Base24 Vs Java

irishguy

I am a recent IT grad working in Base24 development (ill forgive you if you dont know what it is, i didnt either 12months ago) for a large irish financial institution. Originally I wanted to work in J2EE development and i am considering moving within the company to a J2EE role. I have talked to my boss about this and he is naturally talking up his department and is trying to get me a couple of projects that I might be interested in. Now I am undecided whether i want to move or not.
Could anyone tell me what the job prospects/wages would be within both areas?Or if they have personal experience in either area?

leeroybrown

I'm not involved in either area but I would suggest that Base24 is very much a small niche area. I did a a very simple search on jobserve.co.uk (chosen because it's both big and fairly decent) and found 10 Base24 jobs and 1721 J2EE jobs. The J2EE-related jobs had a good spread right across the salary bands. I would guess that the average J2EE salary might be marginally lower but only due to the financial bias of the Base24 jobs.

Unless I had some good industry knowledge about a very strong future in Base24 I'd definitely lean towards J2EE as there are a lot more jobs, a lot more senior jobs and I would suggest a lot more transferable skills.

AARRRGH

I think this says it all -

http://www.jobseeker.ie/jobs.php?k=Base24&l=&x=45&y=13 (searches staff.ie, monster.ie, recruitireland.com, fas.ie, loadzajobs.ie)

Nothing found

So it looks like there are no base24 vacancies in Ireland.

J2EE there are loads of jobs.

irishguy

Approximately 70% of financial institutions use Base24, including the 2 largest financial institutions in the country (which are now pretty much the only 2 employers in Ireland) exempt ACI (who develop Base 24). Nearly all financial institutions have vancanies for permanent staff all the time due to the shortage of skilled employees most financial institutions have to rely on contractors who are very expensive.
I was just wondering if it would be a good idea to stay in a very specialised niche area where there are very few skilled staff or to move into a more general area where there are lots of skilled employees?

AARRRGH

irishguy wrote:

I was just wondering if it would be a good idea to stay in a very specialised niche area where there are very few skilled staff or to move into a more general area where there are lots of skilled employees?

I'd stay with the niche. As you know, banks are horrendously slow at updating their systems, so if they're using base24 now, they'll be using it in 20 years... (probably!)

If you are happy in your current role I would stick with it. It's easy to move language when you've X years dev experience.

Slimjim

dublindude wrote:

I'd stay with the niche.

Yeah, potentially you could become a prima donna contractor, head to somewhere like Saudi Arabia and live it up...