UK tech job openings climb 21% to pre-pandemic highs UK tech vacancies are up by 21 percent to hit their highest levels since before the pandemic, according to research from Accenture. ... regions outside of London will also need to compete for talent and infrastructure The global consultancy found a surge in demand for AI skills, which increased nearly 200 percent in a year …
Consultancies are often framed as enablers of innovation and expertise, but in reality, they operate as parasitic intermediaries - extracting value from skilled labour while insulating themselves from risk and responsibility. These firms don't build intellectual property, they rent other people's time and ideas, then sell them at a markup.
IR35 enforcement aligned neatly with the interests of consultancy lobbyists. By choking the independent market, the government created a captive talent pool for large firms. Workers who might have built viable small businesses were herded into inside-IR35 contracts or umbrella schemes - or pushed back into employment within the very consultancies lobbying for the change.
In practice, consultancies skim a substantial portion of the value their staff create, often without reinvesting in that workforce. Employees are billed out at 2–5x their salary, while the surplus is channelled into profit, executive bonuses, and - all too often - tax-efficient corporate structures that minimise domestic contributions.
These firms claim to be centres of expertise. But strip away the branding, and many are little more than resellers of talent - profiting from the constraints placed on others' ability to operate independently.
For skilled workers, especially in tech, joining a consultancy means surrendering control over your time, your value, and often your IP - all while feeding a machine designed to profit from your disposability.
Don’t call it a career path. It’s an extraction model.
Yup, recently completed a PhD. If the large firms were the so called "centres of expertise" I would have seen them more on campus during my PhD, collaborating with researchers, bringing their partners over to chat and hand out business cards to students rather some recent graduate to talk to students about their "grad scheme experience". Instead they appear insular and closed off. Not sure it's exactly great work experience for professional development, seems to more just serve as a badge to add to your CV.
If they aren't even willing to work with the government to collaborate on R&D, employing people and getting people's foot in the door why should they be winning contracts at the expense of smaller local independent firms. All they offer is a closed-off insular talent pool with mostly low wages while siphoning away profits to executives and shareholders.
But according to the Guardian, "English-speaking countries more nervous about rise of AI, polls suggest"
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/05/english-speaking-countries-more-nervous-about-rise-of-ai-polls-suggest
No one trusts these industry and consulting reports anymore. Just wait for another round of layoffs if you make it through the interviews. Most of the people creating them don't have any experience or education in tech.
They have degrees in finance, economics or business management and don't have to deal with the realities people actually doing the work have to deal with and probably get paid more for easier work and less unpaid involuntary study for endless certs/new tech stacks or flimsy github portfolios.
They aren't dealing with complex multi-round interview requirements, leetcode, hundreds of applicants, 50 years experience, demand you know every weird and wonderful tech stack under the sun.
Meanwhile they have their mates in the c-suite on-call for the next role anytime.
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