Job Hunting

[gaz1]

a possibility yet to come for the uk

and a good example of it enjoy your watch

 

[TechnicAl]

About 3 hours south of Yorkshire

no wonder they were moaning........need an even better car to travel that direction.

 

[redlig]

I saw something this week, discussing Ukraine, could have been football or that warship.....anyway they mentioned wages and the average wage is less than £250 / month (£1.50 or £1.60 an hour).........So the EE workers here on £10 an hour think its fantastic, of course they work hard but they dont really "live" here.....they are on the fringe of society....on the other hand the British know its hard to live here comfortably on that wage.

I wonder how much their housing costs . At a guess its a bit cheaper than here. It's all elative to the cost of living and life style to say nothing of the " must have " and not " need" mindset.

 

[rcx132]

I have been jumping around as an IT contractor for the last, erm, eleven years and ran out of contract in early April.
The planets may have aligned for a follow on but it has been a rubbish time to find any sort of new job.

Is it just me, failing to keep up on training or has the job market flown into the side of a mountain ?

Darn my co worker told me the market is very buoyant so today I started looking for a new job. I'm in tech as well, solution/enterprise architect.

 

[TechnicAl]

I wonder how much their housing costs . At a guess its a bit cheaper than here. It's all elative to the cost of living and life style to say nothing of the " must have " and not " need" mindset.

Property Prices in Ukraine

Average property prices and property investment indexes in Ukraine.

www.numbeo.com

These are saying average wage is £316/month but a city centre apartment will cost you £479 a month

 

[Moose McAlpine]

I saw something this week, discussing Ukraine, could have been football or that warship.....anyway they mentioned wages and the average wage is less than £250 / month (£1.50 or £1.60 an hour).........So the EE workers here on £10 an hour think its fantastic, of course they work hard but they dont really "live" here.....they are on the fringe of society....on the other hand the British know its hard to live here comfortably on that wage.

That's right. I have a good friend who's Ukrainian, and he told me a while ago that the average wage is about 230 a month. But of course, the cost of living is much cheaper too. (But not neccessarily all items. Used cars for example are much more expensive than here, relative to earnings.)

Another mate went a couple years ago to Chernobyl. Said everything was so cheap they couldn't spend all the money they took, ended up giving it all to the taxi driver on the way to the airport. It was about £200 quid between 3 of them, but the taxi driver couldn't believe his luck.

 

[Morrisman]

Friend of mine was offered a HGV driving job paying £11 an hour, only about £1 more than shelf stacking in Aldi which doesn't sound like any incentive to me.

Agency near me currently offering £17.50 an hour for HGV 1.

 

[skotl]

The market has seemingly got busier overnight, maybe there are heads of industry on these very boards !?!?!

Linked in has caught fire slightly since I posted

54 profile viewers in the past 90 days +367% since last week​

Most of my approaches have been direct or from a small number of head hunters after a bit of tweaking of my CV.

I have thrown out the old crap in a bit of CV decluttering as ICL DRS 6000 Unix is fit only for the science museum and HP1000 RTE-A is hogging its spot there already.
Sparc is still showing up on Jobserve as people scramble their workloads to alternatives so that can stay, for now.

Binning off the old tech seems to have tipped the balance but it is three months into IR35 so perhaps some of those projects pushed back by batflu have now reached a state of urgency ?



I know it well, had a contract there building HPC clusters quite a while ago, before using Graphics cards was a thing.

Glad it's starting to pick up. I'd be happy to look at your CV and/or LinkeyDin profile if that helps? I'll IM you.

 

[sako243]

My mum had a conservatory put on not long before the pandemic. Local to her conservatory company so they dealt with all the trades.

Lithuanian groundworkers turned up before breakfast. Put boards down in the garden where they would be walking back and forth. Set up a brew station in the garage and set to. She didn’t even know they were there. There was a bit to do inside, they put old carpet over hers despite her saying that it was all coming up and put house shoes on to work indoors. Whole area was spotless when they left.

2 weeks later the actual conservatory crew turned up from Yorkshire. Moaned that it was a 3 hour drive. When they’d finished moaning they said put the kettle on love and went and sat in the van. Mother ignored them! Eventually they got on with the job. She came down stairs to find muddy trainer prints all through the kitchen to the toilet and back and the apprentice trying to make tea. He couldn’t work the teapot or the plunger coffee thing Didn’t so much as ask, just raided the cupboards.

she overheard the guy in charge telling him to nip to the shop for Nescafé as ‘their coffee is ****e! Got bits in’

packed up in the dark and were moaning about that.

She won’t have them back but the conservatory company has had to send people round several times for the snagging and it’s still not right.

Sounds a similar story to a place where I occassionally go deer stalking.

The two ladies who own the woodland wanted to build a log cabin using trees they needed to fell anyway, couldn't find a British firm that would do it. In the end someone in the pub gave them the phone number of a local Polish guy - he said he'd build exactly what they wanted for about half of what the ready built cabins was going to cost. Only power tool used was a chainsaw, got in a handful of his mates and set to building the cabin using rigging from nearby trees to hoist the beams into place.

Anyway they were also getting mains water and electricity piped in from the nearby road and they dug the trench 400 yards down the hill through the wood by hand. One morning they were waiting for a load of conduit and pipe to be delivered and it got stuck in a massive pile up on the M23 - delayed by 5h. When the ladies arrived in the afternoon expecting to find the water and electricity plumbed in the lorry still hadn't arrived. But they arrived to a load of garden furniture and a deck built out infront of the cabin.

"We didn't ask for this. It's beautiful but we don't have any spare budget for it unfortunately". "No problem" was the response, they had nothing better to do so rather than sit around, doze, drink etc., they just cracked on and built the furniture rather than sit idle.

When you've got that work ethos there's very little to compete against it.

Another similar story was an ex-mechanic from Poland who works for the local trailer fabrication company. Was told the story of his first day at work where the boss was run off his feet to show him the ropes, then a mate of the owner's came in and asked if someone could come back with him to the farm down the road to weld up a bucket on the loader that had a hole in it.

Great thought the boss, take the new guy so I've got time to sort things out. At the end of the day, "anyone seen the new guy?". At that moment walks in from the patch job he went on the morning. When asked what took so long he replied "bucket s***, built new bucket".

 

[James1979]

Sounds a similar story to a place where I occassionally go deer stalking.

The two ladies who own the woodland wanted to build a log cabin using trees they needed to fell anyway, couldn't find a British firm that would do it. In the end someone in the pub gave them the phone number of a local Polish guy - he said he'd build exactly what they wanted for about half of what the ready built cabins was going to cost. Only power tool used was a chainsaw, got in a handful of his mates and set to building the cabin using rigging from nearby trees to hoist the beams into place.

Anyway they were also getting mains water and electricity piped in from the nearby road and they dug the trench 400 yards down the hill through the wood by hand. One morning they were waiting for a load of conduit and pipe to be delivered and it got stuck in a massive pile up on the M23 - delayed by 5h. When the ladies arrived in the afternoon expecting to find the water and electricity plumbed in the lorry still hadn't arrived. But they arrived to a load of garden furniture and a deck built out infront of the cabin.

"We didn't ask for this. It's beautiful but we don't have any spare budget for it unfortunately". "No problem" was the response, they had nothing better to do so rather than sit around, doze, drink etc., they just cracked on and built the furniture rather than sit idle.

When you've got that work ethos there's very little to compete against it.

Another similar story was an ex-mechanic from Poland who works for the local trailer fabrication company. Was told the story of his first day at work where the boss was run off his feet to show him the ropes, then a mate of the owner's came in and asked if someone could come back with him to the farm down the road to weld up a bucket on the loader that had a hole in it.

Great thought the boss, take the new guy so I've got time to sort things out. At the end of the day, "anyone seen the new guy?". At that moment walks in from the patch job he went on the morning. When asked what took so long he replied "bucket s***, built new bucket".

I’ve worked at sea with poles and can believe both of these. Romanians also. They can be a bit of a ‘one trick pony’ and need guidance as to what to do next but that’s a hang up from the old ways of one man, one job. The younger ones are much better.

it’s hard to compete against that. Especially when a lot (not all) of our younger ones just want to start at £50k for doing nowt. No drive. Dunno why but they just have no drive.

 

[Munkul]

No drive. Dunno why but they just have no drive.

Slightly related:
The other day i was queuing in the sun for a cafe takeaway, 3-4 back in the line, It was taking a while. A woman comes up to the front and says "excuse me, would you mind if I push in? My boy has just dropped his scoop of ice cream off the cone, I've just queued for ages for them, i just need to get him another scoop".
Perfectly nice kids maybe 3-4 year old, perfectly polite mother, and they let her in and she got her ice cream and off they went.

I wasn't the only one who was thinking though - what does that teach a child about consequences?

From 4 years old, that child has just had the lesson that it's ok to be careless, because someone else will sort it out.

 

[Ton-up]

My sister wanted some fence posts, panels and a patio laid so got a loa of quotes - all around £3000. Got a recommendation from one of her friends about two Polish guys. Their quote was half the price of everyone else and as she has very little money, she went with them.
They work for someone else during the week but then came to hers 7.30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday, 7.30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday and never stopped grafting all day. The old path they removed was up to a foot thick concrete (ex-council bungalow!) so it put them well behind and they didn't finish, so they have been back Monday and Tuesday evenings, 5 p.m to 8.30 p.m, after their day job and will be back tonight to finish off!!
They cant come the weekend as they have other work on!!
She said they have done a great job and she's very pleased. Not many British guys work like that.

 

[gaz1]

i bet many on here that said about polish guys working for half the price wouldnt even work for that amount

first to moan about wages but employ others that are cheaper than what they would work for

 

[Mr Fro]

i bet many on here that said about polish guys working for half the price wouldnt even work for that amount

first to moan about wages but employ others that are cheaper than what they would work for

Ooooooh, contentious!

In my experience, a lot of us "first world" types are a bit jobsworth-like, sucking out teeth and moaning about everything and anything.

I'd be delighted to employ anyone who would happily get their shoulder to the work and actually have some pride in what they do.

I'm trying to get some quotes for 30 m of fencing and having my soffits & facias done on the house. Not a hope round here in sunny Suffolk where the majority are white British, it's too much work. They come, have a look, suck their teeth and we don't here from them again!

If some Eastern European guy showed up and did a quality job I'd happily pay the going rate plus!

 

[My Old Landy]

When my back boiler sprang a leak two years ago, I contacted 5 plumbers to quote a replacement - obviously to a different system as back boilers are no longer available. Only two returned my call. Both declined to quote as 'its a back boiler mate, we don't touch them'........
British Gas sent a chap around, quoted and got the job. £4200 for boiler, pump and install a Hive system. It took them three days as it was not a simple job - rerouting the gas and water to an outside wall.
Too much trouble for any of the rest it seems!

 

[James1979]

Ooooooh, contentious!

In my experience, a lot of us "first world" types are a bit jobsworth-like, sucking out teeth and moaning about everything and anything.

I'd be delighted to employ anyone who would happily get their shoulder to the work and actually have some pride in what they do.

I'm trying to get some quotes for 30 m of fencing and having my soffits & facias done on the house. Not a hope round here in sunny Suffolk where the majority are white British, it's too much work. They come, have a look, suck their teeth and we don't here from them again!

If some Eastern European guy showed up and did a quality job I'd happily pay the going rate plus!

That’s it really

They turn up and undercut what competition there is, and get the work. There’s no reason they couldn’t charge the going rate. I’ve no idea why they don’t. They are worth it.

I don’t get the race to the bottom. I get asked to revise my prices now and again as ‘x’ will do it cheaper. “Let him” I always say. Usually I then find either x doesn’t exist or is too busy.

 

[Fraserb]

That’s it really

They turn up and undercut what competition there is, and get the work. There’s no reason they couldn’t charge the going rate. I’ve no idea why they don’t. They are worth it.

I don’t get the race to the bottom. I get asked to revise my prices now and again as ‘x’ will do it cheaper. “Let him” I always say. Usually I then find either x doesn’t exist or is too busy.

At the moment I'm lucky enough to be in the same position, someone asks for a price and that's it, if they say x or y is cheaper let them get on with it, I've twice now lost jobs then a few weeks or so later they've came back asking if I could do part of the job as x or y can't, usually charge the same price as the whole job would have.

 

[MCKDAVID]

That’s it really

They turn up and undercut what competition there is, and get the work. There’s no reason they couldn’t charge the going rate. I’ve no idea why they don’t. They are worth it.

I don’t get the race to the bottom. I get asked to revise my prices now and again as ‘x’ will do it cheaper. “Let him” I always say. Usually I then find either x doesn’t exist or is too busy.

Not just me that does that then.... I charge honest rates, I don't take the ****, not necessarily the cheapest, but still take pride in what I do, and what I won't....

aye they'll maybe find cheaper, but to date, I've found it strange how they seem to come back later though when it's not been as rosy as they thought...

 

[Kayos]

When my back boiler sprang a leak two years ago, I contacted 5 plumbers to quote a replacement - obviously to a different system as back boilers are no longer available. Only two returned my call. Both declined to quote as 'its a back boiler mate, we don't touch them'........
British Gas sent a chap around, quoted and got the job. £4200 for boiler, pump and install a Hive system. It took them three days as it was not a simple job - rerouting the gas and water to an outside wall.
Too much trouble for any of the rest it seems!

I see this from the other side, spend ages pricing and working it out, customer expecting to pay £1500 but don't get back to you when its a weeks work and £5k

 

[TechnicAl]

I’ve worked at sea with poles and can believe both of these. Romanians also. They can be a bit of a ‘one trick pony’ and need guidance as to what to do next but that’s a hang up from the old ways of one man, one job. The younger ones are much better.

it’s hard to compete against that. Especially when a lot (not all) of our younger ones just want to start at £50k for doing nowt. No drive. Dunno why but they just have no drive.

I used to train them and other EEs.......to be honest those I met were no more workaholic than the British........there first question was "whats the minimum wage" that was followed by some calculations and a shocked look.......9 out of 10 never finished the courses.......I assume they were off to Lincolnshire picking fruit and veg