Reply to: State of the Market

[BlueSharp]

Taken a look at the market as coming within two months of the current contract finishing

1) Not a lot out there
2) Remote only is dead
3) M365 seems to be in vogue at the moment (why?)
4) Where are all the AI jobs if it's the next big thing?

[avonleigh]

thanks to all the contractors who let companies row back on the remote working stuff by not standing firm - seeing a lot of low grade hybrid working roles this week

Sorry but this is hardly fair. An awful job market for quite a long time now means some people don't have the option of 'standing firm'.

[biergarten]

thanks to all the contractors who let companies row back on the remote working stuff by not standing firm - seeing a lot of low grade hybrid working roles this week

my impression is that the whole remote working is what is lowering the number of contracts and rates in the uk

[PCTNN]

thanks to all the contractors who let companies row back on the remote working stuff by not standing firm - seeing a lot of low grade hybrid working roles this week

Did you have any doubts?

Instead of standing firm, contractors kept their heads down and took it when the whole ir35 thing happened, why did you think they'd stand firm for something less important than that?

[PerfectStorm]

thanks to all the contractors who let companies row back on the remote working stuff by not standing firm - seeing a lot of low grade hybrid working roles this week

[PCTNN]

umI started work in 2000. My starting salary was 32k per annum

I started work in 2013 and my starting salary as a junior UX designer was 35k in a retail bank. 10 years later and the very same role at the very same bank pays 37-40k. Very depressing.

A permanent senior UX designer in the public sector client I'm currently at pays 39-43k. And then they ask themselves why nobody applies to their vacancies and so they're forced to hired contractors.

[Bluenose]

umI started work in 2000. My starting salary was 32k per annum and market was in full swing. I remember there being a contractor there on £100ph plus overtime. I have never seen that rate again.

This is where we were in 2022 for Deliotte Digital, the 2023 rate card has not been posted yet. These guys posted almost 20% in growth and about $2bn in revenue.

[GJABS]

I am not sure it is me or everyone else can see the change in the interviewing style.

1 ) 6-7 years back if they like you they will offer straightway ( sometimes you get offer before you reach home) - there was an urgency to hire asap.

2 Now even if they like they say they would like to interview more candidates and request more CVs if there aren't enough in the 1st batch who could go past 1st round.Agent says they need more candidates so they can compare and have option to chose the best one.

3) Since the person who is interviewing have not changed in last 6-7 years why can't they make decision and make an offer? Why do they wait longer to hire someone?

Any idea what is going on here?

+1
My current contract was around 4 weeks between interview and getting an offer. And then a further month doing on-boarding things. My current client is super-organised; it sometimes feels like the work required in working along with this degree of order is more work than the organisation itself saves. But logically this is unlikely to be true, as it is a large company.

[Kprad35]

I am not sure it is me or everyone else can see the change in the interviewing style.

1 ) 6-7 years back if they like you they will offer straightway ( sometimes you get offer before you reach home) - there was an urgency to hire asap.

2 Now even if they like they say they would like to interview more candidates and request more CVs if there aren't enough in the 1st batch who could go past 1st round.Agent says they need more candidates so they can compare and have option to chose the best one.

3) Since the person who is interviewing have not changed in last 6-7 years why can't they make decision and make an offer? Why do they wait longer to hire someone?

Any idea what is going on here?

[SueEllen]

GJABS you seemed to have missed all the posts in the past about people doing OU degrees for "fun" before they put the fees up.

Funnily enough I've done a few random courses that have impressed clients.

Also having interviewed people in the past someone studying or doing something random e.g. random degree, painting, fishing, ballroom dancing, boxing, pigeon fancying gives you something to talk about.

[GJABS]

You obviously have to concentrate when doing your job to deliver but what about evenings and weekends? And of course, breaks between contracts are a perfect excuse to brush up on skills. Not all new skills need to take months or years to learn either.

I guess you're right. Certainly the gaps I've had between contracts I haven't utilized very well, having focused, if on anything, on things outside of my IT career.

I was talking about this with my therapist a couple of days ago. He suggested that my fear behind not wanting to get much more training might stem from a long term lack of confidence. A belief that I have a lack of a good working memory, that by choosing to learn new things will cause me to forget some of the existing things I know. Which might adversely affect my ability to do my current work. Also the "shaming" that some in the community here had against the idea of learning in the past (recall the criticism of the "paper MCSE" - the person who does all of the Microsoft certifications but is not able to do the job because he doesn't have the corresponding work experience).

My thinking, and I am not sure about this, is that perhaps I should change my attitude a little, away from a focus on the client and the work they need to have done, and instead towards the idea of learning new tech skills for their own sake. This is what I did back when I was 17, and it got me into Cambridge uni. There is something "pure" about study, in that it is always logical and success is not determined by someone's (the client's) opinion but rather upon the successful accumulation of specific facts.
There again, if you read any books on how to be successful they say the opposite, that those who know a lot of facts tend to fall behind those who know a lot of people/are able to solve real business problems. If I can somehow recapture that drive and sense of self esteem that I had back then, perhaps this might be worth it even if it risks alienating the client a bit.

[mogga71]

ah yes, I forgot the Feds role in the Tulip mania!

You're right that the Fed has a big influence in avaliable capital, and that is rocket fuel for a bubble.

But they do occur without undue influence from the Fed. We are teetering on one of many once in a lifetime innovations that could cause massive economic growth (tbf we been teetering for a while).

We are in a recession, anyone saying otherwise has a vested interest or on pure copium. Still seeing MSM and property experts saying the property market will recover by end of the year.

For interest rates I think it's a coin flip, between maintain and increase. No one is lowering anytime soon.

Lots of talk of a new Credit Event (most likely manifesting itself as a small Bank failure) over in the USA. When the Fed has to choose between dealing with a crisis or keeping interest rates high to combat inflation they will always choose the former. A bad credit event could quite easily ...in the space of a few days ... result in a liquidity crisis and the Fed lowering rates and switching on the money printers again. Of course the Fed will spin it saying they believe they now have inflation under control so the time is right etc.

[JustKeepSwimming]

They say it is the US Federal Reserve that is to blame for these last few mega bubbles. Flooding the markets with cheap money. So not really normal capitalism at work. The Bank of England is then forced to go along as well.

Recessions in both the US and UK are now widely expected in the next 6 to 12 month timeframe, as the lag effect of 5% interest rates finally hits. Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan, this week was talking about the possibility of 7% rates.

ah yes, I forgot the Feds role in the Tulip mania!

You're right that the Fed has a big influence in avaliable capital, and that is rocket fuel for a bubble.

But they do occur without undue influence from the Fed. We are teetering on one of many once in a lifetime innovations that could cause massive economic growth (tbf we been teetering for a while).

We are in a recession, anyone saying otherwise has a vested interest or on pure copium. Still seeing MSM and property experts saying the property market will recover by end of the year.

For interest rates I think it's a coin flip, between maintain and increase. No one is lowering anytime soon.

[edison]

Agree with both of these comments. Thanks.

Gaining IT skills while doing a job is risky though, because unless you are specifically being told to study something (as some permies are), if you are spending energy learning new skills then you are by definition spending less energy doing the job in hand for your current client. Clients are not stupid and they will pick up on this, and it might result in you getting fired, because they are only interested in their company's business; your career development is of no value to them if you're a contractor.

You obviously have to concentrate when doing your job to deliver but what about evenings and weekends? And of course, breaks between contracts are a perfect excuse to brush up on skills. Not all new skills need to take months or years to learn either.

[Fraidycat]

Bubbles are a fact of capitalism.

They say it is the US Federal Reserve that is to blame for these last few mega bubbles. Flooding the markets with cheap money. So not really normal capitalism at work. The Bank of England is then forced to go along as well.

Recessions in both the US and UK are now widely expected in the next 6 to 12 month timeframe, as the lag effect of 5% interest rates finally hits. Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan, this week was talking about the possibility of 7% rates.