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Thread: doing contract work

  1. #11
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    The job market I don't know it's hard to say entirely what is oneself and skillset (although frankly my work record reads quite decent IMO, however skills might not be that much demanded shrug, of they may be oversupplied), what is location (I don't even know if other locations are better), what is the job market in general these days, what is just random bad luck (fooled by randomness style). But I suspect the economy is not really what we are being told it is for sure!

    But getting a professional job? There is a ton of temp and contract work, with very few permanent hires.
    I was in a group for unemployed people seeking professional jobs. There was struggle for sure. And frankly struggle for people with what I would think were great credentials (I would think for sure I'd get hired if I had those credentials - but ...).

    So one thing I actually can say FOR SURE is having a real struggle finding professional jobs was NOT JUST ME. Some landed, but I'm not the only one contracting, some took temp work, some are still looking. The person working at the local unemployment office said it's taking people 6 months to a year to get a job these days (and unemployment only lasts 6 months, yea a lot of people in a world of hurt - anyone who tells you you only need 3-6 months saved for unemployment is blowing smoke up your @#$). The job market for professional skills may be broken, really and truly. Meanwhile low paid jobs don't pay enough to live off of.

    What it was like for me was employers were almost expecting something magical, they weren't even looking for skillsets and decent experience, they were almost looking for life paths, someone who had done a lot of things that were exactly what they were looking for that are seldom even found together. I got interviews when I hit magic buttons like this. It was completely an employers market where the standard seemed to be perfection and employers were almost like people going on dates rejecting everything (no second dates) until love at first sight was found.

    I lack the words to describe the crazy, at a certain level of crazy I think all one can do is walk away, try another career, something. Not that there were many options there (there didn't seem to be any I could access almost), but trying to make sense of the crazy just became crazy itself.
    Trees don't grow on money

  2. #12
    Senior Member herbgeek's Avatar
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    Just before the last recession, I was laid off when an exec from a famous company came in, purged, and brought her own team in. I decided to try self employment for a while in a totally different field but found I'm not good at marketing myself, so went back to look for a job in software development. I had been in software testing most of my career, but wanted to do project management. I looked hard for 2 1/2 years. This is with having an engineering BS and an MBA and several certifications. I worked for an entrepreneur for free for a few months just to have something recent on the resume. I finally landed a position, at a significant $ reduction ( though to be fair my last jobs were management, and this one was not). The job is ok, not great, but better than being unemployed. Something has fundamentally changed in the workplace.

  3. #13
    Senior Member SteveinMN's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore View Post
    What it was like for me was employers were almost expecting something magical, they weren't even looking for skillsets and decent experience, they were almost looking for life paths, someone who had done a lot of things that were exactly what they were looking for that are seldom even found together. I got interviews when I hit magic buttons like this. It was completely an employers market where the standard seemed to be perfection and employers were almost like people going on dates rejecting everything (no second dates) until love at first sight was found.
    I think it is that way all over now. Even six years ago in my Corporate Day Job, job openings were aimed at unicorns, ideal candidates who almost could not possibly have all the quailfications desired. I've seen ads from clueless recruiters looking for ten years' experience in development languages that haven't even been around ten years. Some of the specification comes about when the hiring manager really wants someone internal but the rules force him/her to advertise openly for candidates. Voila -- no one on the outside is qualified, so (s)he can hire who (s)he really wanted in the first place. But some of it is that there doesn't seem to be room for people to grow into jobs anymore. You hit the ground running -- or you get run over.

    Quote Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore View Post
    I lack the words to describe the crazy, at a certain level of crazy I think all one can do is walk away, try another career, something. Not that there were many options there (there didn't seem to be any I could access almost), but trying to make sense of the crazy just became crazy itself.
    I hold no illusions, that, six years out of what I was last doing in IT (and now pushing 60) I'd get a job in IT again, unless I was willing to go way down the ladder and, even then, I'd likely be considered either overqualified or too old. Not sure my ego needs that much of a bruising.

    I recently received a LinkedIn invitation (from someone I didn't know) so to stop the "nag" I logged into LinkedIn for the first time in several months. I see very little movement among my connections. I'm not sure if they're finding LI as "useful" as I am and just not noting their own new jobs or if there simply aren't moves to be made. Based on conversations I have had with former coworkers (a much smaller sample), no one seems to be moving around much at all (many of them are just hanging on until they can retire and hoping not to get bought out). So, yeah, landing career-type full-time employment seems problematic. Less than that? Maybe not doing so well, either.
    Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington

  4. #14
    Senior Member catherine's Avatar
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    ANM, I hope the contract job works out OK. Sounds like a rough commute, but often a "foot in the door" works out more long-term in one way or the other. My career in market research started out as a temp job in word processing in a market research company, which I very reluctantly took.

    I hope it works out for you.
    "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
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  5. #15
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    And let's not forget that all this temp and contract and part-time work has no benefits attached. No paid sick days, no paid vacation, no paid holidays, no health insurance, no pension or 401(k).

  6. #16
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    And let's not forget that all this temp and contract and part-time work has no benefits attached. No paid sick days, no paid vacation, no paid holidays, no health insurance, no pension or 401(k)
    this is largely true, however California passed a law recently requiring all employees even contractors get sick days in this state, only about 3 a year though is required. I think some other states like NY have been passing sick time too.
    Trees don't grow on money

  7. #17
    Yppej
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    If we had national health insurance provided by the government businesses would have one less excuse to not hire permanently older workers, who they stereotype as sicker.

  8. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yppej View Post
    If we had national health insurance provided by the government businesses would have one less excuse to not hire permanently older workers, who they stereotype as sicker.
    It is likely a factor but it is not the only thing that is going on that adds to the perception among older job hunters that age discrimination is getting worse, actually in some cases getting into an wall that can't be scaled, and "things didn't used to be like this". They probably didn't for older workers in the economy, maybe the economy has changed (for all workers), sure seems so, but also the laws have been changing. People don't know that, but this is part of why the 50+ job seeker can't find work:

    https://www.propublica.org/article/a...-under-the-law

    I don't know to what extent I really hit discrimination, early 40s, maybe, not as clear cut as if I was over 50. So I talk to a contractor coworker who has been contracting since 2009 (interesting year, yea), he blames immigration (H1Bs, plus bad immigrant recruiters) and outsourcing. He's not white if you want to think "typical Trump voter" or something (but I do sometimes say: this is why Trump is president, though I have no idea how the guy votes). And my coworker could be right, I mean you would think it would have to have an effect, so I don't dismiss it but at the same time I don't know the scale of it. He mentions he wishes he could change careers but is too old, I ask sincerely "what is too old?" because I wonder, I wonder what the job market thinks.

    But as for the very real age discrimination that people are hitting, which makes the "am I too old to change careers" and "am I too old to work period" relevant, yea, it's part health care expenses but also it's become de facto not illegal so companies got the green light to discriminate on age and do.
    Trees don't grow on money

  9. #19
    Senior Member SteveinMN's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore View Post
    I don't know to what extent I really hit discrimination, early 40s, maybe, not as clear cut as if I was over 50. So I talk to a contractor coworker who has been contracting since 2009 (interesting year, yea), he blames immigration (H1Bs, plus bad immigrant recruiters) and outsourcing. He's not white if you want to think "typical Trump voter" or something (but I do sometimes say: this is why Trump is president, though I have no idea how the guy votes). And my coworker could be right, I mean you would think it would have to have an effect, so I don't dismiss it but at the same time I don't know the scale of it.
    The scale is big. Even at my last IT job, pretty much every domestic IT group except IT Security was reviewed against outsourcers. The competition is tough when they're paying U.S. workers $40-50/hour (gross pay plus benefits) but they have to pay only $35/hour to our "cosourcing partners". Unfortunately for us, the (our) effort to clean up their messes* came out of a different budget, so senior management (the same folks who obviously understand getting what you pay for, based on the Audis and Lexi in the parking ramp) remained largely clueless and just saw dollar signs.

    The trouble for the Trumpistas, though, is that most of the job loss he rails against isn't ever coming back to the U.S., for lots of reasons which are OT here. I will just note that when I left The Day Job, TIINC were examining if it paid to move development to China or Vietnam because they thought Indian developers were getting too expensive and the Chinese and Vietnamese worked for so much less money. Returning the work to U.S. employees never made the short list.

    Quote Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore View Post
    He mentions he wishes he could change careers but is too old, I ask sincerely "what is too old?" because I wonder, I wonder what the job market thinks.
    One reason I left The Day Job rather than lateral into another part of IT was that, at a high enough level, you become a specialist (which I was) and no one wants to pay a specialist's salary for entry-level or journeyperson work. I could not move to, say, database analyst without pretty much starting over again. Well, maybe I could have but I would have said goodbye to any compensation increase probably for the rest of my career.

    Now, transition out of IT; that’s more do-able but still leaves the 50-60-year old worker battling the assumptions that (s)he no longer has the stamina to handle long work weeks or really flexible schedules or that (s)he knows how to associate with or influence Millennials. It's kind of the same brush that tarred younger working women because the assumption was they all wanted to work until they married and could leave work to have babies. It's not true for all and the notion really needed to be challenged. I am not hopeful, though it did work for young working women pretty well after 30-40 years of spotlighting the behavior.


    * To be completely fair about it, some of the mess came with what we handed our partners. Garbage in, garbage out, as the old computer saying goes. If we could not spec a project properly or hold the line on endless feature requests, that was our failure. What we got back from our partners was not of the highest quality, but our frequent inability to at least define what the monster looked like cost us, too.
    Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington

  10. #20
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    Ap, there are so many people in your situation. Somehow this country has gotten into a terrible situation. People who are willing to work and smart should not have to struggle like this to get jobs. I've been thinking that if I retire or get canned this year and and I run into financial difficulties, one of my "fallbacks" is to apply to a retailer with a good track record for treating employees well. There are a few out there. Maybe that could work for you if your current contract runs out. Just a thought. You sound like a super smart resourceful person, you deserve better than this. Sending you good vibes.

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