Market reports and general feeling amongst the IT contracting community is that 2006 is going to be a good year with high demand pushing rates back up close to pre bubble burst times in the late 1990’s.
Smarter developers will no doubt be aware that some of the most lucrative gravy trains to be on are Java or .NET, particularly .NET.
Everyone is aware of Java. It’s been around proving itself for years. .NET however is a relative newcomer.
But the .NET ship has been sailing for a few years now and those developers who have not yet climbed aboard may well find that it has well and truly sailed too far from shore. Another 6 months from now and it will be very difficult to get that first piece of real experience on the CV without be highly creative with the truth.
From a development standpoint using .NET can provide some significant advantageous but I can’t help but be wary of the over hyping of what is essentially a programming language as being the next silver bullet.
Sure, there are some great new shiny tools in the .NET toolbox, but bad workmen (developers) still build rubbish even if you give them nice tools.
In the past I’ve witnessed project mangers lacking technical background deciding to move teams to the new super duper technologies thinking it will solve their problems. Having witnessed other teams on successful .XYZ projects they feel that .XYZ was why it was successful, and not the actually workmen on the job.
Sadly for them, this tactic back fires in the short term: The newly trained developers leave the projects with glowing CVs with ‘real experience’ and get highly paid contract positions to make mess whilst leaving behind the previous mess for others to clear up.
Not all is bad though, it gets worse: If the managers projects are not effectively measured they can simply sound the success horn, put the skills on their CV as well and then get a higher paid managers job elsewhere having got ‘real experience’ of having managed .XYZ projects.
And so the show goes on….
A cynical contractor, Bristol.