The UK Ruby Contract Drought Is Real • Hacker News Board

Re: The UK Ruby Contract Drought Is Real

#41

Post by functionalfoo » Sat, Feb 28, 2015, 4:55 PM UTC

JAlexoid wrote: post #35

heidar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of contracts in London with 500-700 GBP per day rates...Java/Ruby/Node and more. Those are for dev roles, not consulting roles.

No, there are not. There are a lot of ads with those rates, but most roles are ~ £450. Please note that a single contract goes out to many agencies that post the same contract, so you might think that there is a lot of £600+ roles. While in reality there is a lot of people posting the same role X^N times. Some of those posts are not even real roles - new guys in agencies need to collect a lot of CVs, so they post bog…

Rates in london for developers are usually under 500 day for non-finance, and anywhere between 500-700 for finance, and maybe 700-800 if you have some quant dev work in finance. You can get higher rates outside dev, for example Project Mgr is around 700 day, and Programme Mgr around 900 day.

Occasionally, there are much higher rates (1k-2k) for very short urgent roles, but not that common.

Re: The UK Ruby Contract Drought Is Real

#42

Post by JAlexoid » Sat, Feb 28, 2015, 4:59 PM UTC

JAlexoid wrote: post #35

heidar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of contracts in London with 500-700 GBP per day rates...Java/Ruby/Node and more. Those are for dev roles, not consulting roles.

No, there are not. There are a lot of ads with those rates, but most roles are ~ £450. Please note that a single contract goes out to many agencies that post the same contract, so you might think that there is a lot of £600+ roles. While in reality there is a lot of people posting the same role X^N times. Some of those posts are not even real roles - new guys in agencies need to collect a lot of CVs, so they post bog…

"I'm sure that's also true but plenty are real." Plenty are, but not as many. There are a few teams in London and they usually stick together and for long term. And a lot of them don't get filled fast, because they are looking for very strong specific experience.

My most well paid contract was awarded to me after the job was open for 3 months - Thales e-Security HSM API specialist.

Re: The UK Ruby Contract Drought Is Real

#43

Post by JAlexoid » Sat, Feb 28, 2015, 5:07 PM UTC

JAlexoid wrote: post #31

cssmoo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay is good. If you're good at it, it's pretty amazing. You can pull £650/day on contract if you know your shit. If you don't but can drive Visual Studio, £400/day is easy.

Please add a note to that £650 - financial experience required. I can pull £800 with Scala and Java. Though I am not about to sell my soul for the £200 difference to spend that on psychotherapy afterwards.

"How much / what sort of financial experience is required?"

One year perm at a bank or a project in a bank as a consultant. Investment banking and FX experience is valued much more.

If you never worked in any financial institution(like for an insurer), then there is maybe 1% chance you're getting a contract in one.

For £800 that's 5-10 years of experience with majority of it with one of the big consultancies(IBM GBS, Accenture, Deloitte) and a few big financial projects. Granted that's an introduction rate, that can go up if you negotiate well.

Re: The UK Ruby Contract Drought Is Real

#44

Post by cssmoo » Sat, Feb 28, 2015, 5:08 PM UTC

louishk wrote: post #40

JAlexoid wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please add a note to that £650 - financial experience required. I can pull £800 with Scala and Java. Though I am not about to sell my soul for the £200 difference to spend that on psychotherapy afterwards.

How much / what sort of financial experience is required?

Incidentally bugger all in most cases I reckon unless you're working in trading. There's a bit of a vacuum at the moment so standards are low. Most orgs are willing to drag you through the relevant training.

In all my years of working in the financial sector (NOT trading I will add!), about as complex as it got was numeric precision, rounding, equation of a line and curve fitting which was all pretty easy. Oh and deciphering lots of poorly written regulation and rules.

Don't hit trading unless you like snorting coke and 100 hour weeks.

Re: The UK Ruby Contract Drought Is Real

#45

Post by paulbjensen » Sat, Feb 28, 2015, 5:16 PM UTC

Can't comment on Ruby, but in relation to Node.js in London it's very much a seller's market at the moment; good developers with commercial experience are contracting at £550pd, and very few are interested in taking permanent roles.

It's a good time to be a software developer in London, and not so good if you're trying to recruit one.

Re: The UK Ruby Contract Drought Is Real

#46

Post by functionalfoo » Sat, Feb 28, 2015, 5:28 PM UTC

louishk wrote: post #40

JAlexoid wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please add a note to that £650 - financial experience required. I can pull £800 with Scala and Java. Though I am not about to sell my soul for the £200 difference to spend that on psychotherapy afterwards.

How much / what sort of financial experience is required?

You can learn brush up on the terminology pretty quickly - the IBs will hire any solid developers who know their platform well enough (so java devs who appreciate core java + modern ecosystem; python devs who have experience with scipy/numpy etc. A big part though is willingness to jump in and remain for a while, to be able to tolerate the mindless processes and procedures that come with massive companies in a regulated industry.

Re: The UK Ruby Contract Drought Is Real

#47

Post by busterarm » Sat, Feb 28, 2015, 7:22 PM UTC

jalfresi wrote: post #24

functionalfoo wrote: post #5

The truth is not nice, but here it goes: A lot of companies got burnt on ruby related projects. Especially anything rails related. There is a steady pipeline of work right now for skilled developers to migrate services and code from ruby to go, Scala, java - basically anything else except ruby. I have earnt quite well doing such gigs, although I tend do more erlang/elixir stuff these days. I would always ask the clie…

This has been my perception too; over the past couple of years we've been inundated with recruitment agencies trying to pass on these Ruby/Rails devs like its the new hot shit and all I've ever seen in my experience is spagetti codebases and sloppy work. Node is the same. It used to be PHP devs were this class (we refer to them as "enthusiastic ametuers" but the "brogrammer" name also equally applies; people who are…

So for someone who is working with ruby but technology agnostic and trying to land a gig as a junior dev, what do you suggest?

I feel like switching stacks before actually getting work might do more harm than good and at this stage I'm not looking to contract.

Re: The UK Ruby Contract Drought Is Real

#48

Post by nextweek2 » Sat, Feb 28, 2015, 7:48 PM UTC

makeitsuckless wrote: post #33

jalfresi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my perception too; over the past couple of years we've been inundated with recruitment agencies trying to pass on these Ruby/Rails devs like its the new hot shit and all I've ever seen in my experience is spagetti codebases and sloppy work. Node is the same. It used to be PHP devs were this class (we refer to them as "enthusiastic ametuers" but the "brogrammer" name also equally applies; people who are…

If that's the case, then there is still hope for Ruby enthusiasts. PHP has come out the other end, mostly by splitting into separate communities that only have the language in common. The issue with Ruby is that it is so tightly associated with simple architecture of Rails. Nothing wrong with Rails in itself, but for many complex projects that require architectural solutions Rails doesn't support, Rails + inexperienc…

> Ruby is fine, but RoR is toxic.

A language without its framework is like a hammer without a nail.

Re: The UK Ruby Contract Drought Is Real

#49

Post by busterarm » Sat, Feb 28, 2015, 8:31 PM UTC

nextweek2 wrote: post #48

makeitsuckless wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case, then there is still hope for Ruby enthusiasts. PHP has come out the other end, mostly by splitting into separate communities that only have the language in common. The issue with Ruby is that it is so tightly associated with simple architecture of Rails. Nothing wrong with Rails in itself, but for many complex projects that require architectural solutions Rails doesn't support, Rails + inexperienc…

> Ruby is fine, but RoR is toxic. A language without its framework is like a hammer without a nail.

okay so...Sinatra, Padrino, Lotus?

Re: The UK Ruby Contract Drought Is Real

#50

Post by ritchiea » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 12:55 AM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #47

jalfresi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my perception too; over the past couple of years we've been inundated with recruitment agencies trying to pass on these Ruby/Rails devs like its the new hot shit and all I've ever seen in my experience is spagetti codebases and sloppy work. Node is the same. It used to be PHP devs were this class (we refer to them as "enthusiastic ametuers" but the "brogrammer" name also equally applies; people who are…

So for someone who is working with ruby but technology agnostic and trying to land a gig as a junior dev, what do you suggest? I feel like switching stacks before actually getting work might do more harm than good and at this stage I'm not looking to contract.

Don't switch stacks. He's expressing an opinion about code from Rails developers which is about as broad as opinions go this side of saying "black people are like X" or "Asians are like Y." On the bright side he does leave the door open that Rails developers could write solid code though most don't in his opinion. The best thing you could do is continue working on Rails but read a variety of opinions on good code in different languages, read Coders at Work and similar texts on coding, and remember not to blindly follow coding trends. Generally keep your code simple and work to find abstractions to fit your domain.

I'm not saying anyone here is incorrect in their generalizations of Rails developers. I've obviously never seen the code they are criticizing. But they also aren't providing any useful information. Keep that in mind above all else. There will always be politics and disagreements. You're never going to make everyone happy and it would be a disaster to try to.