[Gllug] VACANCY: Site Reliability Engineering

Bruce Richardson itsbruce at workshy.org
Thu Feb 19 11:34:59 UTC 2009


On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:09:35AM +0000, Peter wrote:
> On 19 Feb 2009, at 10:42, Jose Luis Martinez wrote:
> [...]
> > That is may point, the market conditions are pretty dire...
> 
> 
> Only for non-essential people. There's always work for people who are  
> prepared to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty,  
> metaphorically or otherwise.

There's always *some* work, but there's simply less work, fewer jobs on
offer without a doubt.  The environment has changed in a big way.

My previous permanent employers went under over a year ago, back in the
boom times.  It was a very pleasant period in which to be made
reduncant, because the London IT contracting world was offering silly
money, the salary scales inflated by the top line rates offered by the
banks.  It was definitely a seller's market, with many more jobs on
offer than qualified people available to fill them.  There were
companies paying double rates and more to contract workers to fill
places while they tried to recruit permanent staff to those positions
(and often not seeing the irony of this practice).  It was an
environment in which you could confidently turn down work while you
looked for the contracts that interested you, or take a holiday on
impulse, knowing you could make up the money later.

All of this has changed.  There are fewer jobs on offer, budgets have
been slashed, a large number of people have been sacked in a short
period of time.  Not only will the companies I mentioned will be more
likely to leave the jobs vacant until they find a permanent recruit but
they will not have to wait nearly as long or pay as much.

No matter how good you are, or think you are, there are simply more
people at your level looking with less money on offer to them.  This is
likely to get worse - significantly worse - over the coming year, so
anybody who is unsure of the longevity of their current employer should
be looking seriously *now*.

-- 
Bruce

I unfortunately do not know how to turn cheese into gold.
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