State of software industry in Ireland currently?

fergalr

Hi all,

I'm currently doing academic research at the moment, so I haven't been looking for software work for a while, and have no plans to.

But I'm curious about other's views on the state of the Irish software industry, because I'm hearing different things different places.

Mostly when I talk to developers, there seems to be ongoing demand for software developers who know their stuff, and can code reasonably well. I've heard several people complaining its hard to hire competent people.


However, I've come across several posts and heard several developers say stuff along the lines of 'you are lucky to have a software job at the moment', which surprise me.

Obviously, there's a terrible recession which is putting many good people out of work - but I thought software was doing ok.


Have certain subsectors been hit disproportionally?
Anyone got a good feel for what areas might not be buoyant?
Maybe graduate jobs have are harder to get?


It just seems a little unusual to hear different folk say different things.

I also have to say I'm a little surprised CAO points for CS didn't rise. Generally CAO points provide some sort of an indicator of what the popular consciousness thinks is a lucrative career.

Is it the case that people generally don't know IT is doing OK at the moment? Or have certain sectors really suffered that I dont know people in?

Be really curious to hear anyones general thoughts - or if anyone else is just wondering the same thing.

Sparks

The need for good programmers is, I think, perennial. Because frankly, there aren't that many out there, and we're not producing a lot of them each year (and before people start blaming colleges, spread some of that blame over to the people funding the colleges; you can't run decent courses without any money, or worse, with those with the money demanding you get into bed with specific industry groups).

And I know that the big companies are all in recruitment drives right now - Google, Facebook, Amazon and IBM are all hiring, for example.

But SMEs are getting squeezed, some more than others. And startups have gone to the wall - hell, that's why I changed jobs recently. So if you're looking for work in a small company or startup, that might be slightly harder right now. But for the most part, there do seem to be software jobs out there.

stevenmu

From what I've seen general IT services have suffered a lot, clients aren't looking to do the regular automatic hardware refreshes and windows/office upgrades that they may have done in years past. A lot of clients though are looking to streamline, cut costs and make processes more efficient, and they're looking to IT/software to help with that. So companies that can deliver that seem to be doing pretty well.

Tobias Greeshman

fergalr wrote: »

Mostly when I talk to developers, there seems to be ongoing demand for software developers who know their stuff, and can code reasonably well. I've heard several people complaining its hard to hire competent people.

I think that's pretty accurate, very good developers are hard to come by so I can understand from an employers point of view it's hard to find them. All in all I think the recession has being very good for the IT Industry in Ireland, we had a lot of dead weight, and we really needed a good pruning of people that should never of being hired in the first place. People that just weren't good enough, and ended up developing a lot of bad software. Where as now the people that do get hired are good developers, who know what they're talking about, and are actually good at their job.

There's definitely a good amount of places still hiring for development roles, and most of my past colleagues who've either left or were unfortunate to be made redundant have all found work in quite a short period of time.

In short, if you're a good enough developer you won't be without work for too long.

Sparks

Tobias Greeshman wrote: »

I think the recession has being very good for the IT Industry in Ireland, we had a lot of dead weight, and we really needed a good pruning of people that should never of being hired in the first place. People that just weren't good enough, and ended up developing a lot of bad software. Where as now the people that do get hired are good developers, who know what they're talking about, and are actually good at their job.

Or, more accurately, now managers who not only don't always know the fine detail of the technical work, but who also have entirely different metrics for success, will wind up outsourcing far more work to India and other bodyshops that charge less than local developers; and you and I will wind up spending more of our time fixing that in the years to come.

Recession isn't evolution's natural selection in action - it's more like evolution's large asteroid. Fecks up everything pretty even-handedly.

In short, if you're a good enough developer you won't be without work for too long.

Yes, but that's true of the top 2% of people in every single field of human endeavor ever invented. So really, it's got nothing to do with the software industry specifically.

IRLConor

Sparks wrote: »

The need for good programmers is, I think, perennial. Because frankly, there aren't that many out there, and we're not producing a lot of them each year (and before people start blaming colleges, spread some of that blame over to the people funding the colleges; you can't run decent courses without any money, or worse, with those with the money demanding you get into bed with specific industry groups).

TBH, the only blame I'd lay at the door of the colleges is that they don't fail people early enough or often enough. They might save some funds if they were a little more aggressive about dropping those who weren't making the grade.

It would be much better for all involved if there were fewer graduates with a higher average quality. I'm not currently directly involved in hiring, but any time I have been I've been continually shocked at the poor quality of candidates. In a past job when I worked with fergalr, we had some absolute horror stories when interviewing.

Sparks wrote: »

And I know that the big companies are all in recruitment drives right now - Google, Facebook, Amazon and IBM are all hiring, for example.

And Daft/Boards/Adverts too, for that matter.

Sparks

IRLConor wrote: »

TBH, the only blame I'd lay at the door of the colleges is that they don't fail people early enough or often enough. They might save some funds if they were a little more aggressive about dropping those who weren't making the grade.

Except that they wouldn't; they'd be losing the funds they get for having those students enrolled for the full year. And the economic reality of the college's funding situation has them pretty desperate for funds right now. The government's successively cut their funding for several years, right through the economic boom, and now they're seeking to make major overt cuts; the end result isn't going to be colleges, it's going to be Microsoft bodyshops. When Microsoft dumps a ton of cash into the coffers, it's damn hard to get the college to continue to teach basic programming using purpose-designed languages like pascal, or with open source command-line compilers, or indeed, even with more than one operating system. Since I started, it's gone from using Pascal and Modula-2 on unix platforms and PCs (for both languages) as a starting point, to using C++ and then to Java and then to J++, and back to C++. This is not how to run a training course, it's how to jump from fad to fad without ever building up a deep enough knowledgebase to teach effectively, and the fact that only two engineers from a class of 200 chose to do computer engineering this year reflects that. But the choices weren't made internally, they were forced on the college by external factors like where the funding was coming from.

And Daft/Boards/Adverts too, for that matter.

Now you mention it

IRLConor

Sparks wrote: »

Except that they wouldn't; they'd be losing the funds they get for having those students enrolled for the full year.

I agree that the fund-any-old-warm-body approach is flawed, but given that such a policy is unlikely to change any time in the next decade, perhaps it's time for the colleges to recognise that it's in their long term financial interests to take the hit and fail the students anyway. Currently, by not failing sub-standard students they're devaluing their degrees which will only lead to further drops in CAO preferences and a further spiral downwards in quality. Turning out sub-standard graduates also hurts their long-term academic prospects too. Where are they going to get their future post-graduates?

Colleges whinging about funding and then passing people anyway is a remarkably short-term strategy. I would have though that they'd be some of the few institutions, public or private, that were actually capable of long-term thinking.

Sparks wrote: »

Now you mention it

Thinking of turning in the big blue suit already?

fergalr

IRLConor wrote: »

I agree that the fund-any-old-warm-body approach is flawed, but given that such a policy is unlikely to change any time in the next decade, perhaps it's time for the colleges to recognise that it's in their long term financial interests to take the hit and fail the students anyway. Currently, by not failing sub-standard students they're devaluing their degrees which will only lead to further drops in CAO preferences and a further spiral downwards in quality. Turning out sub-standard graduates also hurts their long-term academic prospects too. Where are they going to get their future post-graduates?

Colleges whinging about funding and then passing people anyway is a remarkably short-term strategy. I would have though that they'd be some of the few institutions, public or private, that were actually capable of long-term thinking.

Thats an interesting point.
I have to agree with Sparks, in that from what I've seen colleges are much too acutely aware that failing students leads to direct funding drops...

While in theory the university as an institution might be able to think long term, in this sense, the individual people making the decisions are vulnerable to short term political pressure. Lets say your section of the institution goes to war with the government, by refusing to pass the number of grads the government have decided they need.
If you as a result get your funding cut, and all your fellow academics have even less resources for their research agendas, I guess you'll probably find career advancement hard.

The real issue though, is why the higher political figures are pushing quantity over quality. I guess its the old problem of politicians not thinking long term.


On the topic of the industry so far, it sounds like:

Highly skilled developers are still required and in demand.
IT services is suffering.
Big companies are hiring, but there are fewer startups in operation.

Be interested to get more replies from people in different industry sectors, or if the above doesn't tally with peoples experience.

Sparks

IRLConor wrote: »

I agree that the fund-any-old-warm-body approach is flawed, but given that such a policy is unlikely to change any time in the next decade, perhaps it's time for the colleges to recognise that it's in their long term financial interests to take the hit and fail the students anyway.

How long is long though? There's only so much of a hit they are actually capable of taking, and right now, they're about one academic year away from dropping courses. Lecturers are already in less than short supply, and the short-term contract researchers teaching courses is not a good idea from the point of view of the courses themselves.

And how much of a hit? Their current financials aren't that far from the "which bit of the campus do we sell" stage, and even that stage doesn't raise much money anymore.

Currently, by not failing sub-standard students they're devaluing their degrees which will only lead to further drops in CAO preferences and a further spiral downwards in quality. Turning out sub-standard graduates also hurts their long-term academic prospects too. Where are they going to get their future post-graduates?

China.
And no, I'm not joking. Half my class last year were Chinese. At the guts of €20k a student and with more supply than available places, they're a major revenue source for colleges at the moment.

Colleges whinging about funding and then passing people anyway is a remarkably short-term strategy.

Yup, not disagreeing with that at all.

I would have though that they'd be some of the few institutions, public or private, that were actually capable of long-term thinking.

They're not exempt from bills anymore than anywhere else, alas.

Thinking of turning in the big blue suit already?

Sorry, no. Compared to the last five years of "passionate startups", this place is heaven. I mean, phrases like "stop faffing about, we'll code the unit tests up after we make the release date" used to drive me up one wall and down the other in a blind rage; today, anyone saying something like that gets taken aside for a quiet chat about how we don't do things like that here, because we're a professional company.
I damn near fell over in the first week when I realised they really hadn't been kidding about that during the interview.

Herbal Deity

fergalr wrote: »

I also have to say I'm a little surprised CAO points for CS didn't rise. Generally CAO points provide some sort of an indicator of what the popular consciousness thinks is a lucrative career.

There's no promotion of CS degrees as being worthwhile. There's no dot com hype prompting people to pick CS courses any more.

Simply put, unless you happened to fall into a niche of people interested in computers from a young age (generally male gamers), you're not going to know much about what software development is or why you might be interested in it.

Given that we really need more good people to be doing CS courses, it's quite shocking that you don't encounter anything to do with CS at all in primary or secondary level education in Ireland, nor is there really any promotion of CS courses.

IT seems to be a pretty stable industry, but the thing about CS graduates is that there is a massive variation in quality between them, especially with the extremely blatant grade inflation and passing of wasters which is going on atm, which I don't think is as true of graduates of other courses.

onemorechance

Tobias Greeshman wrote: »

People that just weren't good enough, and ended up developing a lot of bad software.

Should the organisation not be blamed for allowing bad software to be developed? An organisation that does not have proper processes and checks is going to encourage bad development.

IRLConor wrote: »

TBH, the only blame I'd lay at the door of the colleges is that they don't fail people early enough or often enough.

If all grades from 1st year on were to count for the overall degree mark, say 10%, 20%, 30% and 40%, then a better overall graduates would be the result!

Sparks

onemorechance wrote: »

If all grades from 1st year on were to count for the overall degree mark, say 10%, 20%, 30% and 40%, then a better overall graduates would be the result!

They do; they've had continual assessment in the C.Eng course since 1998 if I remember correctly (we were the last year not to have it), and it didn't result in that.
It resulted instead in an acceleration of the trend where CS/CEng students, instead of taking on lots of extra-curricular projects and cutting their teeth early on real world stuff, dropped all those ideas and focussed instead on getting the final exams.
Which, as the LC proves year-in, year-out, is a piss-poor method of training a professional to do their job. Rote memorisation without application will not make you a good programmer.

onemorechance

Sparks wrote: »

They do; they've had continual assessment in the C.Eng course since 1998 if I remember correctly (we were the last year not to have it), and it didn't result in that.
It resulted instead in an acceleration of the trend where CS/CEng students, instead of taking on lots of extra-curricular projects and cutting their teeth early on real world stuff, dropped all those ideas and focussed instead on getting the final exams.
Which, as the LC proves year-in, year-out, is a piss-poor method of training a professional to do their job. Rote memorisation without application will not make you a good programmer.

Any course I did required us to apply what we learned to projects and assignments, but only your final year work counted for the degree. You could scrape into 4th year with the minimum marks and by finally doing some work in 4th year you could get a degree, despite maybe having little knowledge of the vast majority of subjects. All 4 years counting would be a better assessment, I think.

Civilian_Target

Personally, my experience of the Irish software industry is:
- With a few exceptions, most of the courses are substandard. When I went to do a masters in the UK, I was genuinely shocked how far behind my theoretical knowledge was! (They also failed 1/3rd of the class!)
- Most Irish employers moan about the lack of quality graduates... but then fail to pay them wages that are competitive with other European economies. A majority of the top Irish graduates of my year (that I know), no longer work in Ireland

Evil Phil

Here's part of a job description for a contract position I received from a Dublin company today.

Desirable Skills:

• Ability to prioritize own workload and work to deadlines
• A strong analytical and process driven approach
• Excellent analytical, troubleshooting and problem solving skills

I would assume that these were a given in a software developer, not desirable. I don't know what to say about that, perhaps Irish companies have a inferiority complex or something, you know that inherit Irish fear that somebody, somewhere will think you're getting to big for your boots. Because, to be quite honest with you all, it seems that otherwise they don't give a toss about who they hire.

I'm doing my MSc with a UK university at the moment and I have to say, I'm very impressed with how thorough the course is.

IRLConor

Evil Phil wrote: »

I would assume that these were a given in a software developer, not desirable.

One shouldn't have to ask for those qualities, but unfortunately it's not a given.

I don't think it's just an Irish thing though, fergalr and I interviewed people (for clients of ours) in California and the pickings weren't much better.

Evil Phil wrote: »

Because, to be quite honest with you all, it seems that otherwise they don't give a toss about who they hire.

I'm lucky enough that I've mostly worked with smart people, but I've met a few who would fit into that bucket. In those situations though it was less of a case of "don't give a toss" but more that the hiring company wouldn't know what a software developer was if one bit them.

stevenmu

I'm not a fan of continual assessment, personally I think a degree should be a measure of a persons abilities and knowledge at the time of gaining it. If someone did nothing with the subject for 3 years, then it clicked in the 4th and they knew as much and possessed the same capabilities as someone who found it easier right the way through, they deserve the same degree IMO.

I think a greater problem is that the curricula tend to favour memorisation and learning by rote over a deeper understanding and an ability to actually use the knowledge. In particular far too many exam questions were along the lines of "Give the definition of ..." as opposed to "Explain how ... works" or "Describe how you would ...". Some people on my course did better than me because they could memorise the textbooks and regurgitate the answers on the demand, but when it came to sitting down and doing their FYP they had to ask help to open notepad to write some java code, not to mention the help they needed when it came to actually writing the code.

(granted I did a Comp. Sci. course which would be naturally more biased in that direction than a Software/Comp. Eng. course)

onemorechance

Continual assessment can test your ability to work to deadlines.

It may also assess the speed at which you can learn the material; for those who find it easy; or for those who find it hard; the time they are willing to put into learning it.

Evil Phil

I find that continual assessment really does measure your understanding of a subject, rather than your ability to regurgitate stuff in an exam, but I'm dyslexic so its a style of education that suits me. However, I will say that if somebody does nothing with a subject for 3 years, then they probably should be failed out at that stage instead of being kept on to supply the institution with funds.

OwenM

The temporary contract lecturers are perhaps far more susceptible to influence when it comes to passing quotas, permanent lecturers have nothing to fear - can't be let go on a whim.

I am graduating this october with 5 others out of 40 that started the course, 35 that didn't make it. Doesn't sound like a degree factory to me.

Graduates need experience to become good programmers, it seems to me that most Irish sme's are not interested in hiring graduates and putting this effort in, and I understand their reasons, but i've no time for them complaining about the lack of people available to them as a result, do they really consider it a non sequitur? Perhaps they think a Fas course should be established to produce a 'passionate individual' with 5-8 years J2EE experience?

IRLConor

OwenM wrote: »

most Irish sme's are not interested in hiring graduates and putting this effort in, and I understand their reasons, but i've no time for them complaining about the lack of people available to them as a result, do they really consider it a non sequitur? Perhaps they think a Fas course should be established to produce a 'passionate individual' with 5-8 years J2EE experience?

I suspect that many of them would prefer that the graduates go and get their experience in large companies where the overhead of carrying a non-productive/lightly-productive member of staff is an acceptable cost of doing business.

The "must have X-Y years experience doing Z" has (in my experience at least) been entirely ignored. Granted, I've had very little experience with recruitment companies and from what I've heard they're pretty bad offenders in that department.

fergalr

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/business/economy/07jobs.html?_r=4&hp

which is an article on a similar topic in the states.
Discussed on slashdot here:

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/09/07/2042201/Tech-Sector-Slow-To-Hire

Similar story - different people seem to be saying different things.

fergalr

http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=2056048142

Interesting thread in 'work and jobs'.
Interesting follow on to this.