Actually contractors are worth 8 grand a month. And so are many permanent staff.
£400 a day is a decent rate for an IT contractor. A permie with a similar skill level would probably earn around £40Kpa, possibly more. Given 5 weeks paid holiday (that's 10% of the working year, remember - worth about £4K), sick pay (assume another week or two), decent company pension contributions and employer national insurance payments (at 13% that costs the employer over £5K for this example), plus all the other perks, bonuses and other direct and indirect costs , the actual expense to the employer is much more than £40K. My manager at a FTSE100 company I recently worked at said the cost to an employer is, as a crude calculation, double the salary paid to the employee. £80K is £6.5K per month.
Contractors are still more expensive, yes, but for the extra £1.5K per month the company gets flexibility in their workforce and the benefit of no commitment to the individual, as BT are demonstrating here. The contractors get to trouser a big chunk of what would normally be the employer's employment expenses themselves, and if they chose not to take a holiday or work through sickness to ensure they take the money, that's their business.
The Shuttle can come down in loads of places if it has to. There are options all over the planet. (Google will reveal the full list.) I remember driving past an Australian Airforce base in the Northern Territory and noting the runway seemed to go on forever. A local later told me NASA had paid to have the runway extended way out into the outback to provide another emergency facility.
In the early days these were innovative little machines. Now, the guy who said they're just underpowered laptops is spot on. No solid state drive, no Linux option, no sub-1Kg weight and no low price.
How sad to see even the company who defined the new market to lose courage and go back to just churning out the same old stuff.
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3 posts • joined Tuesday 19th May 2009 15:56 GMT
8 grand a month?
Actually contractors are worth 8 grand a month. And so are many permanent staff.
£400 a day is a decent rate for an IT contractor. A permie with a similar skill level would probably earn around £40Kpa, possibly more. Given 5 weeks paid holiday (that's 10% of the working year, remember - worth about £4K), sick pay (assume another week or two), decent company pension contributions and employer national insurance payments (at 13% that costs the employer over £5K for this example), plus all the other perks, bonuses and other direct and indirect costs , the actual expense to the employer is much more than £40K. My manager at a FTSE100 company I recently worked at said the cost to an employer is, as a crude calculation, double the salary paid to the employee. £80K is £6.5K per month.
Contractors are still more expensive, yes, but for the extra £1.5K per month the company gets flexibility in their workforce and the benefit of no commitment to the individual, as BT are demonstrating here. The contractors get to trouser a big chunk of what would normally be the employer's employment expenses themselves, and if they chose not to take a holiday or work through sickness to ensure they take the money, that's their business.
Lots of places, in an emergency
The Shuttle can come down in loads of places if it has to. There are options all over the planet. (Google will reveal the full list.) I remember driving past an Australian Airforce base in the Northern Territory and noting the runway seemed to go on forever. A local later told me NASA had paid to have the runway extended way out into the outback to provide another emergency facility.
The USP is fading away
In the early days these were innovative little machines. Now, the guy who said they're just underpowered laptops is spot on. No solid state drive, no Linux option, no sub-1Kg weight and no low price.
How sad to see even the company who defined the new market to lose courage and go back to just churning out the same old stuff.