Are wages that bad ?

Geuze · 27-11-2017 12:17PM

2017 Q2 data just published:

http://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/elcq/earningsandlabourcostsq22017finalq32017preliminaryestimates/

Average earnings:

720 pw
22.48 per hour

lawred2 · 27-11-2017 12:19PM

Greybottle wrote: »

Average wage is a false statistic. It distorts the true picture somewhat.

The mean wage is around €29,000, which is a far more accurate picture of true earnings in the State.

the average is the mean

did you mean Median?

lawred2 · 27-11-2017 12:20PM

Geuze wrote: »

I think you mean the "median earnings".

Yes, median is better than the mean.

The mean 2016 earnings were 45,611.

Median earnings are lower, at 41,829 in 2014.

that sounds high - last time I saw the median full time income in Ireland was reported at 32k

Geuze · 27-11-2017 03:41PM

lawred2 wrote: »

that sounds high - last time I saw the median full time income in Ireland was reported at 32k

The CSO don't publish median earnings, which is a pity.

Instead, we must look to Eurostat, who do.

See the SES 2014.

http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=earn_ses_annual&lang=en

Geuze · 27-11-2017 03:42PM

lawred2 wrote: »

that sounds high - last time I saw the median full time income in Ireland was reported at 32k

Note that we are discussing earnings here, not incomes.

Geuze · 27-11-2017 03:44PM

lawred2 wrote: »

that sounds high - last time I saw the median full time income in Ireland was reported at 32k

Median earnings in 2014 for full-time workers were 41,829.

Mean earnings the same year were 48,598, again for FT workers.

This data from Eurostat SES 2014.

Geuze · 26-02-2018 01:29PM

Reasonable increase in mean hourly earnings during 2017

22.15 to 22.66

That's a 2.3% increase, which is ok, given the low inflation.

Weekly earnings are up 2.5% to 735 euro.

ballyargus · 26-02-2018 01:31PM

No. Rent and property here are scandalous.

draiochtanois · 26-02-2018 04:05PM

This post has been deleted.

FizzleSticks · 27-02-2018 01:20AM

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Avatar MIA · 27-02-2018 04:27PM

FizzleSticks wrote: »

I've seen a lot of job posts where they are chancing their arm with the salary they're offering and sure enough someone takes it.

Mostly the jobs which are 20-35K are entry level or administrative but I have seen posts where they are advertising for a skilled job with 2-3 years experience and offer the starter salary with no benefits.

I'm sure it happens, but any experienced company wont want that type of employee, especially at more responsible levels. It's why I've seen some people undercut the stated salary and don't get hired.

Creol1 · 27-02-2018 08:43PM

JustAThought wrote: »

Of course in the public service there is no comparison - nor do the surveys factor in the incredible benefit of an index linked pension for life and gilden handshake when you retire - on the back of pruvate sector taxes and effort of course.

Pensions do tend to be for life.

irishguy · 27-02-2018 09:40PM

If you look at the stats from charteredaccountants.ie not that many people respond in each category, the average qualification year is in the late 90's (so 20 years PQE, so 25 years after uni) and in a lot of categories the highest paid got ~8/10 times more than the lowest.
So yes there are some very paid people in Accounting (predominantly in larger Financial services organisations), but without a larger sample set and mean figures it doesnt mean much.

Conversely, I personally know a few accountants (mid-manager level) and software engineers (senior/tech lead) earning 100 -120k (salary+bonus+pension) all working for large US companies with 10-15 years experience. There are a lot of well-paid jobs in those sectors, but only for strong candidates.

ted1 · 27-02-2018 10:15PM

Greybottle wrote: »

Average wage is a false statistic. It distorts the true picture somewhat.

The mean wage is around €29,000, which is a far more accurate picture of true earnings in the State.

Our grads start on 31k

I think to give a mean wage you need to break out jobs that require a formal qualification v a job anybody could walk into

cinnamony · 28-02-2018 04:40PM

ted1 wrote: »

Our grads start on 31k

I think to give a mean wage you need to break out jobs that require a formal qualification v a job anybody could walk into

I'm a recent graduate and I don't know anyone on more than 26k. I work in Data Analytics and had to negotiate a higher salary as the company wanted to give me 22k. My friends working in IT on 30k have a few years experience already so I think maybe it depends on the sector.

irishguy · 28-02-2018 04:56PM

cinnamony wrote: »

I'm a recent graduate and I don't know anyone on more than 26k. I work in Data Analytics and had to negotiate a higher salary as the company wanted to give me 22k. My friends working in IT on 30k have a few years experience already so I think maybe it depends on the sector.

We pay all our Dev grads (only hired 3 last year) between 30-35. 35 would only be for very strong grads/Masters students etc.

12 years ago when I graduated our class got between 24-31 (the ones that went into large MNC's and were strong devs i.e. 2.1/1.1), most were high 20's.
I know all the grads we interviewed had multiple offers in the 30-35 range, I would say they would be all the top 10% of students. i.e they all had written decent pieces of software in their free time we could talk about.

If you get non dev roles or in smaller companies then the above salaries would be less, if your non IT it would be less initially.

cinnamony · 28-02-2018 05:37PM

irishguy wrote: »

We pay all our Dev grads (only hired 3 last year) between 30-35. 35 would only be for very strong grads/Masters students etc.

12 years ago when I graduated our class got between 24-31 (the ones that went into large MNC's and were strong devs i.e. 2.1/1.1), most were high 20's.
I know all the grads we interviewed had multiple offers in the 30-35 range, I would say they would be all the top 10% of students. i.e they all had written decent pieces of software in their free time we could talk about.

If you get non dev roles or in smaller companies then the above salaries would be less, if your non IT it would be less initially.

Funnily enough Data Analytics is supposedly a high paying field as it is a specialization but I literally don't know anyone from my degree making 30K, my friends who work in IT and are making 30-32k are developers or software engineers. But then again they have a few years of experience. Some of them studied in Trinity or UCD so I'm not talking just about ITs (people say grads from ITs earn less) I guess its a really variable figure!

irishguy · 28-02-2018 05:47PM

cinnamony wrote: »

Funnily enough Data Analytics is supposedly a high paying field as it is a specialization but I literally don't know anyone from my degree making 30K, my friends who work in IT and are making 30-32k are developers or software engineers. But then again they have a few years of experience. Some of them studied in Trinity or UCD so I'm not talking just about ITs (people say grads from ITs earn less) I guess its a really variable figure!

Grads are really just a high risk cost for companies until they have a few years experience. Only the larger companies can afford to hire and pay you more in the hope you become productive in a year or 2.

Data Analytics/Data Science is well paid, but only if you have a strong development background (say in Java) and you learn R, Spark, Scala etc. That would take a while to learn all that to a sufficient enough level where you can become an asset to a company and they are willing to pay you a decent salary. Stick with it and in a few years you will be on decent money, assuming the current bubble doesnt burst by then.

cinnamony · 28-02-2018 06:13PM

irishguy wrote: »

Grads are really just a high risk cost for companies until they have a few years experience. Only the larger companies can afford to hire and pay you more in the hope you become productive in a year or 2.

Data Analytics/Data Science is well paid, but only if you have a strong development background (say in Java) and you learn R, Spark, Scala etc. That would take a while to learn all that to a sufficient enough level where you can become an asset to a company and they are willing to pay you a decent salary. Stick with it and in a few years you will be on decent money, assuming the current bubble doesnt burst by then.

Thats essentially what I'm hoping for. My degree had a strong emphasis on Python and R and not much Java or Spark. The company I work for has a Java and SQL team as well as a low turn over because they mostly hire internally. I've managed to build a good relationship with the development team and theyve stated that eventually they will train me in Java and SQL, so I am using my lower salary to build a stronger skillset. Java, SQL and Excel at work and Python, R and Spark in my own time.

As a graduate you have to take risks like this (accepting lower salaries to gain experience) in the hopes it pays off. In a large MNC for example it would have likely not been as easy for me to build a relationship with the development team and get trained from scratch..

GarIT · 28-02-2018 07:16PM

cinnamony wrote: »

I'm a recent graduate and I don't know anyone on more than 26k. I work in Data Analytics and had to negotiate a higher salary as the company wanted to give me 22k. My friends working in IT on 30k have a few years experience already so I think maybe it depends on the sector.

Was it a college or Uni you went to? I know one guy that got €125k from Amazon as a graduate but he was unique because his thesis had something to do with improving the performance of AWS. Another 3 on €75K and anyone I know with a 1st got $40K+. Most of the people with a 2:1 or lower are in the €28-36k range. I've never heard of anyone getting lower than €28k.

As a CS grad I wouldn't turn up for an interview if I knew they were payig less than €36k.

fungie · 28-02-2018 08:34PM

cinnamony wrote: »

I'm a recent graduate and I don't know anyone on more than 26k. I work in Data Analytics and had to negotiate a higher salary as the company wanted to give me 22k. My friends working in IT on 30k have a few years experience already so I think maybe it depends on the sector.

Generally data analytics jobs should pay more than Dev jobs so that is unusual.

cinnamony · 28-02-2018 09:14PM

I went to a uni and just for the record I don't have a background in CS, Data Analytics is more of a Statistical field than it is a Computing one imo. Funnily enough I did better with programming than stats and got a 1:1 or high 2:1 in all my programming projects. But due to a few unexpected circumstances I got a 2:2 overall (was so close though..sigh), I didnt take time off because I didn't expect to be so badly affected by the events in my life at the time.. A terrible mistake I know!
Before I accepted this job in Dublin I even applied to jobs in the UK and the salaries for Data Analytics were still low.
Actually at the time Accenture were looking for a person with 5 or 10 years experience with Python and Natural language processing and the salary was 45k I believe.
I got an offer from a start up company to build an API for them for free.

Edited to add: I know someone working for Amazon as a Grad Software Engineer, they're making 24k...

TimeToShine · 01-03-2018 04:39PM

Haha €125k my arse. If his thesis actually had any relevance to AWS and he was that good they would have shipped him to the US on a H1B. Amazon don't have any operations or development underway in Ireland that warrants a grad being paid 6 figures. The cream of crop are in the US.

CS grads are making good money alright, I put it at around 26-33k for the ITs and 33-45k for the UCD/TCD ones, with a good portfolio contributing significantly regardless of which college you went to.

GarIT · 01-03-2018 11:16PM

TimeToShine wrote: »

Haha €125k my arse. If his thesis actually had any relevance to AWS and he was that good they would have shipped him to the US on a H1B. Amazon don't have any operations or development underway in Ireland that warrants a grad being paid 6 figures. The cream of crop are in the US.

He could be I'm not 100% sure, he could be talking out of his arse, but he seemed like a decent lad and our lecturers talked like he was the best thing that ever happened to the University. It's not that unrealistic given that if you improved the efficencyof AWS by 1% you'd probably be saving them 10s of millions if not more and his thesis was definitely on Cloud Processing efficency.

02-03-2018 09:23PM

cinnamony wrote: »

Funnily enough Data Analytics is supposedly a high paying field as it is a specialization but I literally don't know anyone from my degree making 30K, my friends who work in IT and are making 30-32k are developers or software engineers. But then again they have a few years of experience. Some of them studied in Trinity or UCD so I'm not talking just about ITs (people say grads from ITs earn less) I guess its a really variable figure!

I got a degree from an IT in Software Development and the salary from my graduate job is 33k/year. I am doing software testing.

Avatar MIA · 02-03-2018 09:28PM

GarIT wrote: »

He could be I'm not 100% sure, he could be talking out of his arse, but he seemed like a decent lad and our lecturers talked like he was the best thing that ever happened to the University. It's not that unrealistic given that if you improved the efficencyof AWS by 1% you'd probably be saving them 10s of millions if not more and his thesis was definitely on Cloud Processing efficency.

It's plausible. Why wouldn't they pay him so well considering. Possibly sold himself short. Good luck to him.

cinnamony · 03-03-2018 02:18PM

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I got a degree from an IT in Software Development and the salary from my graduate job is 33k/year. I am doing software testing.

Don't get me wrong I am by no means saying its impossible

just putting it out there that for many reasons this can vary. My degree is specifically in Data Science (not Computer Science or anything else JUST Data Science) which doesn't qualify me for Dev roles or anything of the like. My company pays their Project Managers 28-30k for example and this isnt a role for people just out of college. Its just how salaries are they vary a lot for many reasons which is why when talking about the "average wage" the median (not the mean) should be the standard measurement.

Geuze · 06-03-2018 12:15PM

GarIT wrote: »

As a CS grad I wouldn't turn up for an interview if I knew they were payig less than €36k.

Last year or the year before Ammeon were paying 23k for graduates, based in central Dublin.

I often think some ICT wages are not as high as the media portrays.

draiochtanois · 06-03-2018 12:18PM

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GarIT · 06-03-2018 03:36PM

Geuze wrote: »

Last year or the year before Ammeon were paying 23k for graduates, based in central Dublin.

I often think some ICT wages are not as high as the media portrays.

Definitely not. I know a lot of people stuck around €30k. If you put effort in and present yourself well with good results €45k is achieveable though.

Are wages that bad ?

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