Reply to: State of the Market

[Snooky]

No amount of protectionist or anti-immigrant legislation is going to rescue you

I disagree, to some extent. Where we have fairly free movement, allowing workers to do jobs in the UK that can't be done elsewhere (or the client prefers them to be done onshore), UK resident workers are at a disadvantage to foreign workers whose aim is to work here for long enough to earn a sizeable amount of income relative in terms of their home country. The migrant workers may pay the same taxes and have the same costs while they're here, but they don't have the same long-term costs a UK resident may have if they wish to have a tolerable or even prosperous future in the UK.

A simple example: I know several Polish people who worked in the UK at rates below what a UK worker might expect, they told me that they were just keeping enough to live on but the rest was for building a nice big house back home. The UK worker who tries to compete with those lower rates will find themselves at a significant disadvantage to those Polish workers, because demand has been artificially reduced by allowing an increase in supply of those skills (i.e. allowing , thus lowering costs, yet local cost of living hasn't reduced to account for it.

I've also worked with many, many "onshored" Indian guys, all lovely and competent people, who did exactly the same. A couple of my colleagues had several servants back at home in India, yet their company charged them at a far lower rate than UK resident staff.

I wasn't pro-Brexit, but I understand completely why quite a number of Leavers were hoping Brexit would reduce this genuine problem. Instead, Government has just opened up migration from other quarters to assuage large businesses who'd prefer not to have higher staffing costs.

Immigration is a completely different issue; then the worker has committed to a life here (usually) and will bear the same long term costs as other citizens, so they'll need to earn at a similar level. The only problem then is when does a population become too big for our infrastructure, even if we extend it.

[gables]

No one could have foresaw this shift in such a relatively short space of time…jobs have hundreds of applicants now that just wasn’t the case 10/20 years ago …PMO job £150 /inside?! any takers?

Would depend on the role within the PMO, which from I've seen can be junior admin staff with a team manager.

Exacerbates.

what's a PMO? another useless so-called 'XXX Manager' ??

From memory PMO = Project Management Office but not necessarily the PMs but the team\office that tries to ensure that the orgs project management processes are adhered to by said PMs.

[SueEllen]

China are producing cheap EV cars now. The US and Germans wont be able to compete, so they will to slap large tariffs on Chinese cars. So much for 'competing in the global market place'

They keep catching fire very randomly.

Oh and it will be the EU not Germany slapping large tariffs on Chinese cars. I suspect it can done using an environmental tariff.

[sadkingbilly]

This is true of many immigrants. But many others are actively here stealing British intellectual property. Many bring their relatives over precisely when they need expensive medical care and abuse our healthcare system. Many bring their children in for free education at precisely the years it would cost them most at home to send them to school. Many abuse our tax system. Many play the system to gain British passports.

Layered on top of some demographics of immigrations who openly hate the Brits and all we stand for, they openly say it, you only have to listen to what they say at Hyde Park corner etc.

let's see....................
1) English Defence League
2) National Action
3) Britain First
4)All of the above

answers on a £20 note please.

[jamesbrown]

Agreed. And I don't blame immigrants.

While the British government could have "rescued" us by not having the mass immigration of the past few years, I think this would have been protectionist/anti free-market and not desirable for the country as a whole in that respect.
Immigration is a symptom of the problem, not the cause.

Right, although there are two parallel developments, immigration and offshoring. You cannot isolate an economy to fight these structural changes (without dire consequences, such as persistent inflation and higher taxes). I admire anyone who gives contracting a go, it takes some courage. The economy will probably improve quite soon after the next GE as interest rates decline and confidence returns, and I hope all of you that are out of work will pick up new gigs in due course. At the same time, these underlying forces are going nowhere and the economy is cyclical, so it's worth formulating a plan, even at this late stage.

[CoolCat]

Agreed. And I don't blame immigrants.

While the British government could have "rescued" us by not having the mass immigration of the past few years, I think this would have been protectionist/anti free-market and not desirable for the country as a whole in that respect.
Immigration is a symptom of the problem, not the cause.

Re "I'm not offering you or others a solution, more an alternative perspective. It's easy to blame immigrants, but the reality is they've done nothing more than you would do in their position and they've probably seen the opportunity to better themselves more quickly than many people around here spotted the impending risks to their own livelihoods and bettered themselves. Nonetheless, the risk was hiding in plain sight." This is true of many immigrants. But many others are actively here stealing British intellectual property. Many bring their relatives over precisely when they need expensive medical care and abuse our healthcare system. Many bring their children in for free education at precisely the years it would cost them most at home to send them to school. Many abuse our tax system. Many play the system to gain British passports.

Personally when I have worked abroad I have always paid at least as much tax as the locals. I have never stolen their intellectual property. I have always paid for my, and families, medical insurance and bills. I have always paid for me childrens education. I never expected to pickup permanent residency or citizenship simply for working in a country a while. I never undecut the locals. I always brought skills that genuinely did not exist in that country.

Layered on top of some demographics of immigrations who openly hate the Brits and all we stand for, they openly say it, you only have to listen to what they say at Hyde Park corner etc.

[GJABS]

I'm not offering you or others a solution, more an alternative perspective. It's easy to blame immigrants, but the reality is they've done nothing more than you would do in their position and they've probably seen the opportunity to better themselves more quickly than many people around here spotted the impending risks to their own livelihoods and bettered themselves. Nonetheless, the risk was hiding in plain sight.

Agreed. And I don't blame immigrants.

While the British government could have "rescued" us by not having the mass immigration of the past few years, I think this would have been protectionist/anti free-market and not desirable for the country as a whole in that respect.
Immigration is a symptom of the problem, not the cause.

[sadkingbilly]

It’s simple economics we have had mass immigration over the last 25 years ….that is a fact …why do you think we ended up with Brexit!

it has and does affect all sectors …doesn’t matter if they are pink, orange or green or which country they’ve come from the sheer numbers have driven down wages …so many more applicants for jobs hence lower wages.

The double whammy is that they have on the whole come from much poorer countries so that exasperates the issue too.

Plus the visa situation being exploited has added to the volume…its numbers pure and simple …

No one could have foresaw this shift in such a relatively short space of time…jobs have hundreds of applicants now that just wasn’t the case 10/20 years ago …PMO job £150 /inside?! any takers?

AI is a lesser issue I believe ….

Exacerbates.

what's a PMO? another useless so-called 'XXX Manager' ??

[jamesbrown]

No one could have foresaw this shift in such a relatively short space of time…jobs have hundreds of applicants now that just wasn’t the case 10/20 years ago …PMO job £150 /inside?! any takers?

Not true. It was easily foreseeable and foreseen by many around here. Some of the very earliest posts in this thread allude to it, almost 10 years ago now . Regardless, you can see it now, right? Your skillset has been commoditized under your nose. No amount of protectionist or anti-immigrant legislation is going to rescue you. What have you done about it? What are you doing about it? What are you going to do about it?

[eek]

Rates are low because few people are recruiting - prime example on Saturday Jobserve has 20,500 jobs - even at the lowest point of Covid it had 10,000

[Cookielove]

It’s simple economics we have had mass immigration over the last 25 years ….that is a fact …why do you think we ended up with Brexit!

it has and does affect all sectors …doesn’t matter if they are pink, orange or green or which country they’ve come from the sheer numbers have driven down wages …so many more applicants for jobs hence lower wages.

The double whammy is that they have on the whole come from much poorer countries so that exasperates the issue too.

Plus the visa situation being exploited has added to the volume…its numbers pure and simple …

No one could have foresaw this shift in such a relatively short space of time…jobs have hundreds of applicants now that just wasn’t the case 10/20 years ago …PMO job £150 /inside?! any takers?

AI is a lesser issue I believe ….

[eek]

I said back in the day, 25 years ago, that open source was going to eventually devalue/commoditise our work.

And the final nail in the coffin, AI has been trained on all that open source code as well.

Facebook are doing the same thing with AI at the moment, facebook is spending billions on AI for their own websites/apps, but then making those models open source just to devalue/commoditise the work Google and Microsoft and OpenAI are doing.

Sorry but Nope. AI is like everything else - hyped beyond it's capabilities.

AI will allow me to write code - I can tell it exactly what I want it to do and it will generate usable code, ask your typical business user though and their instructions will not be specific enough so while the code may work it won't work that well.

As I've pointed out on here before, the advantage we have is that we can take a vague request from the business and convert it into a usable system - now if you need explicit instructions than AI is going to take you work but if you can take vague instructions and create the system the user wants AI won't be coming for your job just yet.

[jamesbrown]

You seem to be implying that the remedy to generic skillsets becoming commoditized (and rates to fall as a result) is to acquire specialised skillsets.
But isn't "specialised" just another word for "rare"?
The problem we have is that a small proportion of the circa 1 billion Indian population (and other nations) have decided to pursue IT as a career, and work for western companies either local or remote. While most of these have acquired generic skillsets themselves (competing with us), isn't there a chance that some of them might also learn the same specialist skills that you have, and compete with you as a result?

For regular contractors in the UK, who don't have particular entrepreneurial skills or are not blessed with the gift of original thinking, it seems to me to be far from clear what we should have done over the past 10 years to mitigate this problem.

I'm not implying that is the only remedy or, indeed, that there is one at all. A complete change of profession is extraordinarily difficult to pull off. Others will have looked at plan Bs such as property or other investments. Those blessed with the gift of original thought have probably used it. Many others will have been left behind. For them, there may be no remedy, practically speaking. But there is no point whatsoever in trying to blame this on immigration. It's akin to blaming the moon for high tides. You cannot fight these forces and they've been blindingly obvious for some time. Whether you or others could've done more is very hard to say.

I'm absolutely vulnerable to the same forces in the long-run (as I noted earlier), although my specialism does require a quantitative Ph.D., so it will probably be a while before it happens. It takes time to build a competitive university sector and the USA and UK remain completely dominant for now. But I'm under no illusion that, as these huge economies expand and improve their universities, competition will dramatically increase. At the same time, I'm not afraid of it, I welcome it.

I'm not offering you or others a solution, more an alternative perspective. It's easy to blame immigrants, but the reality is they've done nothing more than you would do in their position and they've probably seen the opportunity to better themselves more quickly than many people around here spotted the impending risks to their own livelihoods and bettered themselves. Nonetheless, the risk was hiding in plain sight.

[edison]

To answer my own question, I think part of the problem is that IT has become too easy.
Back in the day, computer programming was intellectually difficult and complex, and this difficulty provided a barrier to entry because many candidates were not capable of getting up to speed with the technology.

Nowadays it is a lot easier due to frameworks and GUIs, resulting in millions being able to gain the skills.

Of course it is true that it is not so easy to do programming -well-, but commercially this is often not mandatory if it can be done ok in a so-so manner - so doing it well won't pay the big bucks any more.

Maybe the solution is to look towards the next technology that has not yet been made "easy", where you have to be quite clever in order to do it at all in the first place. AI is an obvious one, but I'm sure there are others.

(..s*d's law will mean I will turn out to not to be clever enough lol..)

I saw a recent quote from a leader on Surrey University's AI PhD course saying that if they had the capacity, they could churn out hundreds of PhD students a year and they would all get great, high paying jobs. Clearly not everyone has the talent to do a PhD but the AI talent race has been going on for about 10 years and really hotted up in the last couple.

But how long will this last?

[Fraidycat]

Nowadays it is a lot easier due to frameworks and GUIs, resulting in millions being able to gain the skills.

I said back in the day, 25 years ago, that open source was going to eventually devalue/commoditise our work.

And the final nail in the coffin, AI has been trained on all that open source code as well.

Facebook are doing the same thing with AI at the moment, facebook is spending billions on AI for their own websites/apps, but then making those models open source just to devalue/commoditise the work Google and Microsoft and OpenAI are doing.