Reply to: State of the Market

[fargaman]

I don't post much here, but I follow this thread a lot.
I had about 2 decades worth of contracting behind my belt (in london financial services, software dev and architecting) before I took the permie plunge back in 2020 when they offered me a deal I couldn't refuse....and I've been stuck there ever since.

Its been good in the sense that I have upskilled, taken on more responsibility and learned what life is like for decision makers on the other side of the fence.
but its also been utterly miserable in many ways. when you reach certain levels of seniority, permie work becomes almost exclusively about politics.
the bureaucracy is mind numbing and most of your time is navigating your way around various entrenched little empires run by sinecured jobsworths.

So, I've reached the end of my tether and am planning a jump back into the contracting market to glide my way to retirement....except it appears that market has disappeared...at least over the last several years. I've been trying to understand why.

Some would argue that much generic IT work is now being outsourced to foreign lands. That has been going on for decades though, but in recent years it has certainly accelerated. In my current job, I manage and work with loads of contractors (from big outsourcing companies) from eastern europe doing exactly the same stuff I used to do and still do. They are generally very good - far better than what you would get from the usual outsourcing suspects from India. But even then, they lack finance domain knowledge and that can cause problems. We have started to recruit again from the local market as a result.

But I dont think this is the main cause of the current slowdown. The offshorers are suffering too. TCS is laying off thousands, so is Accenture from their Indian operations.
So I think something more is going on.

Some say it is AI. I have been increasingly involved with this myself and am rapidly upgrading my skills in this direction. But the truth is, while massive spending is being made on the infrastructure around this, most big corporates (including where I am) have just been dipping their toes in this space. small scale experimental projects are happening, but given the speed with which the tech is developing, many are reluctant to go full throttle apart from rolling out co-pilots across their organizations.

Economic conditions (high interest rates, sluggish growth and higher taxes) are a huge part of this, but I also think we are in a kind of transition phase as we figure out exactly what this AI revolution actually means...so many firms have put big IT investments on ice while they try to figure things out.

I think the contract market will bounce back - but it will be very very different from what it was. If you have made your living as a kind of generic C#, or Java, or Javascript dev, I think you need to retrain very quickly if you want to take advantage of any bounce back. Those sorts of jobs have been offshored for now, and soon they will be automated - at least at the junior or mid level. Someone posted a thread the other day from 20 years ago which had some contractor moaning about their lot because no-one wanted to hire vb6 devs anymore and they didnt want to upskill to this new shiny .net thing that was about then. Well, we are at that place again.

Good contractors are paid well when they are able to exploit demand/supply discrepancies. When a new skill or technology emerges, there is always a gap between those who want it and those who know it. So in order to survive, you need to be constantly learning and adapting. Its very easy to become complacent, as I have, when the money keeps rolling in and your attention is focused mainly on family, life etc.

whats happening with generative AI is a massive opportunity - and will potentially revolutionize not only how software is delivered but the applications of it. So it would be wise to throw yourself in to the deep end here. It might well be a bubble - just like the .com era - but there will be a lot of incoming investment in the coming years. No-ones quite sure how it will all play out, and the kinds of jobs being offered in this field seem quite scattered and confused, so its difficult to know where to focus.

So, who knows....but if you're a dev, its probably worth your while spending time with coding agents....and python.

[fatJock]

My thoughts too. Find it incredible anybody can last 2-3 years without working in this day and age when everything is so expensive. I personally could get to 18 months with savings. But as you say 3 months out I would also be taking whatever I could. 12 months out I would be getting out of IT and doing something else altogether.

Snap - I can't imagine not having had work for three years yet still waiting for something to happen. If it wasn't happening after 3, 6 or 12 months I'd accept that it's me, my skills or my priorities that are the problem.

If you can afford it - fair enough but that money being burnt on the bench could be better used IMO.

[sadkingbilly]

I rather assumed (possibility incorrectly) that anyone contracting in the 70s or 80s would have retired in a life of luxury some time ago, and wouldn't be reading about the state of the market

retired twice,so far.
get bored easily, and people keep making me offers that are very difficult to refuse.
Oh, and ex wives tend to detract from one's 'life of luxury'

[fatJock]

And how very timely, just got off the phone to one of our Indian friends looking for a backend contractor, London 3 days a week, Inside IR35, £ 400 / day.

THAT, ladies and gentlemen is the state of the market!

It's the state of your market and the permanent low ball offers from off shore suppliers. Not suggesting anyone takes such a role but 400 a day inside is better than zero income at all .... which is kind of my point.

[sadkingbilly]

And you cycled to work on your penny farthing!

Triumph Bonneville or cortina 2.0 E, depending on weather/mood/location. (70's)

[fatJock]

Suppose your company has financial obligations of its own - car lease, flat lease, life assurance, joint-shareholder, all of which require paying at some point. I'm not saying my company has these commitments currently but it has in the past. What do you do to meet those commitments? Pay into your company from the proceeds of heavily taxed inside income? What about expenses incurred in the context of servicing that inside contract? i live about 240 miles from London when I'm in the UK, or 1,400 if I'm out in Spain. Without the ability to claim those expenses, which over my 10 year stint working in London finance averaged out at around £ 30k p.a., I'd have to stump up those expenses, again out of heavily taxed income. And of course, most of the rates, even in London finance for inside roles aren't really that much more than what they were when they were outside.

That's just the financial side. Any company that couldn't give a rats arse about the suppliers they work with, well it says it all to me.

I operate inside and outside depending on the gig - my company has the funds to meet it's obligations from 8 years of such mixed trading. Having zero income on principle is a larger problem given you can always loan in money to your company as a director. As for expenses - you figure out what you'd lose and you compensate for it in an increased day rate.

My inside rate is 25% more than my outside rate and I tend to only work on gigs that are predominantly WFH. In my personal situation working inside or outside is financially irrelvant.

[Protagoras]

I find it impossible to believe that, absent of any disabilities that might limit their scope, anyone is unable to find paid work within 2 years, so I assume you have a healthy warchest or some other type of income and are patiently waiting for something that you consider appropriate to your expectations rather than anything which will pay the bills.

I think it depends on personal circumstances, but the big challenge after a long absence is surely convincing anyone that one has current skill and domain knowledge.

[Protagoras]

you forgot the 70's and 80's.
When real freelance contracting was around.

I rather assumed (possibility incorrectly) that anyone contracting in the 70s or 80s would have retired in a life of luxury some time ago, and wouldn't be reading about the state of the market

[SussexSeagull]

Couple of responses to points raised:

There is only so much the UK government, of any colour, can do. They can restrict Visas but it is very difficult to stop companies offshoring work, especially when you consider most of these companies are international anyway. As it stands Indian offshoring is much cheaper than getting it done in the UK (granted that doesn't take into account quality or getting it right first time but accountants run the show).

If you are semi retired and in a financial position to hold on for an outside contract then fair enough but for the rest of us it gets to a time being out of work where you either go inside, FTC, permit or find something else to do. The market does decide these things.

[avonleigh]

I think after 3 months I would be taking whatever work I can find, inside IR35, FTC, perm etc. Perhaps you already have.

After 6 months I would be very seriously looking at retraining or some other way of switching into an occupation where I had a good chance of finding reasonably paid work, even if it wasn't the big bucks I might have been accustomed to previously.

I find it impossible to believe that, absent of any disabilities that might limit their scope, anyone is unable to find paid work within 2 years, so I assume you have a healthy warchest or some other type of income and are patiently waiting for something that you consider appropriate to your expectations rather than anything which will pay the bills.

My thoughts too. Find it incredible anybody can last 2-3 years without working in this day and age when everything is so expensive. I personally could get to 18 months with savings. But as you say 3 months out I would also be taking whatever I could. 12 months out I would be getting out of IT and doing something else altogether.

[Snooky]

Starting year3 on the bench

I think after 3 months I would be taking whatever work I can find, inside IR35, FTC, perm etc. Perhaps you already have.

After 6 months I would be very seriously looking at retraining or some other way of switching into an occupation where I had a good chance of finding reasonably paid work, even if it wasn't the big bucks I might have been accustomed to previously.

I find it impossible to believe that, absent of any disabilities that might limit their scope, anyone is unable to find paid work within 2 years, so I assume you have a healthy warchest or some other type of income and are patiently waiting for something that you consider appropriate to your expectations rather than anything which will pay the bills.

[oliverson]

you forgot the 70's and 80's.
When real freelance contracting was around.

And you cycled to work on your penny farthing!

[sadkingbilly]

The halcyon days of the 90s and 00s have gone.

you forgot the 70's and 80's.
When real freelance contracting was around.

[Protagoras]

IMHO, this is the new norm. Until we get a government that priorities the people already living here, outsourcing, offshoring, nearshoring and so on will continue to dominate.

In addition to this the pledge of the Conservatives to now review IR35 again, they've got balls, I'll give them that.

This is a 'contractor' site but most of the items in "latest contractor news & guides" seem to be about pseudo-employment via umbrella companies, not contracting as we knew it. The message is there.

The halcyon days of the 90s and 00s have gone. Government has closed down the sector, and it's not going to be attractive to new entrants, so will slowly just fade away.

Too late for the so-called "Conservatives" to reform anything, they had the chance and chose other stakeholders' interests over those of people working in the UK.

I don't think it will get better anytime soon; before that I expect a stock market correction. Harder times ahead, if anything.

[oliverson]

Just had a spam email from computer futures. TBF, it's more than welcome as I can't remember the last time I had one from them.

Starting year3 on the bench. Might find a new hobby.

You must be going insane heading into your third year!

8 months for me. I've decided not to stress about it and enjoy the rest of this month out in Spain because the weather is superb currently and by the end of the month it's clock change, which tends to signal to me it's time to prepare to return home and knuckle down for the winter.