A Lost Generation in the IT Industry?

um7y1h83ge06nx

Hi guys,

I have an opinion but am not sure whether it is just my limited exposure, bull, or it has a grain of truth in it.

There seems to me now to be a huge lack of people in the I.T. industry in their 20's. In my own company, at 28, I'm the only 20 something.

I believe a lot of this has to do with the dot com collapse in 2001/2002. I started uni in 2001 and we were the last big class in that course. The collapse had begun and a lot of the lecturers were telling us not to worry, things will have turned around by the time you finish.

Sure enough, things had picked up a bit by 2005. However IT courses were "tainted" by the collapse and demand had dropped off a load. Several courses have been dropped or amalgamated with others.

Now when I look at a lot of companies in the Limerick/Shannon region, I see the vast majority of employees being in their early 30's upwards.

The knock-on for someone like me, is that despite several years in the industry I still look relatively junior in comparison to the majority. Of course if more young people enter the industry in the future I will look pretty senior then in comparison.

So then, is there any truth to what I'm saying or is it a load of bull?

dazberry

That's probably one of the factors to it.

The second is possibly the technology stack you are using (or not), sometimes you'll find that as technologies come in and out of favour, developers on the trailing edge tend to be older then the new upstarts the want to do all the new good sh1t!!

The third perhaps is the industries' desire to only hire experienced people (how many junior development positions or cross training opportunities do you see advertised?)

My 2 cents anyway...

D.

um7y1h83ge06nx

Good points.

As regards point 2, I see that a lot with stuff like COBOL or RPG where the guys on that would be tend to be older again than the average age of employee. Although in companies that would include core tech like Java or C# with different bells and whistles I still see a relatively high average age in comparison to something like accounting.

The third point is spot on too, that is very noticeable.

I guess the thing that pains me is that it can make it that little bit more difficult for guys like me to be regarded as a "senior" person. Although, it's a long road.

The Corinthian

The dotCom period saw a huge influx in school leavers who wanted to enter IT, because there was a lot of money in it (my own salary literally doubled every six months back then) and it was, briefly, a sexy industry.

The bubble burst in 2000, and interest in these courses dropped dramatically, and has bit by bit returned to it's pre-dotCom levels, when software engineers were often older on average.

So I'd imagine there are still young people in IT, but supply has dried up to a great extent and the average age has become something more akin to any other mature industry.

fergalr

Miracle Weak Storyteller wrote: »

I believe a lot of this has to do with the dot com collapse in 2001/2002. I started uni in 2001 and we were the last big class in that course. The collapse had begun and a lot of the lecturers were telling us not to worry, things will have turned around by the time you finish.

I think this is a pretty commonly held belief.
I've heard many people say the same thing.

I started in college about the same time.

I don't like talking about CAO points, but they do serve as some measure of demand for college courses. The points for CS in TCD plummeted after the dot com crash.



Casually related? Hard to say, but I would guess 'yes'.

This only shows a reduction in demand, for places in one university. It doesn't necessarily mean there's a negative change in quality of grads, or in numbers of people working in the industry, on its own.



The other side of things, after the .com crash, is that we went through a period of several years, in this country, where jobs that skimmed transactional value were considered more important than jobs that created value.

This is my biased opinion, but for a while there, people that worked in banking or law (e.g. conveyancing), property development or estate agency, could skim a lot of money from the contracts they were passing through, without adding much.

Now, those jobs can certainly create value. But the way they were being done here, the rewards were very disproportional to the value being created (or even destroyed, in some cases...).

We had several years where it looked pretty foolish to go and sweat on a technical subject, for not much reward, in comparison, and I believe that had an effect.

This was a result of some very poor societal management; but thankfully seems to be swinging back, a little.



I've mixed feelings.
While there are fewer young devs here than there probably should be, I wouldn't say its a 'lost generation' either.
Some people complain about the lack of talented developers, here.
But what they really are complaining about, is having to pay for the talent - there are good people here, and you'd still pay more for them, if you were in California!


Another thing I've noticed recently, thats hugely positive, is a big increase in the number of developer and tech centric events going on.
Theres loads of startups, startup funding, theres things like various language and platform user groups, events like the web summit; there are lots of young people at these - so I think overall, its a pretty good time for tech in Ireland.

Miracle Weak Storyteller wrote: »

Now when I look at a lot of companies in the Limerick/Shannon region, I see the vast majority of employees being in their early 30's upwards.

I know plenty of people in their (mostly now late) 20s working in IT in Dublin; maybe people moved away from the shannon region? I don't know what other confounding factors there might be, if we restrict discussion to a locality.

m1nder

Dont worry, when you are retired, then Indians will fill all the IT roles.

The Corinthian

m1nder wrote: »

Dont worry, when you are retired, then Indians will fill all the IT roles.

Not necessarily.

To begin with, you cannot outsource all IT roles; customer facing ones, such as analysis and project management have to be physically present - Skype only goes so far.

Then there are the experts; the one's who either specialize and/or are really good at what they do. They're not easy to outsource, or even find most of the time.

Finally, you presume that the present wage imbalance between the industrialized and developing World, that makes outsourcing attractive to companies, is going to remain unchanged. Salary levels are already increasing there and combined with the distinct possibility that in the industrialized World they may even fall, the gap will grow small enough, over time, to make outsourcing less attractive - especially if you take into account the overhead of managing outsourced teams.

Certainly, if you sit on your laurels in IT and coast along doing something that could be easily outsourced, then this could well happen and long before retirement. An IT career is like a shark; keep moving forward or die.

m1nder

The Corinthian wrote: »

Not necessarily.

To begin with, you cannot outsource all IT roles; customer facing ones, such as analysis and project management have to be physically present - Skype only goes so far.

Then there are the experts; the one's who either specialize and/or are really good at what they do. They're not easy to outsource, or even find most of the time.

Finally, you presume that the present wage imbalance between the industrialized and developing World, that makes outsourcing attractive to companies, is going to remain unchanged. Salary levels are already increasing there and combined with the distinct possibility that in the industrialized World they may even fall, the gap will grow small enough, over time, to make outsourcing less attractive - especially if you take into account the overhead of managing outsourced teams.

Certainly, if you sit on your laurels in IT and coast along doing something that could be easily outsourced, then this could well happen and long before retirement. An IT career is like a shark; keep moving forward or die.

all good points, well put.

Creamy Goodness

85% of the developers where i work are under 30, it depends where you are and the view you have in the industry.

Do know what you mean though about feeling less senior because of your age, but i think in fairness you get that in pretty much any job where there are different skill levels.

BostonB

I think another issue is that a lot of companies, do not hire inexperienced IT staff or train them. As a result the pool of new people with the right skillset declines.

Also companies don't tend to spread projects around to build experience with junior staff. They tend to keep using the old reliables. Those the junior people loose interest and drift off to other area's. Its a bit like a football team never giving junior players their game.

You can't reap what you don't sow.

RealistSpy

BostonB wrote: »

I think another issue is that a lot of companies, do not hire inexperienced IT staff or train them. As a result the pool of new people with the right skillset declines.

Also companies don't tend to spread projects around to build experience with junior staff. They tend to keep using the old reliables. Those the junior people loose interest and drift off to other area's. Its a bit like a football team never giving junior players their game.

You can't reap what you don't sow.

I Can't agree more. There seems to be screams here and there about the IT industry lack of staff, but only a hand full of Companies look up to take interns. People look for experience but they are reluctant to train the future employees.

NB: I am talking from a point of view of a 3rd year software development student.

fergalr

Its hard to know.
In a lot of ways, someone finishing a 4 year course in something like software engineering, should be able to learn enough to train themselves on the job, and shouldn't need a huge amount of explicit training.

They'll need time to get up to speed, on whatever the job is, certainly; probably several months, before their productivity starts to increase. But they shouldn't be taking up too much of other employees resources, and you'd expect them to at least be breaking even, on their salary - adding small amounts of value - after a month or two, in many jobs (maybe less, or more, depending on whats asked of them).


I think part of the reason that people look for experience, is that a lot of people find it hard to judge how good a developer someone inexperienced will be. Recruiters, in IT in particular, are basically completely hopeless at this sort of thing, and essentially can only judge experience.

So, if the cost of a developers salary is low, relative to the worth of the work they are doing, then it makes a lot of sense to get someone experienced, to mitigate risk.


In theory, modern businesses should be into facilitating the growth of their employees, and investing in training them; this is probably the ideal state.

But I can see why it isn't happening like that, at the moment.
I think the software industry is very fluid, currently; people move around a lot.

Part of this is probably because companies are unwilling to recognize the value of the intellectual capital in their existing employees, and increase pay accordingly. I have heard, anecdotally, that often the only way to get a substantial raise, is to change jobs. This is probably short-sighted, hurting both employer and employee.

But, considering that the industry is so fluid, I can see why employers - at least small and medium size ones - aren't willing to take on the cost of training inexperienced developers who then leave for better jobs.

dalta5billion

fergalr wrote: »

Miracle Weak Storyteller wrote: »

I believe a lot of this has to do with the dot com collapse in 2001/2002. I started uni in 2001 and we were the last big class in that course. The collapse had begun and a lot of the lecturers were telling us not to worry, things will have turned around by the time you finish.

I think this is a pretty commonly held belief.
I've heard many people say the same thing.

I started in college about the same time.

I don't like talking about CAO points, but they do serve as some measure of demand for college courses. The points for CS in TCD plummeted after the dot com crash.



Casually related? Hard to say, but I would guess 'yes'.

This only shows a reduction in demand, for places in one university. It doesn't necessarily mean there's a negative change in quality of grads, or in numbers of people working in the industry, on its own.



The other side of things, after the .com crash, is that we went through a period of several years, in this country, where jobs that skimmed transactional value were considered more important than jobs that created value.

This is my biased opinion, but for a while there, people that worked in banking or law (e.g. conveyancing), property development or estate agency, could skim a lot of money from the contracts they were passing through, without adding much.

Now, those jobs can certainly create value. But the way they were being done here, the rewards were very disproportional to the value being created (or even destroyed, in some cases...).

We had several years where it looked pretty foolish to go and sweat on a technical subject, for not much reward, in comparison, and I believe that had an effect.

This was a result of some very poor societal management; but thankfully seems to be swinging back, a little.



I've mixed feelings.
While there are fewer young devs here than there probably should be, I wouldn't say its a 'lost generation' either.
Some people complain about the lack of talented developers, here.
But what they really are complaining about, is having to pay for the talent - there are good people here, and you'd still pay more for them, if you were in California!


Another thing I've noticed recently, thats hugely positive, is a big increase in the number of developer and tech centric events going on.
Theres loads of startups, startup funding, theres things like various language and platform user groups, events like the web summit; there are lots of young people at these - so I think overall, its a pretty good time for tech in Ireland.

Miracle Weak Storyteller wrote: »

Now when I look at a lot of companies in the Limerick/Shannon region, I see the vast majority of employees being in their early 30's upwards.

I know plenty of people in their (mostly now late) 20s working in IT in Dublin; maybe people moved away from the shannon region? I don't know what other confounding factors there might be, if we restrict discussion to a locality.

I thought it was interesting to see it go up exactly 30 points. (Bonus HL maths points)