[ragmondo]

"because it is a seller's market." ... sorry as a contractor who has been in the industry for 20 (!) years now I can guarantee you it is definitely not a seller's market. It is very very much a buyers market. It was bad in 1998 (around that time?) before the Euro kickstarted the industry, bad again in 2007 (I think) but this downturn has been the worst yet. I am slightly exposed to the IT / finance industry but as a general rule it is quite closely correlated to IT in general.

[mootothemax]

sorry as a contractor who has been in the industry for 20 (!) years now I can guarantee you it is definitely not a seller's market. It is very very much a buyers market.

Could you clarify this a bit further? My one-man web dev consultancy (specializing in PHP at that!) is continually on the up. I know that we're not the most expensive out there, but we're certainly towards the top. So is it that top-tier which is suffering right now, or the financial IT market, or both?

[ragmondo]

I can only talk for financial IT and I can tell you it's suffering. Budgets cut (or just not increasing) on any "interesting" projects, double dip recession (yawn) and the fact that a lot of companies are trying to hide their disastrous attempts at outsourcing / offshoring over the last 10 years (as in "Look how much money we've saved by not having local contractors now give me a bonus" and not "Holy Cow nothing gets done here anymore by that clueless consultancy I hope no one notices").

If you are doing great guns on your web dev consultancy then I am happy for you - keep it up - I'm jealous !

[Spooky23]

You're not dealing with big corporates or government. If you are, you're not doing so in a way that the budget weenies notice you.

Big orgs are consolidating, and part of that consolidation is cutting off the ability of "rogue" business units to contract with any vendor who isn't on a select list. (And the vendors on the select list are under orders to rat out rogue initiatives to corporate HQ)

Survival for small business folks stuck in this world is becoming a "partner" for IBM, Cisco/EMC/VMWare, Microsoft, HP, Deloitte, etc.

[tptacek]

This may be the case in financial IT, (our billings from financial clients aren't suffering) but it doesn't appear to be the case anywhere else. Generic IT is pretty far down the food chain; if your business is suffering and you're a general IT consultant, I'd consider specializing your way out of that area.