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 ….
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Reply to: State of the Market
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Previously on "State of the Market"
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Originally posted by Fraidycat View Post
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.
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.
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Originally posted by GJABS View Post
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 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.
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Originally posted by GJABS View Post
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..)
But how long will this last?
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Originally posted by GJABS View PostNowadays it is a lot easier due to frameworks and GUIs, resulting in millions being able to gain the skills.
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.Last edited by Fraidycat; Yesterday, 22:13.
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Bob has been around since I started contacting and it's never impacted me, other than having to fix their bad workmanship. Intelligent managers know this and always have a few experienced contractors in a team to balance out the poor skills from the bobs.
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Originally posted by GJABS View Post
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.
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..)
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Originally posted by Fraidycat View Post
Yet you don't mention what your specialism is? I doubt it is anything really specialised at all, that anyone else with general experience and a decent IQ couldn't pick up within a few months..
Also, it's funny that a year or so ago, remote was all the jazz, but now suddenly that is bad as it opens up candidate pools substantially.
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Originally posted by eek View Post
Hardly surprising because they are now here so there is nothing you can do about it.
I will ignore the blatant racism
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Originally posted by jamesbrown View PostI have become rather specialised myself
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Originally posted by jamesbrown View Post
Correct, you cannot compete with a generic/commoditized skillset and expect to maintain a contract rate or permie salary that resembles something you might have enjoyed until recently, especially if you started during the dotcom boom. I'm sorry for your loss (only partly joking). No one owes you a living. Competing might still mean a significant reduction in expected income, especially as more highly skilled roles begin to become commoditized. I have become rather specialised myself (albeit in a transferrable skillset, not in some arbitrary software framework or coding language), and I am not remotely complacent about the risks to my future income, so I plan accordingly, as best I can.
But, let's be absolutely honest, if you had a generic skillset and didn't realise 10 or more years ago that it was heading in this direction, then you've been extraordinarily naïve. You aren't the only one, there are many like you, evidently in this thread.
...
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.
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Originally posted by Fraidycat View Post
Thats impossible now with fully remote jobs getting more common post covid.
We cant compete with those in locations with much lower costs of living.
At previous client, there was a mid level permie guy based in Greece on 30K and Senior guy based in spain on 50K, both were getting high end pay in their locations and experience levels. Both getting paid half of what they would get in the UK.
And those in East Europe are even cheaper than those in Greece and Spain.
We should probably count ourselves lucky that India and China are in very different timezones to us and East Africans aren't into IT.
It is easy to say 'reskill', but those in Greece/Spain/East Europe are all going to be reskilling at the same time as well.
On a off topic but related note:
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' Our large corporations get government help when they cant compete which includes being able to import cheap IT workers. We get thrown under the bus.
But, let's be absolutely honest, if you had a generic skillset and didn't realise 10 or more years ago that it was heading in this direction, then you've been extraordinarily naïve. You aren't the only one, there are many like you, evidently in this thread.
As an aside, you seem to have a rather poor understanding of how markets (should) work. Absent politics, it would be a brainless opportunity to consume as many of those (underpriced) EV as we can possibly consume. Free money! Competing means finding productive outlets when others become unproductive. It means upheaval. It means that people will be caught napping and lose their source of income. Politicians and electorates struggle with this, but it's really quite childlike to expect that local markets can be successfully manipulated in your favour. Immigration really isn't the problem, it's much closer to home.
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That’s the situation at my current place we are fully remote but lot of people are based in Romania and Poland so £50k is a fantastic salary …not so in London ….remote working has changed things too..:it’s not about not upskilling!! …good post @Fraidycat….
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