As you might already know, in Switzerland, we're holding the Year of IT, with an IT-fair Informatica 08 held by major Swiss IT players like Google, Credit Suisse and others.
This is really cool and for me as an IT guy, being really glad that I chose to work in IT (there ARE a lot of downsides too, but you often get to see many interesting things thanks to IT), but it seems that the whole event has been set up mainly to attract to IT people and give them the impression of being a particularly good employer.
And particularly now, one major bank that co-sponsored this whole event dictates (again) freelancer salaries by advising all agencies that bring in IT-freelancers. The company requires those agencies to reduce agreed hourly rate by about 8%. This after this bank has, together with another major bank, dictated hour-salaries in the past. Even worse, currently employed freelancers were forced to accept a lower salary or leave with short notice.
In this sense, I say thanks to that company for organizing such an Event that should improve the reputation of IT (it's being thought as boring, corny and stressful). But to me this company rather seems to piggyback, hoping to attract some more of those rare IT people ( I wonder how they communicate those even lower salaries to them..) Are they really that rude ? (erm, yes, they are.. that's how things work). It's just always again difficult to see such little morale and ethics.
Anyway, I've worked 14 months for that company, and ever since try to avoid them (successfully so far :-) )
Good IT-Year !!
Denis
