Does it mean that there's a bubble in the tech market and it's going to explode soon? Do we need to prepare for the tech apocalypse?
2. A healthy contracting market with rates steadily increasing despite IR35. Contractors are deciding what they'll be paid and are still be lapped up. Nothings worse then a late or undelivered project to your end clients. Maybe layoffs are a strategy in shaking this trend?
There's certainly a recession happening and or on the way but why should markets such as the UK be worried when roles in my company at least go unfilled for 6+ months at a time.
You can see market trends by looking at reports published on the top 5 UK IT recruitment websites (usually published every 6 months), ITJobServ is a good site too for real time trends.
Architecture roles - which to some companies meant spending time coding (yay) and to other companies spending time on non-coding activities; aligning teams, strategy, planning, managing stakeholders, slide decks etc...
For what duration are these contracts usually agreed upon?
In which case they get me to work remotely and bill directly to the project, whilst funnelling communications through the project manager or tech lead. That way regular employees don’t see me, and they still get the work done.
Never had an initial 6 month contract turn out to be "just" 6 months. Shortest duration during my stints was 18 months (2 renewals).
These days it feels like the market is actually cooling down to me, but that could just be because I'm looking in the wrong sectors.
If anything else, and at least on the high(ish) end of skill and seniority there's an artificial reverse bubble that I can only attribute to the almost pathological and almost allergic insistence of UK employers to have as few well paid employees as possible.
The supply of CVs for any position we open there for mid/senior positions is a trickle compared to the UK, and it's not really been like they're all perfectly qualified, there's a lot of 'noise' too. We let go of any geographical constraint, as long as you're willing to work close to our time zone and in a nation that we're legally allowed to do business with, then we'd consider it.
In short - if you're an established engineer who's easy to work with and has some initiative, I would not be worried. Salaries/raises might slow down, inflation is here and is going to bite you, but such is life.
UK just can’t compete. EU is bigger, and have more money.
This isn’t even the beginning of pain for Brexit.
The EU as a whole surely does have more money, although developer salaries on average are higher in London than many other places in the EU too.
Technology stocks are mostly different with the exception of some startups that are valued based on user growth instead of revenue growth. Users are not customers though, and customers are the only real sustainable source of finance.
There are a lot of technology firms now that are financed by their customers so even if there is a full stock market meltdown in tech stocks, you shouldn't be afraid of unemployment but salaries will adjust to the reduced competition from VC-funded startups.
Will it ‘explode’ and lead to an ‘apocalypse?’ Your guess is as good as mine.
Personally I don’t expect it to be like 99 again as many tech companies have real profit and VCs have plenty of cash… but I suppose there are plenty that don’t as well.
Was there a bubble? There is noone with a conscience who can claim there was not.
Is there still a bubble? I think so. I think a combination of current fiscal policy combined with a need for companies to react to their stock price (fiduciary duty to investors) will result in cuts almost everywhere.
Stay safe out there.
I anticipate it being a bad time for middle managers with no skills outside of that.
Given the rise of remote work, cultural proximity, excellent English skills in Europe (I even heard that there's a country that's full of native speakers although they do have a slight accent and an obsession with tea) this might not work out so badly for _some_ developers.
It's why Fed/ECB targets 2% inflation, to keep the treadmill moving.
That's what you get for replacing the worlds largest generation, the Boomers, with the worlds smallest generation, the Zoomers.