Reply to: Market Prospects Good?

[BrilloPad]

32 years contracting. 29 years in the city. 28 years since my first contract started(I was permie for 6 years recently).

I can remember when you had to be good at your job. Or nice. Not both.....

[BrilloPad]

So is there a point to this thread?

Its feeding time in the general shark tank.

Come here newbie. I've laid out a nice sweetie trial for you.....

[ChimpMaster]

Also been just over 10 years for me and it's been trials and tribulations with HMRC's ever-changing and ever-challenging taxation landscape, but I think overall things have worked out OK.

Comparing myself with a couple of my permie highflyer friends though, I have seen their incomes double or treble even, whilst in contracting terms I wouldn't say rates have changed much over the past 10 years. They're both senior management and have done very well in their permie careers, but boy have they had to slog and sacrifice.

[ChimpMaster]

True

I'm seeing a lot of stuff come back onshore, also a fair amount of stuff coming out of the Cloud to local hosted solutions

I'm seeing a trend: back from India and into Ireland.

[Troll]

True

I'm seeing a lot of stuff come back onshore, also a fair amount of stuff coming out of the Cloud to local hosted solutions

[silverlight1]

I'm a PM and my experience wouldn't indicate that the London market is getting smaller for contractors.

Quite a few big corps IMO seem to be back-peddaling the frantic offshoring they did a few years ago.

Clients almost welcome reliable professional contractors since they know the job will get done, they look good when it gets done and we're there just to do the job not build empires.

Also, sense that clients are just tired of the cheap Bobs - an example is that an offshore developer took 4 weeks to do a job that my UK developer did in 2 days. Suffice to say UK developer contractor on the team now entrenched and Bob got moved out.

[NickFitz]

So is there a point to this thread?

I think it says "Boomed!"

[cojak]

Well it can do it in General.

[unixman]

It's another humblebrag thread, and as such performs a serious function!

[cojak]

This thread is just crewing the cud so I've moved it to General.

[unixman]

Just approaching the 10th anniversary. I think it is hard to generalise about whether perm or contract is better. I have had some excellent perm jobs, and one terrible one. Same with contracts. A good company with good managers will make any contract or perm job a pleasure.

The contracting market will always be there I think. Sort term expertise will always be needed, whatever the terms of engagement. Movement of labour might be an increasing challenge and will tend to suppress rates. Same for permies.

[northernladuk]

London market is getting smaller for contractors? Really?

[uk contractor]

Good luck to you OP make the most of it but it will not last there is so much market contraction happening in London especially for IT roles due to globalisation/outsourcing/downsizing. Most bubbles burst eventually IT is just being more stubborn about it! You did not mention what you do I presume developer/project manager/BA??

[Ketto]

I've just passed my tenth anniversary since I started contracting too and agree it has given me some great experiences. Have to be honest though, I think the future looks a bit bleak for the contracting industry. Have a bad feeling that HMRC will be gunning for the Ltd and umbrella users as soon as they have finished shafting the loan scheme users. Hopefully I'm wrong, but with all this retro legislation who knows what they can come up with next. That said, i'll stick with it regardless, inside IR35 beats permie. After four years togethor the Mrs has even given up nagging me to get a full time job!

[northernladuk]

So is there a point to this thread?