Greedy IT Contractors
Do we have a load of greedy IT Contractors who are now facing reality after the end of the boom? Or is it just the market for IT Contractors playing out?
I don‘t know what prompted this, but we had the following email sent to us out of the blue from a recruitment agent (or at least someone purporting to be one). It is not one of our usual recruitment agents who are good enough to give us their views and job market information. Here it is:-
Huge Rates for Greedy IT Contractors
It was only a few short years ago that IT contractors were cock-a-hoop. They were getting huge rates from the boom. The rates were going through the roof, and so much so that the costs for the companies that they supply (or their clients as they like to call them) went through the roof and made them internationally uncompetitive.
This was sheer greed on the contractor‘s behalf, and their own greed suffocated them as they piled more and more cash into their already stuffed-full mouths. It was their own greed that killed them.
Government Introduced Fast Track Visa System
It had reached such proportions that the Government had to introduce the Fast Track Visa system in order to bring down the costs of IT to companies that the greedy IT Fat Cats had pushed up.
How the greedy IT contractors were cock-a-hoop in their fancy new cars and their lascivious lifestyles.
IT Contractors Were Proud Cockerels
The trouble with that is that one day you are a proud cockerel and the next you are a feather duster.
If contractors had been less greedy then their profession might not be in the current state that it is in. Many companies have decided now to bring in good professionals from outside the EU. They are much cheaper, and they don‘t start getting greedy when the market is good.
Companies Won’t Employ Greedy IT Contractors
Many companies won‘t employ UK-based IT contractors again because they were badly bitten by them last time
If the market picks up again, then my advice to contractors would be to not be so greedy and keep their rates at reasonable levels. They‘ve got to start wooing the customer back again. It may be some time before customers have confidence in them again.
IT Contractor Comment
When rates were going up you said that contractors were greedy. Now that rates are coming down is that because contractors have suddenly become not so greedy?
No, of course it isn‘t. That‘s just nonsense.
The rates that contractors get aren‘t normally driven by them, but by the market. If there are more jobs than contractors then the rates go up. If there are more contractors than jobs then we see the rates go down.
This is called the Laws of Supply and Demand, and it is one of the basic tenets of economics.
It is nothing to do whatsoever with greed.
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