Hi monkMAC,

I do indeed know the feeling: I just graduated (Master's in Chemistry) and am looking for a six-month contract job (I have a permanent job which starts in March 2003.) This is proving to be an immensely hard and trying process. Indeed I have resorted to the hideously unethical practice of applying for permanent jobs and not telling that I will be leaving in six months (something which does not sit well with my sense of ethics, but I am having little choice. OTOH, if I wasn't cutting the mustard or times were hared ,they'd get rid of me in a second so you pays your money and you takes your choice.)

It has reached the point that I have essentially decided that I am not going to find a job in IT for the next half year and have started applying for lab jobs as well. OK, I am not the world's best or most experienced programmer but I have over six months experience in internships and am comfortable with HTML, MySQL, Perl, PHP, VB, VBScript and JavaScript plus I am teaching myself C/C++ at the moment (slowly as I can't afford to buy the manuals at £30 a time so online tutorials are having to do.) All this on windows and *NIX platforms (although they all seem to want ASP monkeys over here at the moment.)

The market sucks badly at the moment and we allegedl have a 'skills shortage' in the UK, which increasingly means to me that they just want to pay programmers less.

"Rule #17 of Travel: Never try and score dope off Hassidic Jews while under the impression that they are Rastafarians."
       - Pete McCarthy, McCarthy's Bar