Reply to: State of the Market

[Jaws]

Effieciency has increased and there is no hiding if you are a sub par contractor.

I think that depends completely on the team. My last contract sure had its share of "sub par" developers. Sprint planning ends up with small tasks given increased story points, developers not necessarily picking up anything new when finishing said tasks early and daily standup a consisting of people saying "still working on X" even if it's gone over. Everyone accepts it implicitly because barely anyone is paying attention in these meetings anyway.

The amount of items completed in a sprint decrease naturally with team performance and some projects just take forever. Especially when you consider the additional time spent in meetings to communicate and coordinate it all.

[SchumiStars]

Teams are faster though, if they shed the dead weight. Last bunch of clowns I was working with, all off-shore, honestly I could have done the job quicker just by myself. They seemed to spend at least 80% of the time arguing with the delivery manager about why they had not completed their work. The "mythical man month", I believe it is called.

I agree. SCRUM/XP has changed things considerably. There is less wastage in a teams effort to deliver quality software.

It does mean that developers, testers are working harder in smaller, manageable, measurable chunks of work. Effieciency has increased and there is no hiding if you are a sub par contractor.

Although I prefer it the other way round, the new way of working is here to stay.

[willendure]

Meta announced that will lay off roughly 600 employees within it's AI unit next month.

Meta's chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang wrote:
"By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact"


'Load bearing', thats what tech employees have been reduced to, like brick walls in a house.

Teams are faster though, if they shed the dead weight. Last bunch of clowns I was working with, all off-shore, honestly I could have done the job quicker just by myself. They seemed to spend at least 80% of the time arguing with the delivery manager about why they had not completed their work. The "mythical man month", I believe it is called.

[Fraidycat]

Meta announced that will lay off roughly 600 employees within it's AI unit next month.

Meta's chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang wrote:
"By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact"


'Load bearing', thats what tech employees have been reduced to, like brick walls in a house.

[oliverson]

One thing is for sure, I'm a lot fitter and stronger now

Going gym, Friday night at it's best.

Unlike your bank balance (and mine)!

[SchumiStars]

One thing is for sure, I'm a lot fitter and stronger now

Going gym, Friday night at it's best.

[willendure]

I've stopped applying for myworkday stuff - I can't get past the algo. Noir - I never hear back although there's plenty of evidence they are legit. I haven't had many cold calls from recruiters except for the maggots promising contracts with great rates but they'll only forward you with references. Also the moment you make yourself phoneable on Indeed you get a tonne of scam calls. CV Library is much better anyway. JobServe could be good but the site seemingly hasn't been updated since 2000.

Thanks for the recomendations - CV library turned up some stuff. Noir? it only seemed to have 1 listing on it.

I don't get put off by Jobserve website being ancient, its still a busy site with plenty stuff on it.

I get a daily email from total jobs too, main issue with that is that the email subscription cannot be filtered to just contracts, so the email is 90% perm roles.

Any more good recomendations welcome.

Personally, I am still in the goldilocks zone - relevant skillset, some cash in hand and not working. So I can afford to take it easy and see if something interesting turns up.

[oliverson]

So, the role I got frustrated with a few days has actually been filled internally.

Another one with a previous client where I'd had a subtle hint something was going to happen hasn't. Typical of that place to yet again have a change of plan.

Sat waiting for a 50/50 possibility of joining a previous contractor colleague on a project at his place. Not holding my breath.

Waiting for a call from another agent recommended to me by yet another ex-colleague and I know it's not going to happen, not on a Friday afternoon anyway.

Fielding off £ 60k p.a. FTC work via LinkedIn

WTF is going on? Seems like nobody has clear direction of where they are heading or the professionalism to follow up on promises.

The driving range and bar await. 30+ C again today and not a cloud.

[DrGUID]

Got made redundant from zombie company over the summer. Found another gig really quickly but I ended up walking due to paranoid manager who was so worried about me wasting time to the point it was stopping me actually doing work. It's a shame as it's probably the best work I've had in the last 5 years.

There are a lot more roles about but there are also a LOT of people looking. Don't be put off by the 100+ applicants according to LinkedIn because 50% of those aren't in the UK and then there's probably another 20% without work permits.

I've stopped applying for myworkday stuff - I can't get past the algo. Noir - I never hear back although there's plenty of evidence they are legit. I haven't had many cold calls from recruiters except for the maggots promising contracts with great rates but they'll only forward you with references. Also the moment you make yourself phoneable on Indeed you get a tonne of scam calls. CV Library is much better anyway. JobServe could be good but the site seemingly hasn't been updated since 2000.

Hiring managers are taking an absolute age to make decisions. So I'm carrying on with my side project until I hear something.

I expect most companies will wait for the budget. That will probably end up a nothingburger. So companies will hire like crazy in January and the usual boom/bust cycle will continue.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

This one is a big name consultancy - they have the contract for the initial design phase that lasts until Xmas - but they don't have the gig to implement it yet. Too risky even for me and I'm not especially risk averse - the problem is it's mostly stuff I'd have no control over.

[herman_g]

Just off the phone from an agent trying to place someone for 2 months at £900/day

I did one of those "someone's walked out" projects before - it was good money but no fun and I don't think it helped my career.

I signed up for a contract in Frankfurt in 2000 that was supposed to last 6 weeks - the contractor left suddenly also. I ended up staying on for 6.5 years. I met the contractor 10 years later. He was working for the software vendor and he wasn't getting his hotel bills paid. I worked for the vendor some time later and had the exact same issues.

[oliverson]

Just off the phone from an agent trying to place someone for 2 months at £900/day

I did one of those "someone's walked out" projects before - it was good money but no fun and I don't think it helped my career.

I also did one. Late Friday and I’m finishing up on a contract and this burly guy and his sidekick came marching down the corridor at pace. I watched them getting closer and they finished up at my desk! Turns out they’d been working with a contractor for over a year and he’d been escorted from the building a few days earlier, a result of an explosion of expletives in the office, taking with him all the source code on his laptop. Nothing had been committed to source control. One of the Big 4 consultancies as well. Head office. They’d heard I was finishing up and did I want a challenge?!

Now, you can imagine the heat of this project, already late and now they have absolutely sweet fa to show for it. Clients were expecting an imminent release. So, we got on with it. There was some initial friction at the start, understandable I guess, but I stood my ground. It took another year or so but that project got delivered and into the hands of the customer. It was one of the best projects I ever worked on. None of this scrum nonsense, I was given an actual spec, in Word format. Actual requirements with screen mock ups. In fact I’d say the vast majority of successful projects I’ve delivered have been like this. Quite the opposite of scrum.

The work schedule was hard but fair and they asked me to work extra hours given the circumstances. A lot of those weeks were 7 day weeks. At least one was 8 billable days. Not the kind of thing that can be sustained forever. Two years or so later the project came to a natural conclusion and that was that. So, to the original poster, I wouldn’t rule it out. Where there’s adversity, there’s always opportunity. In fact what I’d give for another opportunity like that to present itself right now.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Just off the phone from an agent trying to place someone for 2 months at £900/day

I did one of those "someone's walked out" projects before - it was good money but no fun and I don't think it helped my career.

[oliverson]

I dance around the court.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Can people stop with the snidey personal comments and stick to the thread subject please? Why does every online community end up as two bald men arguing over a comb?