Is this developer job asking too much for €30k PA ?

Páid · 24-04-2014 3:00pm #1

http://www.nli.ie/en/udlist/current-opportunities.aspx?article=113b8167-cf16-4565-8b41-c2839d186ede

Mandatory:
• Degree in Computer Science, Software Development or equivalent
• Demonstrated ability to develop new programming skills, and to grasp unfamiliar architectures and application designs quickly.
• Working knowledge of object oriented programming concepts and experience developing with one or more of the following languages: Ruby, PHP, Java, C#
• Experience developing applications using MVC web frameworks (e.g. Ruby on Rails, Zend 2)
• Experience developing engaging, responsive web interfaces using JavaScript and CSS frameworks (e.g. jQuery, Twitter Bootstrap, Blueprint, HTML5)
• Working knowledge of relational database design and management including experience with one of the following: SQL Server, Oracle, or MySQL.
• Demonstrated proficiency with team collaboration tools (issue-trackers, wikis, etc.) and version control systems (e.g. Git or Subversion)
• Strong analytical skills and orientation to detail.
• Excellent communications skills and the ability to work effectively in a team- and project-oriented environment
• Demonstrated interest in working within the digital library domain

Just saw this and was interested at first but it seems on the extreme lower end of the salary scale for the skills required.

Is it because it's aimed at graduates i.e. experience is desirable but not necessarily required?

jester77 · 24-04-2014 3:04pm

Páid wrote: »

http://www.nli.ie/en/udlist/current-opportunities.aspx?article=113b8167-cf16-4565-8b41-c2839d186ede

Just saw this and was interested at first but it seems on the extreme lower end of the salary scale for the skills required.

Is it because it's aimed at graduates i.e. experience is desirable but not necessarily required?

It's a 3 year contract. Sounds poor to me for such a role but the skill set is fairly standard and nothing that a developer with 2 or 3 years of experience wouldn't be able to handle.

Raging_Ninja · 24-04-2014 4:54pm

Its a graduate role, 30k seems about right (might even be a bit better than a lot) for Dublin, would be lower in other parts of the country.

DublinWriter · 24-04-2014 5:03pm

Very unrealistic.

Anyone with at least 4-5 of the listed mandatory skills would be somewhere else making at least twice as much.

There's no way a graduate would even begin to satisfy that list.

Plus it's not a full-time job, it's a three year contract.

The Corinthian · 24-04-2014 5:39pm

I think it largely depends upon what they mean by 'experience' because the spec is a little vague - they may accept "I did hello world in that" as experience, after all. And my guess is they're going to have to.

The only caveat is that it's a contract role. If it was full-time, I could see it as a graduate role, the moment there's an end-date on the job, I expect the rates to increase. When I see a fixed-term contract being advertised at even a realistic full-time salary, I bin it.

So my feeling is that it is just about fillable, if they're willing to lower the bar (a lot), but they're pushing it where it comes to trying to get a good deal - that's the problem with Ireland, everyone too busy horse trading and trying to shaft the other guy to actually run a decent business.

Talisman · 25-04-2014 9:27am

They obviously are looking for a Ruby on Rails developer.

Desirable:
• Expertise developing applications with Ruby on Rails, including the creation of plug-ins, engines and gems.
• Experience integrating loosely coupled applications via RESTful web services
• Experience developing with XML and related technologies (e.g., XSD, XSLT, XPath, XQuery).
• Prior experience of working with digital library systems and standards, e.g. Fedora Commons repository system, Dublin Core, MARC, METS, OAI-PMH, RDF.
• Experience of text analysis and full-text searching using Apache Lucene and Solr
• Experience working in Linux environments
• Working knowledge of the RDF data model, Linked Data and related technologies (e.g. triple-stores, SPARQL);
• Relevant work experience in a developer role
• Demonstrated experience contributing to community-based open source projects
• Knowledge of and interest in practices such test-first development (e.g. TDD, BDD), continuous integration, agile development cycles, and automated deployment

It could be a handy number but the pay is pittance, the fine print reads like it's a spawn of the Haddington Road Agreement.

7. The current annual rate of pay applying to the post will be €30,000 per annum (€574.93 per week).

8. The post may be terminated by the National Library, at any time, in the event of misconduct by the graduate or persistent failure for any reason to carry out satisfactorily the duties assigned to him/her.

9. The successful applicant will be required to work in the Library for 43.25 hours per week The annual leave entitlement will be 22 days .

Working in such a position is equivalent to doing National Service. There's no mention of training which is usually an indication of a reliance on "Google / Open-Source Community Forums / Wikis" to fill gaps in your knowledge.

If you want the job then my recommendation is to eat and sleep Ruby on Rails - the project will use Hydra so that's your study resource.

Aswerty · 25-04-2014 9:47am

Eh, for a graudate position the pay is decent. The only gotchas are as stated; the working hours seem longer than most places and their may not be a more senior dev to work under. If the working hours include a lunch hour/half hour or something like that then the hours are pretty standard.

I'd consider this a better looking job spec than the one I ended up in as a graduate. Though if the working hours actually are something like 9:00 - 18:30 it'd be a lot less desireable.

Trojan · 25-04-2014 10:17am

43.25 hours is (9am-5.45pm x 3 days)+(9am-5.30pm x 2 days) or (9am-6pm x 4 days)+(9am-4.15pm x 1 day).

Aswerty · 25-04-2014 10:21am

Trojan wrote: »

43.25 hours is (9am-5.45pm x 3 days)+(9am-5.30pm x 2 days) or (9am-6pm x 4 days)+(9am-4.15pm x 1 day).

So is it safe to assume the 43.25 hours includes lunch/break times? If so the hours seem grand.

The Corinthian · 25-04-2014 10:42am

Maybe. Maybe not. A standard working week in Switzerland, at least the German speaking part, is 42 hours and excludes lunch and breaks.

TBH, if the role is largely unsupervised (i.e. there's no technical line manager) as someone suggested, you'll learn nothing (which is important as a graduate in their first job) and you'll be able to do nothing for most of the day as whoever is supervising you won't really have a clue what you're doing or how long it takes.

Aswerty · 25-04-2014 11:32am

In my first role I didn't have a technical line manager and I learned a bucket load. Now thats not to say I wouldn't have loved a senior engineer to whom I could turn to with questions. But if you're dropped in the deep end and you manage to stay afloat it generally means you learned to swim by yourself. Of course running this analogy there is every chance you started doggy paddling instead of the butterfly. I'd like to think I got a bit further than doggy paddling though.

I guess if you're on your own you need to have an equal motivation to learn as to getting things done. Numerous times I'd do something for my learning benefit as opposed to doing something more productive. It was in this role I learned the value of version control and SOLID principles. Also the entire stack I currently use I learned from scratch in this role. To a certain degree I was lucky in that I was building systems from scratch so I had to learn everything from the bottom up as opposed to being landed with something already built which I had to try to understand.

Saying all that when I left the company my replacement ended up sinking and left within a handful of months. I guess some graduates will be able to hold their own when leaving college and some still need a bit of hand holding. I guess everyone needs to determine which one they are and pick an appropriate position. For me the one question that kind of haunts me is; if I did as well as I did on my own could I have learned so much more under a good quality senior dev?

Is this developer job asking too much for €30k PA ?

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