Current feel for the IT job market?

[NickK]

In terms of new opportunities, it seems pretty dead. A lot of competition for roles advertised too.

In the past when I've seen this, the company signs off budget and gets the job reqs out to recruitment but then mystically the roles are never filled. What happens behind the scenes is the budgets are put on hold, or delayed/cut but nobody says anything (or they could be sued or look incompetent).

 

[NickK]

Mainly digital transformation, services with a smatter of consultancy/advisory.

 

[NickK]

Having only been in IT for a month... I have nothing to compare against, but I'm being told it's so hard to recruit decent developers at the moment. Online has exploded in the last 2 years due to Covid, our team has apparently increased by around 300%. If other companies are in a similar position, it's no surprise we're struggling to recruit, the demand must simply outweigh the resource.

I'm trying to secure a role in this new field before redundancy in April, but at the same time, I'm not overly worried. Even with my very limited experience, it looks like there's so much opportunity out there, hopefully I will be okay.

Also, my brother's a developer that got made redundant about 2 weeks ago. He had two interviews before being given a job offer... not exactly hard for him.

Back in 1997 that was the same for me. However the last time I've seriously coded was 2005. I still code on the odd occasion but I've become a generalist in delivery, operations and innovation at most levels in an organisation after learning to swim on the job rather than have the qualification. The last true qualifications were a BSc in Software Engineering and an examination based product management course back in 2007.

I have noted one reference to Ethereum was misspelt on my CV this morning after giving it a refresh including running it through Grammarly professional which did highlight a couple of issues after rewording. I do find that Grammarly is a little sensitive to input structure. The result is it may not highlight something incorrect in a bullet list unless something else is altered.

 

[NickK]

Can't find good developers, operations people or marketers anywhere in the UK. Those that are available (via recruitment firms head hunting) are asking for insane salaries that SME's simply can't support long-term.

We're having to offshore work with a view of establishing offices in Europe.

So in answer to the question, there should be an abundance of opportunities for IT.

If there's any project managers or programmers looking for opportunities, hit me up

Lots of EU development capacity! So either companies get taxed by Brexit or have to pay the price for Brexit inflation here.

 

[NickK]

As the IT sector transitions to remote/hybrid working I do think offshore is something to explore (given the disadvantages of offshore are reduced in a remote model), at least until the rates converge even closer (certainly there is a major issue with retention in India as well with soaring salaries and hence rates). Really what should be happening is other countries with lower costs of living should be recognising this UK skills shortage and churning out IT workers to start undercutting us and cool things off a bit.

Certainly a great time for those that are young and ambitious in IT, people will be hitting heights in their late-20s I would have considered a fantasy at that age (admittedly impacted by the financial crisis), they can effectively shortcut their careers by at least 5 years with the state of the market at present. A couple of years experience under their belt and then jump straight to big boy money.

Company finance directors love low digit figures for engineering salaries. Hence there's always pressure to find the next country that has the graduate-technologist training infrastructure in place. Poland, India, Estonia etc have all gone through this. I found the graduates for a large Pune team far more progressive and effective compared to Bangalore, however the senior managers really have issues with status ego in both locations. Keeping good engineers is a nightmare but no different to the UK in the late 1990s and early 2000s - partly driven by the dichotomy between modern expectations vs the senior management status-ego.

Current applications rates seem aggressive - according to Linkedin, within 24hours you're looking at 40-80 applicants for senior roles like Head of/CTO/CIO. I'd expect 2-3x that through combined channels. It's bananas.

 

[NickK]

Security, as a risk to manage, is becoming the top risk in the CIO agenda. There's no point competing if your doors are open and your customers trust is gone.

I used to build and operate services for the bank, that includes the secirity, there's more to security than people that think they can 'have a go' at it. I sold quantum cryptography in my last job but the specific was it was around provable QRNG generating the keys - so it's not about insider threat detection, or graphing or ML based response systems. It's a specialist job and one that needs specialists.. hence the demand.

Still radio silence on the job front.. I'll keep going.. and I'm keeping my eye open of opportunities rather than roles too.

 

[NickK]

Have you considered reaching out to CxOs in organisations you 'like'? With such specialist skills; you may need a role carved out for you rather than applying to a watered down job spec that nobody really understands what it is.

I may start doing this, at a minimum canvasing the current state of play.

I have had some interest at last - It's taken 3 months and I feel a lot of organisations have slowed senior recruitment (perhaps at board level) due to the economic outlook. I've just had a call with a mate of a mate, as a CISO he had security roles open but not generalist but he's opened up some of his contacts. I've had a few recruiter emails around the blockchain area.

Just had a look at their LinkedIn profile, and it's definitely in the Azure org.

Given L7 Principle Engineers are typically heavily tied into the market and customers within as experts in their field, I'd expect AWS to be looking at commercial impact of perhaps loosing business and customers. That's their value, unless he's been deployed to an area in MSFT that AWS aren't competing in, or, there's financial hardship/constructive dismissal in the mix. Senior members may offer enough business value that the legal team of the headhunting business may work through the legalities.

 

[NickK]

I'd be similar. It's been a good 16yrs I did much coding. Too long out of it to get back to it. Also now a generalist, but more on the DevOps side, a lot of SQL and admin work in the back end and cloud. Tbh I was happier when I was in the BA/UI space. I prefer to build new things than maintain things.

I find I get spammed on LI with gibberish enquires from recruiters who don't know anything about IT or the roles in it. Maybe I'll go back and do a better profile.

I tend to focus on what is interesting to me. Hence I have an eclectic mix on the CV with self employed gaps developing stereo drone vision, low light astronomy image tracking and control. So I was happy in the high end roles but getting back into them seems to be particularly hard (last time I interviewed was 2015/2016). So I'm also considering simply kicking back and trying something new - I've applied as a lead golang coder. Oddly the company is doing what've done before (large scale transaction processing using almost the same tech I used previously) - I bring that expertise, Golang isn't that different from C++.. and for 4 days in the office a month with a decent salary then I'll probably be interested getting back to grass roots
The alternative is start thinking MBA on the side of that programming course..

That's their value, unless he's been deployed to an area in MSFT that AWS aren't competing in, or, there's financial hardship/constructive dismissal in the mix. Senior members may offer enough business value that the legal team of the headhunting business may work through the legalities.

Actually something just hit me from what I've read recently. Previously employers make lots of threats and barred returning employees, that culture is no longer tolerated by employees that they're trying to chase back later telling them to GFTS. Instead the FAANG are starting to move to open doors - staff are welcome back or suffer their shot foot for ever more.
It may explain why Amazon are having issues recruiting.. and that they're no longer being quite as aggressive.

 

[NickK]

An interesting article has shown that the majority of automated CV sifting systems reject people with >6months gaps between jobs. If that's the case your employability after 6month falls close to zero.

Interesting given the government has stated there's a shortage of people for roles - perhaps it's artificial given the automated systems are failing the investment for people to find jobs?

 

[NickK]

Most people I know come up with excuses for their gaps, e.g. freelancing, contracting, startup idea development, etc to bypass automated filters.

I did find it amusing that someone asked me about a gap that I had about 7 years in the past.

I've taken time in the past to develop new ideas pre-seed etc but this time I had to sort out the build we started when covid hit. Either that or get divorced.

Talking to a recruiter last week the gap and the reason for leaving the old job (they closed my base office, sold the company and fired myself with others under 2 years of employment yet paid my performance bonus). Try really don't give a hoot if you have some time off for a good reason and that wasn't a problem.

 

[NickK]

I doubt the shortage is artificial, similar issues with tech recruitment in the US too etc..

If you can explain the gap then you could still fill something in on the form if you’re worried about that, that should satisfy the automated system.

How big is the gap? If you have a gap of 24 months (not sure if it might be 18 months at some places) then there are special returner schemes at various employers for experienced hires. Goldman Sachs started doing this a while ago and IIRC trademarked the term “returnship”. Basically you get a sort of internship/job trial for grownups for say 3 or 6 months, paid at a decent rate more like your old salary and then they might offer a full time role at the end. It’s aimed originally at mothers who’ve taken a career break for child care but isn’t exclusive to women and could just as well be used by anyone who has looked after a relative or simply taken a sabbatical.

I took May to Dec for the build and starting looking in Jan.