Shortage of IT staff?

peter_dublin wrote: »

Very true, In Ireland it seems everyone wants you to have five years experience and work for 28k a year,

I think IT is not viewed as an engineering skillset. "Sure I know some html, how hard can it be to make another Amazon?" This is possibly due to the high level of skills coming from enthusiast programmers in the 90s who learnt their skills from the new frontiers of the 80s. In other words, they were interested in IT work because it was interesting and they not so pushy on the pay. So companies got used to that.

I heard a great on today on the radio, CPL wanted Oracle Admins / Developers with five years experience. They must also have experience in MS SQL. Sybase, DB2 and Infomix. Not looking for much then.

Wow. What are they paying? Sod all I guess in comparison with any other discipline like engineering or financials. I know guys with Oracle/DB2/SQl/C#/.NET/VB/PHP etc experience for 10 years+ but unable to secure anything better than 40k on 3-6 month contract only.

Young people going into college seem to be smarter than I was and see where the limits lie. It's like the 2000s where the smartest engineers could go into Engineering and get 25k or go into finance in the US and get 250k. No brainer really.

If we'd all charged legal rates per hour for formatting a floppy disk back when you had to type "format a: /F:1440 /U /S" then we'd be much better off now

moycullen14 wrote: »

My definition of a shortage is that your phone would be hopping off the hook with offers (assuming you had the skills!).

I'm sort of looking for contract Java work at the moment and am a bit horrified at the response - especially from agents - calls not returned, no follow up, usually stuff. The first - indeed only - question seems to 'What's your rate?' To which the only answer is 'As much as possible:)'.

I'm not complaining about the difficulty in getting work - it just doesn't seem consistent with the '000's of unfilled vacancies' mantra that I hear in the media.

Maybe I shouldn't believe all that I hear on the radio? Doh!

That's the nail on the head.. IT is a cost, your rate is a cost. In the eyes of the business world you are not a professional, sure don't you know you can now do your primary degree in say Archtecture and if it doesn't work out you can become a IT Professional by taking a one year transitional course under the jobs bridge scheme but strangely I can't seem to find the one year option to become an archchitech in one year or a structural engineer either.

Developement generally pays more I believe because you create wealth for the company against the staf in say a admin or support role. At a 3rd level I believe IT requires a restructuring so that we remove a lot of the generality from some IT degrees. Jack of all trades master of none comes to mind.

I have a BSC Hons in Computer Systems Management. Certs in Cisco, SAP, MS (OS specfic), ITIL and am taking a masters in Advanced Computer Networking with OU and I still get the responce about not having a specific still set at times. These guys want you to be a master in everything and that is not possibe.

As a programmer you specialise in Programming and sample several languages, in other IT degrees we need to move towards the same model I think, so instead of one module in Unix you should have several and instead of one or two in Networking (Which is normally C programming for a large part) you should be able to take a BSc in it which will provide the experts needed.

I once had the purchasing manager for a construction company tell me that he knew about IT because he bought three laptops. My response was I know about purchasing in a contruction enviroment because last week I bought a wheel barrow and shovel.

moycullen14 wrote: »

My definition of a shortage is that your phone would be hopping off the hook with offers (assuming you had the skills!).

I'm sort of looking for contract Java work at the moment and am a bit horrified at the response - especially from agents - calls not returned, no follow up, usually stuff. The first - indeed only - question seems to 'What's your rate?' To which the only answer is 'As much as possible:)'.

I'm not complaining about the difficulty in getting work - it just doesn't seem consistent with the '000's of unfilled vacancies' mantra that I hear in the media.

Maybe I shouldn't believe all that I hear on the radio? Doh!

I am constantly being hounded by agents and companys alike, happy where I am though.

This might be a little harsh but your experience with agents Could be(not saying it is) down to your skill set and experience. I wouldn't even think about contract work with anything less than 5-7 years under my belt.

The SDev community is also very small in Ireland(everyone knows everyone), It could also be that you have worked for the wrong place before without knowing it and people may think you've been tainted by bad practices from said place.

There is also Degree snobbery to contend with(more so if you are Junior), Many who are in a position to hire have notitions about which degrees are good and which are not worth the paper they are wrote upon. This opinion varies form person to person.

Ideally people should be hired on there own merits alone but unfortunatly, a fair few(not all) cases Irelands backward thinking culture will influence hiring decisions.


As has been stated already here though is Business people see IT as an expense not a company asset to be used to drive the Business. A smart few dont share this veiw and generally, their business is usually near the top in their market(funny that).

Unfortuantly the attitudes of the rest is what is driving this shortage with them Expecting 7+ years experience while only wishing to pay what would be graduate rates in any other less demnading field.

There is a shortage of IT people(read: idiots who don't understand their free market worth) who have vast amounts of desirable experience.

Likewise their is also a shortage to some degree of competant people as business are unwilling to invest in Grads / Juniors in order to make them competant in the skills that businesses require.

Colleges can only do so much.. it is up to businesses to take on the responsiblity of educating Graduates on the business in which they wish them to operate in.

</Novel>

It works both ways: not much incentive to stay with a company when competitors are offering a lot more. Courses etc are worthless anyway (aside from getting started), you have to learn the serious stuff yourself.

big_heart_on wrote: »

I've been hearing all about the shortage of IT staff for a long time now, and since I'm losing my job in a few weeks I've started searching and cant see where all the jobs are hiding!

I have been a few years in my current IT software development/support role and got no further training, every course I've done is at my own expense and I've been payed buttons essentially.

I'm willing to take an entry level position despite having 7+ years experience in different roles I picked up no extra training from employers along the way, so every job has requirements for certs that I cant meet, despite having years of "on the job" experience.

Catch 22.

What stuff have you done? I'm looking for people.

MagicRon wrote: »

There is nothing wrong with that attitude - If an employer is serious about holding onto good staff, they should pay up.

Who in their right mind would stay with a company if there were better opportunities elsewhere!?

Define better opportunity? any good Developers I have known have a figure,not the figure they will get out of bed for, but the a figure in which larger amounts of money waved infront doesn't faze them(this is often lower then you would expect), other factors take precedence.

Often good developers are the type of people who would do their work for free if it were not for those pesky bills and financial needs.. Unfortunatily due to us living in a capitalist society, these people type of people are hard to find.

I'm a good developer, and I have a good rule of thumb, offer me double, and I'll jump ship. I'd like to have a logarithmic scale of wage increases.

Giblet wrote: »

I'm a good developer, and I have a good rule of thumb, offer me double, and I'll jump ship. I'd like to have a logarithmic scale of wage increases.

I'm not too bad either . Maybe it's just an age thing (burned out and cynical) but I'm happier to fore-go wages/rates in lieu of other benefits, most notably enjoying what I'm doing, being neither bored nor stressed, and working closer to home. Working somewhere that understands there's more to investing in IT beyond paying your wages is also a benefit, as is not having to wear a f**king suit

D.

Fiona Cuddly Toothpick wrote: »

The problem I see is the lack of graduate positions. Companies are saying they can't get staff and yet aren't willing to provide graduates with jobs.
Alternatively, they want graduates with a raft of experience which colleges don't give you.

When will companies start seeing the potential and give us a chance to build on the foundations which the college courses provided?

I did a H. Dip in Web Technologies and am now doing a Postgrad in Cloud Computing and am starting to ask myself how I'll ever get a job.

How many companies have you applied to work with and how many said you didn't have enough experience? How well do you know everything you did in college? ... have you a portfolio or a website created with your CV on it?... have you worked on any projects in your own time? ... Have you ever worked on an open source project? What programming languages have you played around with?

The company I work with, in Dublin, are looking for graduates.

Fiona Cuddly Toothpick wrote: »

The problem I see is the lack of graduate positions. Companies are saying they can't get staff and yet aren't willing to provide graduates with jobs.
Alternatively, they want graduates with a raft of experience which colleges don't give you.

Exactly. I applied for a few graduate jobs last year that wanted 5+ years experience. How the hell are you supposed to have 5+ years experience if you are a graduate?!

Gurgle wrote: »

What manager in his right mind would hire a graduate in the expectation that he's going to take the salary, training and experience then leave without ever being a productive employee?

The same manager who will increase the wage of the graduate yearly as they gain more experience. Not the manager who will hire the graduate, give them 24k and then expect them to remain on that wage for 5 years.

From my own personal experience. I have been in IT for about 6 years now, started working for HP resetting passwords over the phone for barely more than the dole. 4 jobs later and I've worked my way up to a software developer position. Very happy with my pay and the IT management. Anyway point is I have met a lot people along the way and right now I don't know of anyone looking for a job(Maybe 30-40 people). Thats across all different areas of IT too. My last job went belly up after I had left and all the people in the IT Dept had jobs within no less than a month max.

youcancallmeal wrote: »

Last job I was working in this happened and I didn't even realise until they called me in and said my salary was being increased to match the new starters. Sounds like you were just working pr*cks?

Why was your salary increased to only match the new starters?

I can think of three problems with the vacancies.

A lot of jobs I see out there, and some of them I would be interested in applying for, require a second language because there is some level of support work involved. If they don't require a second language, a CV with one on it is probably going to be favoured more. And the majority of Irish people just don't have the second language.

Combined roles. As in: web developer/graphic designer. I understand there is cross-over, and I see so many positions advertised for this, but if you can't get someone who can do both, should you not cut your losses and split the job description?

Experience. A lot of places want someone with 5 years experince. Fair enough. If you've got 5 years experience, you're going to be established where you are and not necessarily going to want to go. And there are who knows how many graduates sitting around scratching themselves, with the skillsets needed. Maybe not 5 years of experience, but again, it's not the time to be picky. A company wants someone with 5 years experience, and the people looking for the jobs can't get the experience because they don't have 5 years experience. Vicious circle.

I get that it all comes down to money, but I still can't see how "spend money to make money" doesn't make sense to these companies. Short-term thinking is too dominant.

questiontime2 wrote: »

I regret doing a software development degree. Might as well just burn the damm thing, a 2:1 with a little experience does not mean squat in Ireland, unless it's from Trinity. I feel like I've just wasted years of my life and nothing to show for it:o

Time to start a business and patent some process or idea. That or leave the country. I have had very negative experiences with graduate roles, people wasting my time with bull**** psychometric tests and other quackery. Whoever said the IT industry in Ireland is stable for graduates, is simply lying through their teeth.

I can barely afford to pay rent. Self employed people aren't entitled to welfare payments, so I might as well just pack my bags and move to London. Ireland is not a country I want to live in anymore. It's not the country I remember growing up in. Part time jobs at 16 where easier to get than now.

1. You don't need a Trinity degree
2. It is very easy to get a job in IT in Ireland. If this isn't your experience then you either don't know your stuff, are terrible at interviews, or simply haven't tried finding a job.

I've seen three people in this thread say that they are working in a company that is looking for graduates. I see a recent post in the sticky looking for graduates. Have you contacted or sent your CV to these people?