[Caseywhale]

I go to the UK or middle east for 6 month contracts.
I work 6 months, then take 6 months off. Last year I took 9 months off.
fcuk that working in Ireland for peanuts. I can make £500 - £750 a day contracting in the UK. Half that here. Even more in the middle east, but you cant come home at weekends.

Use UK agencies and forget about working in IT in Ireland.

Check it out. Go to UK agencies and ignore the jobs paying less than £50 an hour. Then you'll see what you can make there.

You might as well burn your money. Even junior perm roles are easier to get and better paid in the UK.

And if I was a grad thats where i would go too.

[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.

[tatranska]

Originally Posted by Irishwolff

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.

[Caseywhale]

Originally Posted by 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.

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.

[Caseywhale]

Originally Posted by tatranska

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.

[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.

[tatranska]

Originally Posted by Caseywhale

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.

[Duggys Housemate]

But he was talking about graduates.

[tatranska]

Originally Posted by Duggys Housemate

But he was talking about graduates.

Not all graduates are 21.

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.

[Sparks]

Originally Posted by Irishwolff

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.

[Caseywhale]

Originally Posted by tatranska

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.

[moycullen14]

Originally Posted by Irishwolff

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.

[moycullen14]

Originally Posted by Caseywhale

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?

[djpbarry]

Originally Posted by Caseywhale

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.

[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