Foot_Tapper

Not sure whop the U-CAN dept are, then again there are loads of sub depts.

Not sure what extra goodies they have up here. IBM look after the main site stuff. I work for a 3rd party comp who provide support for just the people i support.

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

A lot of this does ring true, I think Simon has the optimal situation, Local Government cushiness at contract rates, we have 5 of them in our dept as we cant recruit DBA's due to the salary, I am on the top of scale at 31 grand, Senior DBA is another 800 quid, no wonder they are full of 400 quid a day contractors, the cant have a situation where the techies earn more than the managers as that would be the situation if they paid a standard market rate, my problem is that I am not all that fussed, good home/work balance and not under that much pressure financially, house is paid for, no debts but not much disposable income.

Word of warning on spunking your hard earned on a motor, my mate did that, 24 grands worth of Fiat Coupe turbo, then the work dried up and ended up permanent again wishing he had 24 grand rather than a rapidly depreciating Italian Liability.

Simon K

JACKO,

Ive been contracting for 8 years my friend and know all too well about the ups and downs of the contracting market.

I worked in the city for 5 years, and saw many a contractor spending 5K on a rolex, then loosings his contract. I currently have too many cars, an M3 convertible / twin turbo Mkiv supra / Pajero / chitroen and want to now get rid of a few and will no doubt trade one of those in for it.

We'll see what happens, Im such a tight git that when it comes to it I'll probably walk away. I need a new in - out drive in my house, and need a new pool boiler, so will probably end up investing in my house. Or, could throw a few ££££ at my woman, get some silicone beauties in to her :-) hahaah

SBK

Adrian F

I dont deal with Councils in IT but in another area. From my experence over 10 years i would say that Councils vary a lot some are PC mad and the staff spend more time being PC than actually being productive and yet others are full of proffessional motivated staff who do a very good job for wages way below the market value.

If Seriously interested in the job then go and have a look round meet the people and see what they are like.

As said the big problem is that people seem to be promoted on the ability to follow the latest PC policies rather than an ability to do the job they are employed for but then again this seems to be increasingly common in big commercial companies as well.