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Shortage of IT staff?

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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,056 ✭✭✭✭BostonB


    Not everyone can up and leave like that. Well not without considerable hardship if they have dependants young or old.

    I think the idea of a IT shortage is very being very selective with the truth.

    Most employers are cherry picking the best and won't train up people from junior roles. They take on contractors, or only the top end people. If they continue to do that AND open the flood gates it will close the doors for anyone not at that level. People at the low end will leave the industry (or be squeezed completely out of it) and eventually the companies will leave and go to other countries for staff as they will have overfished the skills pool here without repopulating it at the bottom.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,268 ✭✭✭✭ Fiona Cuddly Toothpick


    Irishwolff wrote: »
    I did 3 jobbridge internships interviews in Dublin recently for sw dev positions. I got rejected in 2 but accepted in one so I will start soon. It also will be easier for me to travel to interviews since I will be living in Dublin. I will be living on a budget, 238 per week, so I will have to spend my money wisely as I sure wont be making a profit if anything probably losing money. I will have to pay for rent, bills, food etc. The chances of me been kept on at the end of the internship are slim but I am going because I dont like being at home and doing nothing. I dont know if any of you have been on the dole but it is very tedious, boring, job rejections, social pressure to get a job etc. Then flicking on the news and seeing, not enough IT workers?! lets do conversion courses for people in other deciplines so that we can fill the gap", and I have a degree in sw dev and cant believe that I cant get a job so sometimes end up thinking that there is something wrong with me, am I the only one who cant get a job.

    So in a way I am glad to start the jobbridge job because it will get me in a working routine again. I feel the last 8 months have been a waste because I could of been working, if only some company gave me a chance.

    How companies decide about jobbridge applicants is beyond me.
    I had an interview for an online marketing company who used AWS to host their surveys.
    Everything was going grand until the IT manager asked about my course in Cloud Computing which was what they used.
    As soon as he heard it was 2 late nights a week (10.30) in class, the course suddenly became a problem for them.
    I can only assume he was thinking deadlines and working late to meet them.
    Needless to say I didn't get it and didn't want it. Working for free to get experience is one thing, and is something I'm willing to do. Working overtime for free is exploitation.


  • Registered Users Posts: 170 ✭✭Caseywhale


    BostonB wrote: »
    Not everyone can up and leave like that. Well not without considerable hardship if they have dependants young or old.

    I think the idea of a IT shortage is very being very selective with the truth.

    Most employers are cherry picking the best and won't train up people from junior roles. They take on contractors, or only the top end people. If they continue to do that AND open the flood gates it will close the doors for anyone not at that level. People at the low end will leave the industry (or be squeezed completely out of it) and eventually the companies will leave and go to other countries for staff as they will have overfished the skills pool here without repopulating it at the bottom.

    Well if you are here and not working it makes sense to fly over (expensable) to the uk and back home at the weekend for the money on offer over there.
    A lot of the time when I decide im finished a contract they ask me to stay. I then say no, i have to go home and 9 times out of 10 they ask me to work from home in Ireland for the same rate and fly over once a month.
    Get your first 6 month contract and thats probably what will happen.

    There is no shortage of people to do IT jobs here if the companies pay them properly. The government and companies are making it up so they can bring in cheap labor from abroad and drive down wages even more.


  • Registered Users Posts: 170 ✭✭Caseywhale


    How companies decide about jobbridge applicants is beyond me.
    I had an interview for an online marketing company who used AWS to host their surveys.
    Everything was going grand until the IT manager asked about my course in Cloud Computing which was what they used.
    As soon as he heard it was 2 late nights a week (10.30) in class, the course suddenly became a problem for them.
    I can only assume he was thinking deadlines and working late to meet them.
    Needless to say I didn't get it and didn't want it. Working for free to get experience is one thing, and is something I'm willing to do. Working overtime for free is exploitation.

    Go to the UK. www.jobserve.co.uk
    You wont regret it. Work for nothing here or get experience and good money in the UK. Easy choice i think. If you are a grad in Ireland, get the lube out.

    Also if anyone has problems about having to work extra hours without being paid for them, contracting is great. BEcause you bill for the extra hours. So either you are happy because you get paid or the company asks you not to work late because they dont want to pay you for them. Win/win. With permanent jobs the company think they own you.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,056 ✭✭✭✭BostonB


    Can't argue with that Caseywhale. I was thinking from the point of view of someone working tbh. Wasn't think it through fully.

    tatranska I hear you! Asking the hours worked is always a good one for finding out who expects excessive and/or free overtime. Its not unusual for a company to say one thing in the interview and the reality to be very different.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,268 ✭✭✭✭ Fiona Cuddly Toothpick


    Caseywhale wrote: »
    Go to the UK. www.jobserve.co.uk
    You wont regret it. Work for nothing here or get experience and good money in the UK. Easy choice i think. If you are a grad in Ireland, get the lube out.

    Very easy to go abroad if you don't have a wife and young family.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,298 ✭✭✭Duggys Housemate


    But he was talking about graduates.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,268 ✭✭✭✭ Fiona Cuddly Toothpick


    But he was talking about graduates.


    Not all graduates are 21.:eek:

    I retrained after over 20 years in transport and 2 redundancies in 5 years and in my 40's.
    Did a H.Dip last year and doing a Post Grad now.


  • Registered Users Posts: 40,055 ✭✭✭✭Sparks


    Irishwolff wrote: »
    So in a way I am glad to start the jobbridge job because it will get me in a working routine again.
    The problem with jobbridge is that:
    • it's bad for you (because you're not being paid a fair wage),
    • it's bad for everyone else (because it depresses the market rates for wages artificially - avoiding a boom is one thing, slave wages is another),
    • and it's bad for the actual IT sector itself in the long run (because if I'm a smart kid choosing college courses and career paths, I am not going to chose a STEM role if the paycheck means I have to live in hand-to-mouth penury forever).
    We actually have a rule against advertising jobs like that in the situations vacant thread in here for those reasons (and for advertising jobs with ridiculously low wages for ridiculously high skillset demands, like, say, web companies looking to pay €27k for senior developers with a decade's experience and competency at all levels of the LAMP stack and sysadmin abilities). Not that lack of access to that thread will fix the problem, you understand. But it's hard to understate how destructive jobbridge will be to our industry (and then our economy as a whole) if it keeps going like this. This nonsense about how we need to get into a race to the bottom with wages is going to be enormously harmful to any kind of long-term future for the IT sector in Ireland, let alone an economic recovery.

    The thing is, it's not even about the money for the sake of avarice. Once you can pay the bills - and I'm including things like health insurance and pensions in "bills" because the point of working at all is to have a basic standard of living, and to my mind that includes things like not having to die because you got sick and had no money, or having to subsist off the state when you retire because you couldn't afford to pay a penny into a pension scheme - money stops being about paying for things and starts being a communications channel. It gives information about the role and how the role is viewed by the company. Is it a junior role or a senior one? Is it spec’d as a senior role but with junior pay? Is it at or above the market average? Is it a set figure or a range of figures, and if so, how wide is the range? All of this gives you a feel for how the job will treat you – which is information that won’t be quite so easy to get during the interview.


  • Registered Users Posts: 170 ✭✭Caseywhale


    Caseywhale wrote: »
    Go to the UK. www.jobserve.co.uk
    You wont regret it. Work for nothing here or get experience and good money in the UK. Easy choice i think. If you are a grad in Ireland, get the lube out.

    Very easy to go abroad if you don't have a wife and young family.

    I wouldn't say this is for grads only.
    There is a huge difference between what you make in the uk and Ireland in any it job.

    I do have a wife and young family. I find it very easy. I go to the uk on Sunday night and come back Friday afternoon. I can work more during the week and take a half
    Day Friday. You can do this for 6 months. Make 1 or 2 years Irish salary in that 6 months and take 6 months off when you come home to spend with the family.
    Most of the time after 6 months you can make a deal with the company and work in Ireland for uk rates after the initial 6 months is up. Sometimes even 3 months.
    It's either take the lube in Ireland or do something about it for yourself. Sometimes it's hard to get yourself out of a comfort zone to make a change to your life.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 869 ✭✭✭moycullen14


    Irishwolff wrote: »
    I apllied for a job at Sean O Sullivans company but was told that they dont take graduates because they said the graduates would only stay for a year or 2 and then leave. So for his own company not to have a graduate programme says a lot about his philosophy.

    Jeez, that's appalling. If they said they need people with more experience because they have to work with minimal or no supervision then that would be something but to say 'We don't want graduates because they'll leave' says a lot about the company and the philosophy therein. If the graduates leave after two years it's because there are better opportunities elsewhere. That's the companies problem, not the graduates.


  • Registered Users Posts: 869 ✭✭✭moycullen14


    Caseywhale wrote: »
    I wouldn't say this is for grads only.
    There is a huge difference between what you make in the uk and Ireland in any it job.

    I do have a wife and young family. I find it very easy. I go to the uk on Sunday night and come back Friday afternoon. I can work more during the week and take a half
    Day Friday. You can do this for 6 months. Make 1 or 2 years Irish salary in that 6 months and take 6 months off when you come home to spend with the family.
    Most of the time after 6 months you can make a deal with the company and work in Ireland for uk rates after the initial 6 months is up. Sometimes even 3 months.
    It's either take the lube in Ireland or do something about it for yourself. Sometimes it's hard to get yourself out of a comfort zone to make a change to your life.

    What your speciality? I did exactly the with much the same results during the DotCom boom about 10-12 years ago. The key to being able to dictate terms and conditions (much more important than pay, IMO) is to have a skills that are in demand. The longer term problem with a career in IT is that experience is not seen to be cumulative. A 40 year old does not have 20 years of experience, he has 10 sets of 2 years experience. Technology changes, more importantly, demand for technology changes. This means that a lot of your skills become redundant in the market very quickly.

    I'm interested to see if your experience that working in the UK is better than Ireland is shared by others?


  • Registered Users Posts: 13,104 ✭✭✭✭djpbarry


    Caseywhale wrote: »
    I wouldn't say this is for grads only.
    There is a huge difference between what you make in the uk and Ireland in any it job.
    Funny. I know people based in the UK who contract in Ireland.

    And there’s absolutely no way a graduate with no experience is going to make massive money doing contract work in the UK. An entry-level position for a graduate developer will pay maybe £25-30k in London.


  • Registered Users Posts: 7,157 ✭✭✭srsly78


    London does pay slightly better than Dublin and the rest of UK, aside from that not much difference. Rent in London more than cancels any advantage out :(


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,056 ✭✭✭✭BostonB


    ... The longer term problem with a career in IT is that experience is not seen to be cumulative. A 40 year old does not have 20 years of experience, he has 10 sets of 2 years experience. Technology changes, more importantly, demand for technology changes. This means that a lot of your skills become redundant in the market very quickly...

    Very true. However there are non technical soft skills that you get with working in IT for a long time. I certainly got contracts where that kind of experience was as important, if not more important than to the client. But to get good rates, you need the skillset thats in demand.


  • Registered Users Posts: 869 ✭✭✭moycullen14


    BostonB wrote: »
    Very true. However there are non technical soft skills that you get with working in IT for a long time. I certainly got contracts where that kind of experience was as important, if not more important than to the client. But to get good rates, you need the skillset thats in demand.
    Not saying that these things are unimportant, just that the market doesn't value them.

    Experience & perspective are really valuable and only come with time. With a good grounding in and experience of the basics of software design & implementation, picking up most modern web technologies should be very easy. What is not so easy is determining how well someone will react working on - or even how would you recognise - a failing project, how they deal with unreasonable - or just plain wrong - requests. How you cope with a colleague who can't write code, etc, etc.

    Never in all my years has anyone asked me these questions in an interview. They seem far more concerned about fast sorting algorithms and how may grains of rice can fit in a cup (2,456 if you're interested).


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,645 ✭✭✭k.p.h


    Not saying that these things are unimportant, just that the market doesn't value them.

    Experience & perspective are really valuable and only come with time. With a good grounding in and experience of the basics of software design & implementation, picking up most modern web technologies should be very easy. What is not so easy is determining how well someone will react working on - or even how would you recognise - a failing project, how they deal with unreasonable - or just plain wrong - requests. How you cope with a colleague who can't write code, etc, etc.

    Never in all my years has anyone asked me these questions in an interview. They seem far more concerned about fast sorting algorithms and how may grains of rice can fit in a cup (2,456 if you're interested).

    This particular I would find quite unnerving, sure the money and the all the different aspects of getting a job and accumulating experience are important but one of the main motivational factors for me perusing a career in the industry is avoiding this type of random business/HR/whatever babble like above.

    I just presumed that in a technical industry you would get hired/fired and paid according to your technical ability.. Nothing else..

    I suppose I was completely ignoring the many different market factors but all the same if I was getting asked dumb unrelated questions in an interview warning flags would be set.


  • Registered Users Posts: 40,055 ✭✭✭✭Sparks


    k.p.h wrote: »
    I just presumed that in a technical industry you would get hired/fired and paid according to your technical ability.. Nothing else..
    Aside from the niggly question of how you would judge that technical ability, there is the point that most hiring decisions are not made by engineers, but by managers and HR, who may have no detailed understanding of the technical challanges of the job or the abilities of the employees. At which point your pay becomes a function of unrelated things, from the odd-but-verified-by-studies (eg. your gender, your looks, your hair, your height and so on), to the mundane (eg. your ability to negotiate, how desperate the company is to fill the vacancy, and so on).

    There is also the point that technical ability might not be the best metric for deciding on pay; eg. is the genius engineer worth more than the junior developer who came up with the idea that earned the company 10% of its net profits this year?

    Basicly, no, in a technical industry your pay is not determined by a simple algorithm, and there's reasonable arguments that it should not be...


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,144 ✭✭✭dazberry


    The key to being able to dictate terms and conditions (much more important than pay, IMO) is to have a skills that are in demand. The longer term problem with a career in IT is that experience is not seen to be cumulative. A 40 year old does not have 20 years of experience, he has 10 sets of 2 years experience. Technology changes, more importantly, demand for technology changes. This means that a lot of your skills become redundant in the market very quickly.

    In 2005 I tried to move over to c# dotnet development (did the FAS sponsored MCPD training, ate, drink and slept the stuff) - but 9 to 5 was using a 2002 version of a 90s RAD tool which jobs wise had pretty much ran out of steam, any c# was outsourced, regardless of the crap that frequently came back.

    In this old RAD tool I constructed the application framework, using techniques like dependency injection, wrote a persistence layer and ORM framework, made extensive use of RTTI (aka reflection) by the controller to bind the model to the view, used design patterns etc., all of which would have been generally uncommon in the tool-stack as by default it promoted a component based approach to development.

    Regardless, it all stood for nothing, my experience (since 1994 commercially, was cutting 8 bit code in the 80s) stood for nothing, the 9 to 5 RAD tool stood for nothing, my out of hours c# stood for nothing. The last 3 1/2 years in the place was on a Londonesque :D rate (in Dublin), but was otherwise effectively unemployable. I can't tell you the number of times I was told to my face I had NO EXPERIENCE. There were times I offered to work for nothing, but I won't recant any specific experiences or name any companies as I'll just end up ranting...

    In 2011 almost 6 years later, I managed to get a C# contract. I love cutting code and being part of the process, it's the best job in the world, but I f**king hate this industry...

    D.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 19,777 ✭✭✭✭The Corinthian


    k.p.h wrote: »
    Dose the IT industry have any unions ..?
    I made an attempt to start one, more correctly an association, about 10 years ago. There was some interest, but in the end this actually came more from SME owners who were more interested in setting up in something more akin to a business association, rather than a professional one for those who work in IT.

    During the dotcom, and other booms, there has been little appetite for such an organization. When you can literally double your salary every six months consistently for two years (alas, that was the dotcom), unions are not a priority. Meanwhile, during the lean times, you're not going to have much success setting one up - most are too busy keeping their heads down, avoiding the next round of 'reorganization'.

    IT is unfortunately plagued by a very short term mindset. It's understandable, as many of the technology skills you have today will be useless in a decade, and odds are that the SME that you're working for today won't be around in five years time. However, it's also led a lot of people in the IT sector to make choices based upon the short, rather than the longer term.
    One major factor I've seen for the reason so many IT people company hop is down to very poor management in the IT function itself.
    I don't know if that is completely true. Poor management is certainly a factor, but so is the fear of your skill set becoming stale and, of course, money. Even in recessions, it has never ceased to amaze me the sheer size of salary increases that one can get for moving jobs.

    Again, much of it is as a result of short term thinking.
    BostonB wrote: »
    Out of curiosity what % would have this?
    A lot more than you would think.

    It's not simply blogging, mind you; many get deep into open source projects, or their own software (mobile apps being a case in point). Others, such as myself, will end up writing for developer journals or books (both print and, increasingly, online).

    Certainly if I were to think of ten developers who have been in the business for longer than seven years or so, I think perhaps only two are not 'moonlighting' in this fashion.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 40,055 ✭✭✭✭Sparks


    Caseywhale wrote: »
    I do have a wife and young family. I find it very easy. I go to the uk on Sunday night and come back Friday afternoon.
    My father did that when I was young, and speaking from the other side of the line, "very easy" is not how I would describe that process even in the gentlest of lights. I'm not saying it scars children for life, but I will say I wouldn't do it myself if there was any other choice available. Even if I only had to do it for six months at a stretch, well, six months is a long time with young families.


  • Registered Users Posts: 170 ✭✭Caseywhale


    Sparks wrote: »
    Caseywhale wrote: »
    I do have a wife and young family. I find it very easy. I go to the uk on Sunday night and come back Friday afternoon.
    My father did that when I was young, and speaking from the other side of the line, "very easy" is not how I would describe that process even in the gentlest of lights. I'm not saying it scars children for life, but I will say I wouldn't do it myself if there was any other choice available. Even if I only had to do it for six months at a stretch, well, six months is a long time with young families.


    My dad used to do it too. But instead of being away 4 nights a week he was away 6 months at a time without a visit home.
    If u work in the uk you only need to take 4 nights away every week. And these days video conferencing is simple.

    The 6 months I take off is far far more valuable to me though. But the contract work enables this.

    it's not for everyone. Just putting some option out there for people who want to be paid what they are worth. And If I was a grad I would certainly be looking for perm paid work in the uk instead of being raped here.


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,246 ✭✭✭conor.hogan.2


    What is the going graduate rate in the UK? Also you have to factor in moving/uprooting expenses etc

    Some companies pay quite well in Ireland btw.


  • Registered Users Posts: 13,104 ✭✭✭✭djpbarry


    Caseywhale wrote: »
    And If I was a grad I would certainly be looking for perm paid work in the uk instead of being raped here.
    I'd love to know this magical UK location that pays graduates multiples of what they'd earn in Ireland? Because from where I'm sitting, entry-level salaries in Dublin are very competitive with London, especially when you compare net salaries rather than gross.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 19,777 ✭✭✭✭The Corinthian


    djpbarry wrote: »
    I'd love to know this magical UK location that pays graduates multiples of what they'd earn in Ireland? Because from where I'm sitting, entry-level salaries in Dublin are very competitive with London, especially when you compare net salaries rather than gross.
    If you take the cost of living, in particular somewhere like London, into account, there really is not a lot of difference between the UK and Ireland where it comes to permanent salaries.

    Contract and consultancy rates certainly were much higher, but I can't say how they compare now, not having worked in either for a few years.


  • Registered Users Posts: 20 mathperson


    So what's the deal with IT development jobs in Ireland then? What I seem to be picking up from the thread is that it's quite hard to a job in the first place, then when you do the wages are pretty crap, and as technology is fast moving your skills have a limited lifespan so there is not much in the way of progression up a ladder to better wages.

    So is the case that there is basically feck all cash to be made in IT?


  • Registered Users Posts: 13,104 ✭✭✭✭djpbarry


    mathperson wrote: »
    What I seem to be picking up from the thread is that it's quite hard to a job in the first place, then when you do the wages are pretty crap, and as technology is fast moving your skills have a limited lifespan so there is not much in the way of progression up a ladder to better wages.
    It's not necessarily difficult to find a job - it's pretty easy if you have the right skills. And, it can pay very well. The problem is the last part - what's in demand changes all the funking time. People invent new programming languages (for example) every other day and what's in vogue changes with the weather. It's pretty difficult to keep up, but of course what the higher-ups often don't understand is that an ability to programme well transcends individual languages.


  • Registered Users Posts: 40,055 ✭✭✭✭Sparks


    djpbarry wrote: »
    The problem is the last part - what's in demand changes all the funking time.
    To be honest, I don't think that applies to the whole IT sector in Ireland. The web startups certainly change like things were going out of fashion, but the codebase I'm working on is older than most of today's graduates. C and C++ aren't timeless, but they're fairly close for our purposes. You might not get the "sexy" jobs, I'll grant you...


  • Registered Users Posts: 13,104 ✭✭✭✭djpbarry


    Sparks wrote: »
    To be honest, I don't think that applies to the whole IT sector in Ireland. The web startups certainly change like things were going out of fashion, but the codebase I'm working on is older than most of today's graduates. C and C++ aren't timeless, but they're fairly close for our purposes. You might not get the "sexy" jobs, I'll grant you...
    Fair point - C is certainly going to be usable for the foreseeable future. I suppose I should clarify that I'm speaking largely from personal experience and I work on the fringes of software development in academia, so things are almost certainly a little different to elsewhere. A lot of what I (think I) know about the industry trends is based on what I read in the likes of IEEE Spectrum and Computer, which are a bit US-centric.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 40,055 ✭✭✭✭Sparks


    That's rather a specialised niche djp (and I say that from having spent time there) :D
    The bulk of the work in the sector though (and note that I'm not saying "in the real world" because having been here and having been in academia, that phrase has become a hollow joke), tends to be on legacy code. It's not sexy, but it's stable and it pays bills (which is important enough :D ) and on top of that, working with legacy code is a fairly vital skill. Being able to mash up a web app using dojo is cool, but the nuclear power plant's controllers don't run a LAMP stack :D


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