throwawaythrow1

IR35 is a ridiculous law.

"If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then we treat it like a duck."

I can walk and quack rather convincingly like a duck, but I'm not a duck and any casual observer would agree.

The metaphor provided puts the emphasis on the behaviour of the individual, whereas the behaviour of the hirer/employer is rarely considered... For example, can the contractor be promoted? Can they be given a disciplinary procedure with Union representation? If the contractor has an accident, does the insurance of the company pay for it or does the insurance of the contractor pay for it? Does the contractor have protections from bullying and discrimination?

As someone who lives in the UK, this is news to me. Can you substantiate this please?

Long time UK contractor/freelancer here, I've also done a lot of hiring in the UK.

The problem over the past few years has been IR35 which has effectively gutted/killed the UK contractor market (including lorry drivers and temp roles).

Because of this many companies will only take on contractors within scope of IR35 which drives down the day rate. So employers have found it easier to focus on permanent recruitment.

Your best bet is to look for contracts overseas, or just move out of the UK. I've had some success with braintrust (usebraintrust.com) but with US orgs

List your salary/renumeration/offer, or at least the range.

I have issues with some of the steps listed but by far my biggest issue is that companies don't list their offer. Which for potential candidates makes them wonder if it's even worth attempting to apply.

This is simply not true. One could naïvely say the same for ANY country where it has not been explored.

It can't be all rollercoasters and silicon geography everywhere all the time.

Anyway, the UK has some of the most dense proportion of pubs per capita in the world. (Since that appears to be a concern in your comments)

When people say that monopolies stifle innovation, this should surely be held up as the poster-child of that mantra.

Will this be a flash in the pan? Yes

Was this wasted money? Yes

Could, basically, any human have predicted this is a waste of money? Yes

Could the combined cognitive and monetary resources invested in this have been put to much better use elsewhere? Yes

Don't learn AWS this way, learn about general purpose components and networking and then, if you want, learn the AWS API, it is the ONLY part of AWS that matters.

And replace it with?

Perhaps we can create a system whereby one exchanges skills for products and services? But then how do we scale such a system... money might work, unless you're advocating for communism

There is no quick and easy solution to this. You just have to remember that the interruption is not aware of your state of mind, and also that a bad response (from you) will probably cause a greater degree of interruption.

So be kind, handle the interruption politely and happily, remind the interrupter that you're working and then take measures so that it is more difficult for you to be interrupted in the future.

Hi, I'm a real English person, from England (not from London) . I totally agree about all of this, and all of the sentiments expressed by Salvatore. We say that "English is easy to learn, but hard to master" and I often wonder how people in the world manage to learn it and speak with confidence when using it, they have my admiration and respect.

I have an opposite (but complimentary) perspective to Salvatore, since I spent a few years living in Europe as the only English person amongst my colleagues and friends.

At the start of this period, I quickly learned that no one could understand me. My pleasantries and greetings were met with confusion no matter how slowly I spoke, even to American colleagues. I realised that the English language I had learned was only applicable to the immediate area where I had grown up. This is true of most regions in the UK, you can travel 20 miles from any location on a map in Britain and find the local people speaking in different and sometimes incomprehensible dialects and accents, or using strange words to describe people (like "duckie" or "hen").

I quickly learned to modulate my accent, speak slower and more deliberately.

In later life I moved back to the area from where I grew up and, although people could easily understand me, they often asked me where I came from (since my modulated accent was unfamiliar to them).

Now I have "two modes", one is my incomprehensible native drawl, and the other is much easier to understand and clearer but requires me to concentrate much more.

The difference between these two modes (for me) is that it is much easier to be jovial and extroverted in my native drawl. Whereas I'm much more professional and uptight when using my modulated language, even in social settings.

I now grimace, and even translate, when English colleagues are speaking to non-native English speakers and make zero attempt to improve their use of the language. I wonder how they interact with people when on holiday, do they just shout louder and point at things? How embarrassing.

Amongst others, there's fine work being done at DVLA, DVSA, MOJ, DWP and Home Office Digital are in good shape too

That's the DWP, and they know about it and will eventually get to fixing it but it'll take a while

I think this is likely due to some kind of skewed market internally and probably that many countries hold US assets and debts that are being engineered in to a position of a new normal (or baseline). Real growth in the US is falling over time has been falling at least since the mid 80s. What irks me, is that with increased TSA, border, immigration, political, weather and gun control problems is why the US attracts anyone at all, or even foreign money. I have a hunch that by painting a positive picture in the media and misreporting or under reporting real situations leads to a perception that the US is a great place when looked at externally

Oh boy, I used to work at GDS and I met some people from HMRC about their Childcare voucher system thingy. And it used similar techniques to this, I raised it directly with them but they didn't think it was an issue, and my comments were drowned out by a talking shop of technocratic circle jerking.

It's interesting that no one here has yet mentioned the UK government system "Verify". Fundamentally there are different authentication mechanisms and idealogies at work, but it's the same UK CESG GPG implementation as Verify. I genuinely wonder if the US people understand the privacy implications of a central authenticating party as opposed to many federated ones?

I'm really surprised this hasn't hit the UK news, but the government department that regulates welfare (the DWP) just discovered a £350 Million deficit that is proactively not being acknowledged by the leadership team. Despite maybe 1000+ people losing their job. Granted, a lot of these job losses probably affect contractors and suppliers (IBM, Accenture, CapGemini) more than anyone. But the general perception is that the department is a sinking ship trying to shed weight as fast and as ruthlessly as possible. Many of these people were given only an hour or two notice.

They will no doubt get more money in April but many projects (100s) have been "paused" and I really doubt that the Subject Matter Experts will have the appetite to return to a department that screwed up their budget to such a huge degree.