Northern Ireland

[nicontractor]

Hi Folks,

Anyone else here from Northern Ireland? Been here for a number of years now contracting, work has been thin on the ground but seem to get by until the end of last year.

Getting towards the end of the warchest now & work seeming to be thin on the ground, cant travel away due to family & would probably kill myself after a day in a permie gig. Plan B is but a twinkle...

Anyone else know how all these people get the cushty contracts here? I'd love to know....ideas?

[cojak]

The only contractor I know who lives near Belfast come over to London Mon-Fri.

[eek]

The only contractor I know who lives near Belfast come over to London Mon-Fri.

I spent a while looking at moving over there. Apart from Citibank and 1 other company (I can't remember) I didn't find any firms using contractors enough to make it worthwhile.

And those companies that are over there seem to pay peanuts for permanent staff. But I suppose if you can get them on a low salary and they stay why would you pay them more.

Good luck but unless you widen your locations I don't think things are going to improve in the near future.

[The_Equalizer]

Hi Folks,

Anyone else here from Northern Ireland? Been here for a number of years now contracting, work has been thin on the ground but seem to get by until the end of last year.

Getting towards the end of the warchest now & work seeming to be thin on the ground, cant travel away due to family & would probably kill myself after a day in a permie gig. Plan B is but a twinkle...

Anyone else know how all these people get the cushty contracts here? I'd love to know....ideas?

As pointed out already, there aren't a huge number of employers and a quite a number of well qualified workers. Basically Belfast is the size of a London Borough and Northern Ireland only has 1.6 million people, but has the best state education in the UK. To avoid big bench periods (for most skill-sets) you have to visit either London (shudder) or Dublin. In fact you could just about commute Dublin for a couple of days a week using the Enterprise and have a couple of nights down there. The train is surprisingly inexpensive considering it's a shade over a 100 miles between the two cities.

That said, I would have thought you could have got away with contracting it if you were a Java (or similar) for the last decade, but not too sure now as I've not looked in a while.