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My Guide to Software Engineering Contracting in UK

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Re: My Guide to Software Engineering Contracting in UK

#91

Post by NicoJuicy »

aussieguy1234 wrote: post #45
NicoJuicy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gpt-4 isn't an engineer. It's a stack overflow summarizer. If you would do new things, it won't be able to help you.

The idea that LLMs like GPT-4 are glorified stochastic parrots who are merely predicting the next word has been thoroughly debunked, almost no one in the field believes that anymore. Whats been proven so far is they actually understand your questions and their responses. Its also proven that they have some level of reasoning capabilities. I highly recommend using it. Think of it as a Google replacement. Every enginee…

Nah, their text classification is better then their text generation.

Just let it do something novel instead of something typical stack overflow.

Eg. Nest, a c# library for elastic search, is something it has consistent troubles with because it's not with "and" or "or", but should, must and filter.

But yeah, you won't get into those cases as a junior or doing typical stuff it has been trained on :)

Re: My Guide to Software Engineering Contracting in UK

#92

Post by nly »

lbreakjai wrote: post #16

It's depressing to see that the average day rate in London is still at around 500 pounds. I made as much in my first contract 7 years ago. Sky was offering 650 pounds a day for your average frontend react role. I thought the times were good, but even then the old timers were talking about the good old days with some nostalgia.

Well, real median full-time wages in the UK are lower than 15 years ago. Why would contracting rates be any different?

UK labour market is dire. UK GDP growth is stagnant and border line non-existant

Re: My Guide to Software Engineering Contracting in UK

#93

Post by creativenolo »

aaronrobinson wrote: post #58

Well done for getting this out there. I contracted in the UK for over 30 years and will share my experiences as they’re different to yours in a few places. I’m also well versed in IR35. 1. Job security - you’re absolutely right. In my time I had 3 contracts that lasted longer than 6 years and I left 2 of them 2. Rates - you can earn north of £1000 a day with the right skills but there’s a big difference between insid…

On 7, with personal insurance (say for phones, devices, car hire, etc) and my experiences of insurance companies trying anything to avoid pay out I have always been skeptical if business insurance would ever actually pay out.

Re: My Guide to Software Engineering Contracting in UK

#95

Post by petesergeant »

ashconnor wrote: post #94
badpun wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where "abroad" is pretty much US or Switzerland?

Singapore, UAE. Even Canada pays better than the UK.

UAE has the advantage of being tax-free too, which adds ann extra 30%ish to take-home, although many people work very long hours. Also the weather is phenomenal 8 months of the year (although unliveable the rest), and your employer is on the hook to pay for exceptional health insurance. For a professional couple without kids, it can be a great way to save money, although costs are comparable to London.

I was doing well living there and doing contract work out of US EST.

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