two interviews, out of c. 100 applications. Both of them just went dead - nothing happened, agent not taking or returning calls.

An additional problem with the perm side is that agents can get all hoity-toity about "why have you been out of work for months?" (Why d'you think??????? Idiot...). Given that they're offering salaries at 75% of what I was on in my last perm role four years ago, at that point it's tempting to just throw the phone across the room.

[sspt27]

In my experience none of this is really true. Maybe in a few companies but majority are still tulip shows.

Well, in my last contract, both were true. Systems were a total tulipshow: but management "solved" the problem by ignoring anyone who pointed this out. So that the previous poster's point - devs not fixing any design issues, any creative thinking verboten - was also true. Results was an endless death-march of firefighting. But it was agile, so everything was OK </sarcasm>

[edison]

I know the market has been tough for a long time but If you're making 500, 1000 or god forbid, 3000 job applications without success then surely you must question your whole approach as that many applications must be a huge waste of time if you're not getting a good number of interviews?

After being on the bench since autumn, I decided to start applying for perm roles and applied for a grand total of 11 since March. Got through to the next round of screening (i.e. by a human) once. And that was it. Decided to concentrate looking solely at contract roles.

[dsc]

Got a spam email from Glassdoor (Jobs In Tech forum) this morning, some very sobering stories. The IT sector in the US is going to be around five times bigger than the UK tech sector, so these stories of 800 and 3000 applications are probably true. If vacancies in the UK get 100s of applicants, i can only imagine how many they get in the US, (1000s?)

Project Manager
I just hit my 1 year anniversary of unemployment, I'm being strategic with my search and have submitted at least 800 applications to date with no interviews. I'm not just applying to apply. I meet the majority of requirements when I apply.Looking for recommendations for fully remote non-client facing Project Manager or Scrum Master roles.I've hit the character limit on this post so I'm unable to include all the steps I've taken in this search to appease any critics.

Senior Enterprise Implementation Manager
Month 10 of my tech layoff. No unemployment, I refuse to go on section 8. I dedicated my life to the tech game and now that I’m 3000 plus applications in I’m realizing maybe the game wasn’t made for me. 1099 are the only thing keeping the lights on..

Software Test Engineer
I have been searching for jobs for over 12 months and havent had a call back in the past 10 months.I have over 20 years of experience in my field.

Glassdoor seems to have loads of sob stories, although mostly from managers, then again it might just be who sits on that site that is causing this. I've also seen a fair bit coming from people who recently got into IT, mixed in with the occasional "I have over 20yrs of exp in testing / software dev".

[sreed]

Project Manager
I just hit my 1 year anniversary of unemployment, I'm being strategic with my search and have submitted at least 800 applications to date with no interviews. I'm not just applying to apply. I meet the majority of requirements when I apply.Looking for recommendations for fully remote non-client facing Project Manager or Scrum Master roles.I've hit the character limit on this post so I'm unable to include all the steps I've taken in this search

As a generalist PM myself who’s done 3 different contracts since Covid, I can’t imagine a scenario in which the above is not an extreme edge case OR this person has extremely specific requirements with respect to domain+industry+pay+location+benefits+++, at least in the UK.

I had a similar conversation with a colleague whose wife was a scrum master at TCS (left the job and became her husband’s dependent as TCS was sending her back to India and wouldn’t allow her to stay in the job on her husbands visa), with 10years experience and apparently couldn’t find a job in the UK over the past 6 months. Turns out she would only consider a perm role in a big bank at 100k+ (which apparently she calculated based on purchasing power parity of her TCS salary in India or some such nonsense).

[SchumiStars]

I worked with a cock who was on £100ph + overtime + vat. The guy lived in student digs.

Thats was in 2001. And he was tulip.

[Fraidycat]

I think his house would probably be worth a little more than that these days, don't you?

Yep, house price inflation (HPI) has been more than twice CPI.

Although 65 per hour in 1998 = 122 per hour today using CPI, using HPI its more like 65 per hour = 250 per hour.

[oliverson]

Yep back in the 90s, one year of contracting paid (gross) more than the price of a house, that would be worth 500K today.
And there was no IR35 to worry about either.

Another contractor I used to go out drinking with had a mate who was a C++ developer in London, Canary Wharf I think so he must have been one of the early ones down there. That guy's philosophy was 'dress like a professional and get paid like one'. He was looking to pay off his mortgage imminently for a new 4 bed detached out in Guildford I think, valued at a massive £ 160k. According to my good friend the BoE Inflationary Calculator, £ 160k back in 1998 would be worth c £ 302k today. I think his house would probably be worth a little more than that these days, don't you?

[Fraidycat]

I remember coming across Jobserve as a student on my sandwich year c. 1997/98. One of my mentors was 'going contracting' and accepted a rate of £ 65 per hour. Bank of England's inflation calculator values that at £ 122 per hour in today's money. Happy days!

Yep back in the 90s, one year of contracting paid (gross) more than the price of a house, that would be worth 500K today.
And there was no IR35 to worry about either.

[oliverson]

It still uses aspx which is a Microsoft tech stack from ~2003. The interface has remained unchanged and I usually use the classic view. In fact, I believe the invented the use of a basket for job applications.

I amazed it's still around. I used it when Napster was around!

I remember coming across Jobserve as a student on my sandwich year c. 1997/98. One of my mentors was 'going contracting' and accepted a rate of £ 65 per hour. Bank of England's inflation calculator values that at £ 122 per hour in today's money. Happy days!

[sadkingbilly]

Have to also remember software development has changed massively in the last 5yrs.

The old, cryptic systems that no-one knew much about seem to be less in existence now. Everything is written with SOLID principles which means that there is less maitanance, support and bug fixing.

In general, whereby there used to be support contracts for older systems to keep them running, there seems to much less of them.

except in banks etc.-
legacy systems still COBOL/ PL/1 /assembler code.

[Fraidycat]

Got a spam email from Glassdoor (Jobs In Tech forum) this morning, some very sobering stories. The IT sector in the US is going to be around five times bigger than the UK tech sector, so these stories of 800 and 3000 applications are probably true. If vacancies in the UK get 100s of applicants, i can only imagine how many they get in the US, (1000s?)

Project Manager
I just hit my 1 year anniversary of unemployment, I'm being strategic with my search and have submitted at least 800 applications to date with no interviews. I'm not just applying to apply. I meet the majority of requirements when I apply.Looking for recommendations for fully remote non-client facing Project Manager or Scrum Master roles.I've hit the character limit on this post so I'm unable to include all the steps I've taken in this search to appease any critics.

Senior Enterprise Implementation Manager
Month 10 of my tech layoff. No unemployment, I refuse to go on section 8. I dedicated my life to the tech game and now that I’m 3000 plus applications in I’m realizing maybe the game wasn’t made for me. 1099 are the only thing keeping the lights on..

Software Test Engineer
I have been searching for jobs for over 12 months and havent had a call back in the past 10 months.I have over 20 years of experience in my field.

[Unix]

Have to also remember software development has changed massively in the last 5yrs.

The old, cryptic systems that no-one knew much about seem to be less in existence now. Everything is written with SOLID principles which means that there is less maitanance, support and bug fixing.

In general, whereby there used to be support contracts for older systems to keep them running, there seems to much less of them. Development work seems to more focused on new projects, new integrations, new code.

Then there are the cloud systems which have replaced onprem applications. For instance, why would anyone write their own POS system now? And integration between for instance SAGE into Excel have all been concluded.

A very similar analogy is the death of CRT monitors and TVs. An industry were diagnosing and fixing screens seems to have long disappeared as the availability and cost benefit favours.

I do believe that diagnosing and bug fixing, especially for older systems, seem to be dying. Which is one aspect I used to enjoy TBH. And with coding becoming easier with app developers, believing they are now fully fledged software developers having spent no time reading about LIFO, I can see the industry now diminishing.

I.e Why would a company need a full software dev on £500pd who can develop, diagnose and build software when all I need is 2 app developers to build new software for £600pd for both.

Have to remember that software projects are also better managed now with agile, scrum and iterative design, build and release. Rarely are requirements incorrect and large tasks such as before 'Build screen for database table x' are now broken down into the nth degree and managed through to delivery.

Yes the quality has improved of the product but it has also taken away the creativity from a developer. Meaning we are not solving massive technical design issues, another aspect i miss.

In my experience none of this is really true. Maybe in a few companies but majority are still tulip shows.

[SchumiStars]

I haven't had to do much searching on job boards the last few years as my last five roles all came from my network and referrals. This time has been totally different and via much searching since late last year I can't see that any other board comes close to Jobserve for contract roles.

The one downside is they don't seem to have updated the site for a decade now...

It still uses aspx which is a Microsoft tech stack from ~2003. The interface has remained unchanged and I usually use the classic view. In fact, I believe the invented the use of a basket for job applications.

I amazed it's still around. I used it when Napster was around!