RE: Shocked by news of RPGers-no jobs in the UK

[Colin Williams <Williamsc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think maybe there are two reasons.

1) Y2K and Euro contractors all coming back onto the market as those
projects finish.

2) Companies that have been stung having to pay very high rates for
contractors to do Y2K and Euro work, now see the chance to replace them 
     all with permies  

-----Original Message-----
From: david.kahn@gb.abb.com [mailto:david.kahn@gb.abb.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 1999 2:19 PM
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
Subject: Re: Shocked by news of RPGers-no jobs in the UK




"DAVID BULOG" <d2ba@xtra.co.nz> wrote:

>I  believed there was work for RPGers in the UK working with
>ICMS--IBMs-Customer management and billing system-mainly used by
Telecos.I
>even saw adds for NZ RPGers wanted in the UK-last year-the demand was
huge
>-so Im shocked by your news--Maybe demand for RPGers tapers on and off
>
>That is what worried me about RPG,so I dumped it after a month or two
and
>went with Microsoft Visual Basic(VB Client Server for AS/400 or
whatever)
>.I have a friend who arrived in the UK in Feb from NZ-he got swamped by
>agents with Job offers--some nights they were calling him at
10pm-honest.

David,

It's fallen off dramatically. 6 months ago there was strong demand and
contract
rates were very high. We assumed it was due to a shortage caused by the
Y2K
crunch. For the last 3 or 4 months, however, it's been extremely quiet
and the
clients feel they are now in the driving seat and expect to get good
people at
much lower rates, maybe GBP 20-25 per hour less. More than one agent has
told me
they have good RPG programmers, even with J.D. Edwards skills, sitting
at home
twiddling their thumbs with no obvious explanation for the down turn.
Happily it
now seems to be picking up again, albeit slowly.

Dave Kahn, ABB Steward Ltd.


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