About Rates - honestly ...

[lukemg]

I am earning good coin too (for me) 80/day more than I have had before and commutable (this is after 5 months on the bench so maybe blind luck). However, this is doing a role very different from those I did a few years ago, when I had seen demand for support/installation work drop off a cliff and was too complacent to adapt before that happened.
Point is - You always need to be thinking about your next move, most existing technologies become commodity work after a while (except SAP of course).

[tino]

I'm actually on the joint highest rate of my contracting life, although I lose a days rate with hotel and travel expenses.

Hopefully starting to do a day or two a week from home soon so that will mean BOOMED

[Menelaus]

I've gone from £600 / day to £485 / day (and even then with the pimp bitching and moaning repeatedly that I was screwing him ... yeah, right).

It's a difficult time but surfing it out on the crest of contracting seems to be the right approach for me. Plus, if I were to become a permie again I'd probably end up being even less social than I am already.

[Andy2]

There is no point in contracting for £200/day
A permi job will be better option

[Iron Condor]

Over the last 7 years i have noticed the premium between contractors and permies get smaller and smaller.

Used to be a contractor got 2 times perm, and in the boom of 2000 it was almost 3 times perm.

A year ago the premium had shrunk to less than 2 and now during this downturn with all the rate cuts its almost fallen to parity, atleast for a lot of new contract roles.

[Rantor]

A quick trawl of the PM rates advertised on Jobserve indicates that they appear to be £2-300/day down on 12 months ago.

Of course it all depends on what people are prepared to take and the quality of candidates that the clients are prepared to accept. If I was looking seriously, I would rather spend the warchest than take some of the rates on offer.

What I find interesting is the massive, humongous disparity in rates between Britain and much of mainland Europe.

I still get agents emailing me UK job requirements and some of these are demanding top-notch experience and paying 'up to' 300 quid (solutions architect, technical project mgmt stuff for example.) Surely this is less than a permy?

[TykeMerc]

A quick trawl of the PM rates advertised on Jobserve indicates that they appear to be £2-300/day down on 12 months ago.

Of course it all depends on what people are prepared to take and the quality of candidates that the clients are prepared to accept. If I was looking seriously, I would rather spend the warchest than take some of the rates on offer.

[juststarting]

I have been 7 months away from contracting and ..

Seems like the average rates for Sharepoint have gone at least 30 % down ,

Sharepoint admin work seems even lesser paid than Windows ( ok this is overstatement since Windows work is about 8 p/h these days )

Sharepoint development has gone the same direction with rates of 300 p/d common ... and there are several around 200 p/d ...

What about your rates ?