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Dan Neely wrote: Did that company contract with an insurer that didn't have national partners or just not care enough to do the minimum legwork to offer one?
Both. 
Marc
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It's pretty much still the case.
But if you try to insist on your rights, they'll just hire someone else. And if you take them to court, you may never work in that field again.
I've been (mostly) a contractor since '98 and in most of those cases, I'm just a well paid temp rather than a true 'this is the spec, it pays $X/hr and we want it by date Y' contractor.
But a temp that pays their own tax and pension, and doesn't get to claim sick or holiday pay or any other benefits.
99% of what I do can be done anywhere where there is a desk and a good internet connection, but they like to be able to look over their fiefdom.
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Been there, done that ...
When I was last looking I had a chat with a friend who is a Management Consultant (no not that kind, one who actually gets positive results). She told me to research a few recruitment agencies and interview them before I let them have my details. However I only found one who I thought was really up to it, and they were moving out of IT; they told me. off the record, that there were too many time wasters in it, on both sides.
Veni, vidi, abiit domum
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Marc Clifton wrote: 1. Even when you check "remote work only" and "NO relocation", the phone rings off the hook with "can you relocate to Timbucktoo"
Same thing happened to me. Well, the positions were in the US, but all over the place and included JavaScript development, phone support, IT support and most recently a position for doing QA on car computer firmware (I had none of the required skills listed in my resume).
I actually still receive these mails even three months after taking down my resume. Who knows where that thing has been copied to. 
Marc Clifton wrote: 2. 98% of the calls are from job shops operated by [people from a different country, take a wild guess], God only knows where they're really calling from, with names like "Lucky", and mostly impossible to understand
I got these too and some of them wanted me to send them all kinds of personal information. I noticed that these recruiters would all call me up before sending an email - I hate that.
Don't get me wrong, I was contacted by good and honest recruiters, but it takes me some time figure out which category they fall into. The recruiter who got me my current job a few months ago was one of those and from the beginning had me matched up with two positions that were a good fit for me.
Soren Madsen
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SoMad wrote: Who knows where that thing has been copied to.
I only posted on Monster, but several of the recruiters saw my resume on Dice. Don't know if they share information or just are morons. I suspect the latter.
Marc
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I only posted on Dice, so I guess they work the same. My email address is not in my resume, so I think they must be sharing the information. Either that or they are constantly mining those sites and store resumes along with contact information for a rainy day.
Soren Madsen
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Marc Clifton wrote: 90K was barely acceptable
Wait a second... I initially read this as $90/hr. Are you actually considering a full-time job that pays $90K per year?
I understand you have to lower your price if you want to work from home, but based on your contributions here on CP (I haven't gone full cyber-stalking on you  ), I had mentally placed you in a completely different salary range. Something closer to 190K. Especially being on the East coast.
Soren Madsen
modified 20-Nov-13 16:38pm.
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SoMad wrote: Are you actually considering a full-time job that pays $90K per year?
No, not seriously, but given the ups and downs of the consulting business, at the moment it would actually be an improvement to my financial situation. Getting those $90 per hour jobs is easy enough to do if I want to sell my soul to the devil, namely the financial companies on Wall Street. Which I don't. Did that for 5 months a few years ago, and I would rather be banging out bad rhythms on cooking pots on a sidewalk with a tin box to collect quarters.
SoMad wrote: I had mentally placed you in a completely different salary range.
It varies all over the map. I had a lovely 3 years doing some work for a satellite manufacturer out in CA that was paying that, but then they got bought out, killed all inhouse development, and opted to spend a million or so on some third party commercial app that doesn't do half of what the engineers actually need. Managers 
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: I would rather be banging out bad rhythms on cooking pots on a sidewalk with a tin box to collect quarters.
Go for it!! Do what truly makes you happy!! 
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I make 45k in a Lead role on the east coast. West coast is where all the high salary gigs are. Though I am still making a startup salary.
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Yes, it's not really correct to divide that into East and West coast. In one of your posts, you said that you live in North Carolina. My old manager now lives and works in New York state and the general salary level is well above what it is here in San Diego where I live. Then again, the salary level is also higher up in the San Francisco area, so...
Soren Madsen
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I've never really understood programmer frustration with recruiters. I would never expect a stripper to teach Sunday school or a ![Sheep | [baah]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/sheep.gif) to design a Corvette, so I don't expect recruiters to be anything other than what they are - phone sales reps.
Having extensive experience teaching salespeople, I understand their thinking. Run the numbers, and x percent will turn into money. I approach my interactions with them in the same manner. The more recruiters, clueless or not, who have me on their list of people to ping, the greater my chances of bumping into what I want.
I get emails all the time from people asking for things that have never appeared on my resume. I don't reply and ask them if they've even read my resume. There's no benefit in that line of thinking. Instead, each time, I send them a nice two sentance email explaining that I'm currently unavailable and thanking them for thinking of me. When I am looking for a gig, you'd be surprised how many people remember me and try all the harder because I was nice to them. Reputation is a volume business, but it does pay off over time.
It's all a numbers game, on your side of the fence and theirs. The more contacts made, the greater the statistical probability of success. Getting frustrated with the quality of the numbers doesn't get you any closer to your destination. It just makes the ride more unpleasant.
I've never had much luck with monster, career builder or other general purpose sites. Dice has been useful, not so much as a source of jobs, but because I get more recruiters for my list. Rememeber, any time you're looking for gigs on a website, it's a race to the bottom. I'm surprised someone didn't ask you to work for 10k a year. Build yourself a good network of recruiters instead. You have to constantly stay on top of them to get results, but it's a better investment of your time than websites.
By the way, I know better than to poke you with a stick when you're cranky. Maybe I'll just back slowly to the exit now...
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Christopher Duncan wrote: I would never expect a stripper to teach Sunday school
Perhaps not, but imagine the :cough: rise :cough: in attendance if there was. Hell, even I would consider going.
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I'm not so sure. I'd have to sleep on it.
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Christopher Duncan wrote: I'll just back slowly to the exit now...
Wise choice, Christopher, and good advice, as always. As you say, recruiters can be made into allies if you handle them properly. It's in their best interest to land you a better job - actually, they don't give a damn if it's better, so long as you think it is - and the more of them you have working for you, the better the results are likely to be. Although they get paid by the hiring company, generally, it's perfectly okay and very useful to treat them as your own personal representatives. None of them work for just one client, so they're really kind of a supermarket of job opportunities. It pays to learn how to effectively cultivate and manage them.
Will Rogers never met me.
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Collect the whole set!
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Firstly, these people are in business to make money by filling the positions their contacts give them.
They aren't a charity, they aren't Father Christmas.
Having said which, ROR is a hot technology with a shortage of decent candidates. I wrote one commercial stock Ruby programme six years ago, and I get ROR calls because they are desperate.
Fact is, you need a job. You don't have a right to one, you don't have an entitlement. You have to take control of how you are marketing yourself.
As for the agencies, you have to show willing; one agency in 2006 in Leicester, 100 miles from where I lived, sent me on a couple of no-hope interviews.
They needed a candidate to show, any candidate, to keep the reputation of their agency for finding quality people, even though they might not be right.
In return for this, three agents at the agency adopted me. They were on my side because I was on theirs.
By the end, I was being flown out to interviews in Belfast and Amsterdam, expenses paid.
In the end I took a job with a world leading imaging company on the South Coast, living in a popular holiday resort with more pubs per capita than any town in England, warm climate, white sand beach and lots of social activities.(Team building was usually accompanied by the boss buying us lots of beer).
All because we invested in each other and had good agency relations.
Chin up!
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Maybe you should request to be hired by Monster so you can increase the font size of the no-relocation information.
Or a nice <marquee>. Those are so coming back.
I wonder about
Marc Clifton wrote: First off, as a contractor, it's my understanding that it is illegal to require on-site work unless it can be demonstrated that the work can only be done on-site.
and if there's a UK equivalent law. I'm assuming you're in the US from the thread.
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IANAL. It's not against the law for the company to require you to be on-site, but HMRC can say you're a hidden employee and make _you_ pay the full whack of PAYE tax on your earnings, plus any penalties.
That said, unless you're taking the piss, they generally don't hunt people down under IR35 anymore. Just pay yourself a living wage under PAYE and they'll be happy.
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SortaCore wrote: I'm assuming you're in the US from the thread.
Quite. Near Albany, NY here.[^]
SortaCore wrote: Maybe you should request to be hired by Monster so you can increase the font size of the no-relocation information.
I am half-seriously considering working this from the other direction and figuring out how a real job searching website would actually work, for both employers and people looking for employment.
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: figuring out how a real job searching website would actually work
Funny, as I was reading through this whole thread, the thing I kept thinking was "this sounds like a problem that needs to be solved".
Here's been my experience with Monster and all of them. My first job in college (fall 1999) was as a bus boy at a local Outback that I got by just going in and applying. Since then, I believe I've worked for 9 different employers, and every single one of them was through personal and/or professional contacts, including my first full-time gig out of college (CEO ate at the restaurant I was working at) and every one since. I've done the Monster thing and never once got a real offer/look/etc.
The simple fact is that employers want to hire people where someone in the org already knows the applicant. There's a lot less risk if someone you know is vouching for somebody. That is the problem that needs solving, and I think something like LinkedIn could do that, but it's just too douchey. As I heard on some TV show once, it just reeks of guys that wear their cellphones clipped to their belt.
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IndifferentDisdain wrote: That is the problem that needs solving, and I think something like LinkedIn could do that, but it's just too douchey.
Agreed. And certainly, all my contracts over the last 20 years have been through word of mouth, personal encounter (one was at a potluck dinner for a Quaker Intentional Community) or people calling because of my articles here on Code Project (2 clients).
Marc
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I gave up last week, took early retirement, and waved goodbye with one finger.
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1. + "I'm disgusted with this dehumanizing industry." == irony. Employers want you on site because being there in person allows the team to get to know you. You've been doing this 33 years and haven't figured that out? *You* are the one who doesn't want to be around other people while you work. Who's dehumanizing the industry here?
2. That's a little racist; though I find my self not returning calls to recruiters that I can't understand. The US is the melting pot, people have accents. You should get over it. :P
3. Because the people with Ruby on Rails experience are rarer than those with .NET experience... simple supply and demand here...
4. I make 45k as a Lead Android developer so I don't really want to hear your complaints on 75k/90k. That number also means different things in different parts of the country. EX. 75k in sanfrancisco would be practically unlivable. Here in North Carolina, it would be a decent salary.
Last. Don't use Monster if you want an IT job. Use Dice. (Or craigslist if you want a startup but from the looks of things, you probably couldn't handle a startup salary.)
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Stephen Dycus wrote: Employers want you on site because being there in person allows the team to get to know you. You've been doing this 33 years and haven't figured that out? *You* are the one who doesn't want to be around other people while you work. Who's dehumanizing the industry here?
Of course. And the irony is that I get put into a cubicle with three other people, each from a different nationality, we never talked, English wasn't a particular strong suit for them. The concept of "getting to know the team" is a crock of sh*t in the majority of cases because the company does nothing to foster this.
Stephen Dycus wrote: That's a little racist;
No, it's a stereotype, and it's unfortunate that these people can be "typed" so easily in this way. If you want to call it racist, then I'm OK with that too, quite frankly. This watered-down politically correct BS we have to live with today simply means that people can't say what they really think, which means we don't actually resolve conflicts, instead we just internalize them.
Stephen Dycus wrote: Here in North Carolina, it would be a decent salary.
Absolutely, and I do take that into account.
Stephen Dycus wrote: Don't use Monster if you want an IT job. Use Dice.
Will do, thanks for the advice. I'm also looking at The Ladders.
Marc
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