Reply to: Is the gloss coming off contracting?

[quackhandle]

Hearing recently from my accountants (NW) that HMRC has created three new depts/teams to deal with IR35 got me pi$$ed off and then the Hays contract fails the IR35 review so I have been wondering if this was the end of contracting, media driven witch hunt and all that.

But having chatted to Mandy at PSG got me all smiley again, she soothed all my fears. Hector can go and whistle, I've worked AT (not for) 15 different clients, yeah disgused employee - I must be tulip at my job! Its a bit subjective the OP, as we've all being doing this for different lengths of time. I was busy being stoodant during the nineties so can't comment. Acutally it was just like contracting just with a lot less money.

Personally in 10 years I've been through the good and bad of contracting; pimps still haven't a clue of the world of contracting; searching for gigs and negotiating rates can be tiresome, the opt in/out can be frustrating, but I would give it all up if I could get off my arse and give plan b a go.

Sod going permy though.

qh

[EternalOptimist]

ok

[portseven]

Yes

In area of work (solution architecture) not seen the rates go up at all over the last 5 years, seeing more bobco's hiring UK contractors for naff rates, and driving the market down. As well as more and more bob's in clientco's in general, can't clientcos understand that throwing brown bodies at a job doesn't help!. Getting bored at last number of gig's.

Am tempted to go for a permie role and see if I can x-train into something else.

Then again, maybe not .... Meh

[OwlHoot]

ta

WHS

[nomadd]

Yes

WHS^

Ta.

[Notascooby]

Yes

Depends

[Bacchus]

no

Yes

[northernladuk]

I'm not so sure fella, unless HMRC can outlaw being self employed, or an individual’s right to run a business - (which they can't) it's not going to happen.

This is the whole deal with IR35 imo, they are just trying to scare people to "fess up" in each iteration. I reckon loads of contractors would have been stupid enough to send in their contracts voluntarily.

On topic, for me a lot of it comes down to a change in Executive style and trends away from being "innovative" to "cost saving" ... Cost saving, in my experience means guaranteeing (Sp?) long term failure for the short term success of fudged increased profit <cough, efficiency> figures.

But they are dealing with this with increasing pressure. As the number of PSC's go up so will the pressure for them to pay up until some knee jerk across the board totally unfair policy comes in. As the problem gets bigger you are damn sure the effort to fix it is going to match. What are they going to do? Give up? The only saving grace is they are doing it badly for the moment.

[MyUserName]

I reckon you should all get out of contracting as soon as you can.
In fact get out of any kind of software development in the finance sector at all.

[EternalOptimist]

Unicode Character 'HEAVY CHECK MARK' (U+2714) ✔

ta

[EternalOptimist]

Hang on - The square root of WHS sounds more ambivalent than a WHS

Also it might be negative (*), so NickFitz may actually be disagreeing with you.

(*) although conventionally the square root "function" of a positive number is assumed to be positive.

ok

[NickFitz]

Hang on - The square root of WHS sounds more ambivalent than a WHS

Unicode Character 'HEAVY CHECK MARK' (U+2714) ✔

[BrilloPad]

I started contracting in 1988. It was bad then - but 94-99 were superb! I lasted aniother 10 years before permiedom - but I think it has been downhill for last 13 years.

[gingerjedi]

In my line it's not really worth the bother any more, the rate in (most cases) is the same as permy plus a little extra to cover lack of holiday/sick.

Unfortunatly desperate people are happy to accept this so rates stay low.

I'm looking to go perm at the first good opportunity.

[OwlHoot]

ta

Hang on - The square root of WHS sounds more ambivalent than a WHS

Also it might be negative (*), so NickFitz may actually be disagreeing with you.

(*) although conventionally the square root "function" of a positive number is assumed to be positive.