I've just got back to Sydney after two months away. I've talked to a couple of places about new SharePoint contracts - I'm not looking for that sort of thing actively, but I'm open to the right offer.

What I notice has changed since last year is that going through the standard channels everybody assumes I must be desperate for work, and therefore willing to drop my rate significantly. I'm not of course - I've been planning my exit from full time contracting for a while, so I'm set up with both other clients and some of my own projects. If I was actually in urgent need of a job I'd have one within a few hours, same as the last couple of times.

I can see some unintended consequences coming out of this - in particular, if you only make offers matched to people with no choice but to accept, that's what you'll get - the ones without the skills to do better elsewhere. That's the sort of thing that leads to consultants like myself being brought in later to fix things, so it's all good.