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Shortage of IT staff?

moycullen14

I-Sean O'Sullivan of Dragon's Den fame was on Morning Ireland saying we should allow unrestricted access to IT workers (suitably qualified) as a help to boosting the economy.

Now I know we are constantly been told that there is a shortage of IT workers but is this scheme going to help or is it that there is only a shortage of cheap IT workers?

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stevenmu

Gurgle wrote: »

A McDonalds burger flipper does not earn average industrial wage. Try minimum wage, approx €17k.

As above.

Fair enough, I've never flipped burgers. I have done security though, part time in college, and full time for a little while after. I took a slight pay cut to get my first dev job, fair enough I was fresh out of college and needed experience, but it took me a while to get back to parity, and the first real pay bump I got was when I changed companies 4 years later. Up until then I was very much in the same ballpark.

(to be fair the security guard job was a relatively well paid one, but not amazingly well paid)

Gurgle

I've forgotten half the summer / student jobs I had, security guard was the worst.

I do remember finishing final exams on a thursday, making one phonecall on friday when my hangover eased off and started work as a courier on the following monday. Got my first engineering job a couple of months later, losing about £20 per week off my courier pay.

3 years later, still in the same job, I was barely back to what I was earning as a courier (while the other couriers had seen pretty decent rises). No regrets though, I learned a lot in that time.

Technical experience is only part of it, learning how an international corporation operates carries a lot of weight and you can't do that by spending 6 months in each job.

Sparks

carveone wrote: »

Every decent job I ever got was when I happened to talk to a senior engineer directly.

Yeah, it's risk mitigation. Every time (in previous jobs) where an agency sourced people, you had a 50-50 chance that the person would actually have even basic experience in the areas you specified to the agency (there appears to be a shotgun approach being used by some agencies where they just fling any candidate who even half-resembles the spec into an interview in the hope of a hire and the resulting payoff). Whereas if you talk to an engineer and get a personal recommendation into the recruitment process, there's a lot less risk for the company involved. It's why you see the practice of rewarding employees who recommend friends for jobs who get hired.

I will say this from having done the interviewing - if you're putting a CV into a software company for anything beyond the most junior of roles (ie. your first or second job) and I google your name and find nothing in the field (ie. facebook/twitter don't count, I'm talking about blog entries you wrote - or even better, actual papers - on technical topics or code submissions to open source projects and the like) but I do find those things for someone else I'm interviewing, I'm already moving your name to the 'B' pile in my head and theirs to the 'A' pile.

[Deleted User]

I think the pay for a Developer/Programmer is not that bad. I know that being a teacher in Ireland pays less starting out and this pay gap increases over time. (There are some roles where you could be paid less than a teachers salary though)

Sparks

bigbadcon wrote: »

Our Junior Dev of 2 years just handed in his notice to go to another role that is offering him close to 20k more!

Yeah, that's something that the Irish companies I've worked for seem to have created - the "quit and go elsewhere" pay review. Which is really dumb because an employee who leaves is a loss of knowledge, of skills, of time invested in training, and of course, now you have to go through the mill of hiring a replacement with all the financial fun and risk that entails. It's why I decided to forget about small companies last time I changed jobs.

Stark

Big companies are just as bad

I've noticed you mentioned IBM in your blog post, they're the worst by a long shot. Well they're great to work for in a lot of ways (work-life balance, innovation culture, some great people) but not from a pay review point of view. I know guys who've been there for 8 years+, been "promoted" twice and are still on graduate pay.

BostonB

Sparks wrote: »

...I will say this from having done the interviewing - if ... I google your name and find nothing in the field (ie. facebook/twitter don't count, I'm talking about blog entries you wrote - or even better, actual papers - on technical topics or code submissions to open source projects and the like) but I do find those things for someone else I'm interviewing, I'm already moving your name to the 'B' pile in my head and theirs to the 'A' pile.

Out of curiosity what % would have this? I don't think I've met many working in IT, even the most fanatical developers who would appear in that kind of a search. The only thing close to what your describing I've seen is a move to Linked in for making professional contacts and having an on-line resume. I've seen other sectors doing this aswell, not just IT. Seems to be a recent change as a few years back no one was on it, these days I've seen a lot of people appear on it.

harney

I am still, on occasion, getting emails from Irish recruiters for roles and it really pisses me off. I have not lived nor tried to look for work in Ireland for at least 7 years. No amount of "take me off your lists" seems to be sinking through to the recruiters. :mad:

Sparks wrote: »

Yeah, that's something that the Irish companies I've worked for seem to have created - the "quit and go elsewhere" pay review. Which is really dumb because an employee who leaves is a loss of knowledge, of skills, of time invested in training, and of course, now you have to go through the mill of hiring a replacement with all the financial fun and risk that entails. It's why I decided to forget about small companies last time I changed jobs.

It's hardly an Irish thing.

Sparks

BostonB wrote: »

Out of curiosity what % would have this?

Not a huge number - but that's kindof the point, it's a massively useful thing to see attached to a person when you're doing the interviewing because it means you can get a much better feel for their abilities than a half-hour to an hour of an interview will give. I've never hired purely because of a blog before; but knowing going into the interview that the interviewee doesn't just know what JSON is but has actually built things with it and has worked with it enough to develop opinions about it, that's a serious boost to their position on the shortlist if we happen to be using JSON. I don't think that not having a blog means you're a second-rate programmer, you understand; but having one can be very beneficial for your interview prospects. Assuming, of course, that you're being interviewed by an engineer. I don't think I ever saw anyone in HR in any company who would do this (but then, most HR people in the companies I worked for wouldn't know JSON from Jason until the hockey mask came out).

I don't think I've met many working in IT, even the most fanatical developers who would appear in that kind of a search.

Off the top of my head, every tech lead in every SME I worked for bar the first one, the main devs for boards.ie over the last few years, and quite a lot of the people who'd go to things like PubStandards and the like. There are enough of them out there, but I think the percentage may vary according to the kind of work you're doing - I think you'd find a higher percentage in the web 2.0 crowd than in the legacy C++ programming crowd, to use two sweeping inaccurate generalisations

Sparks

Stark wrote: »

Big companies are just as bad I've noticed you mentioned IBM in your blog post, they're the worst by a long shot. Well they're great to work for in a lot of ways (work-life balance, innovation culture, some great people) but not from a pay review point of view. I know guys who've been there for 8 years+, been "promoted" twice and are still on graduate pay.

There are several thousand people just doing dev work in the one place I'm working in; I think you'd find a fair few who've not been promoted allright, but (a) promotions in IBM and pay bumps and bonuses are not all the same thing and run off different metrics ; and (b) the work/life balance alone is worth a huge amount of money to me (and to all the other devs in there who are about my age and who have young families as well). Someone asked if I wanted a recommendation to a company for a job paying quite a lot more than I'm getting now, and honestly, the money just wasn't able to compete with being able to work from home (yay for fibre to the home) so that I can have Sparks 2.0 sleeping in his travel cot at my feet while Walls grabs a shower or whatever without worrying about him.

Frankly, it's kindof a symptom of what's wrong with some companies that I've worked for that such an arrangement just wouldn't be possible in any way with them, that they'd think you were trying to take advantage of them for even suggesting it. But IBM doesn't even blink. And oddly, I wind up working more hours for them than I did for some other, less flexible companies, and I don't even notice it. Out-of-hours calls and work from home rules and being able to code while at home all come together to give you a nice win-win setup where you're happier and they're happier. Maybe if a few more Irish companies (and I think that myself and half the people in this forum could give you a list of exactly which ones) took that lesson on board, they'd have fewer issues with finding good programmers. Not every coder is a 23-year-old with no social ties or dependants...

BostonB

Sparks wrote: »

...Not every coder is a 23-year-old with no social ties or dependants...

Taking that out of context, thats what occurs to me in relation to-being involved in other projects, and appearing on blogs. Its for people (primarily) with time on the their hands as described above.

Intentional or not and for some places its a business decision, but it would exclude a good many not in that group above. Of course some projects would not appeal to people looking to be at the bleeding edge. As such they may jump to something more interesting at the first chance they got.

Sparks

BostonB wrote: »

Taking that out of context, thats what occurs to me in relation to-being involved in other projects, and appearing on blogs. Its for people (primarily) with time on the their hands as described above.

I don't know if its primarily for that group (quite a lot of the more well-known authors out there have young kids and families), but yes, I definitely accept that it's a factor. That's why it should never be the sole reason for the decision. On the other hand, if you were looking for something to put on your to-do list under the heading of continuing professional development, I think that that kind of thing (writing stuff that goes into the public domain, whether it be blog posts or articles or papers or books) is a pretty important kind of thing, if you can wrangle the time to do it.

srsly78

The googling thing I find hilarious. My firstname and surname are very common, both in Ireland and abroad. You simply won't find me. There is however at least one professor of computer science with the same name, and an author of several highly regarded books in the specialist area that I work in.

This has led to some comedy moments in interviews:
Interviewer: I really liked your book on "complicated topic".
Me: wat

k.p.h

srsly78 wrote: »

The googling thing I find hilarious. My firstname and surname are very common, both in Ireland and abroad. You simply won't find me. There is however at least one professor of computer science with the same name, and an author of several highly regarded books in the specialist area that I work in.

This has led to some comedy moments in interviews:
Interviewer: I really liked your book on "complicated topic".
Me: wat

Be really worth you while to read that book and learn it inside out ..

Sparks

srsly78 wrote: »

The googling thing I find hilarious. My firstname and surname are very common, both in Ireland and abroad. You simply won't find me. There is however at least one professor of computer science with the same name, and an author of several highly regarded books in the specialist area that I work in.

I've gotten the other version of that -
"So, you're not this Sparks who shoots things, are you?"
"Well, yeah..."

carveone

Sparks wrote: »

Yeah, it's risk mitigation. Every time (in previous jobs) where an agency sourced people, you had a 50-50 chance that the person would actually have even basic experience in the areas you specified to the agency

There must be considerable pain involved for the company when dealing with agencies, especially when there's a HR layer that insists on doing so. You know there's someone out there with the ideal characteristics but there's no chance of you finding them when agencies decide that a sysadmin with a CCNP isn't the CCNA you were looking for

Whereas if you talk to an engineer and get a personal recommendation into the recruitment process, there's a lot less risk for the company involved.

Or in my case years ago in Sun, finding out the engineer could just ignore HR and hire me on the spot. Yay! Even though I came in in motorbike gear instead of a suit (the engineer just happened to be a 125cc class race champion). Best. Interview. Ever.

first or second job) and I google your name and find nothing in the field (ie. facebook/twitter don't count, I'm talking about blog entries you wrote - or even better, actual papers - on technical topics or code

But I guess a lot of people would write under a pseudonym. I've posted quite a few articles to this forum in the past but not with my real name. Er. Well, blogs are different I guess - most people most with their actual name to that. Er. Must get myself a blogging platform!

My brother said something about taking half the CVs and binning them - they don't want people who are unlucky

Duggys Housemate

BostonB wrote: »

Out of curiosity what % would have this? I don't think I've met many working in IT, even the most fanatical developers who would appear in that kind of a search. The only thing close to what your describing I've seen is a move to Linked in for making professional contacts and having an on-line resume. I've seen other sectors doing this aswell, not just IT. Seems to be a recent change as a few years back no one was on it, these days I've seen a lot of people appear on it.

Sparks wrote: »

I don't know if its primarily for that group (quite a lot of the more well-known authors out there have young kids and families), but yes, I definitely accept that it's a factor. That's why it should never be the sole reason for the decision. On the other hand, if you were looking for something to put on your to-do list under the heading of continuing professional development, I think that that kind of thing (writing stuff that goes into the public domain, whether it be blog posts or articles or papers or books) is a pretty important kind of thing, if you can wrangle the time to do it.

Sparks wrote: »

I've gotten the other version of that -
"So, you're not this Sparks who shoots things, are you?"
"Well, yeah..."

There must be serious engineers in IBM who don't blog. I think GitHub would be a more useful metric. For me I come with a portfolio, and my name does come up on one major open source project but buried down a lot because of my tweeting.

On the other hand a company I worked for hired a blogger who knew a lot about the industry in theory, but couldn't code.

questiontime2

I guess it just really down to "do you want to be rich yourself, or do you want to make somebody else rich?" Working for other people is not an option, people tend to be far too emotional and prejudiced when hiring others. Ireland needs more home grown software houses and products, not Corporations who are only here because of our generous Corporate welfare.

Increase the 12.5% Corporate Tax rate, and watch em leave. They are only here because of the tax breaks, what is to stop IBM or Intel or Google from relocating to India? Not much.

Sparks

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

There must be serious engineers in IBM who don't blog.

Yes, but IBM pushes them (by making doing such things a metric for your annual performance review) to write white papers, best practices papers, patents, academic papers - all things that turn up in a google search.
But I take your point - and I'm not disagreeing with it, I'm just saying that if you're doing interviewing and you can go into the interview with more information on the candidate's technical ability because of stuff they've done that you can see in blogs or papers or whatever, it does really good things to that candidate's chances.

Sparks

questiontime2 wrote: »

I guess it just really down to "do you want to be rich yourself, or do you want to make somebody else rich?" Working for other people is not an option, people tend to be far too emotional and prejudiced when hiring others. Ireland needs more home grown software houses and products, not Corporations who are only here because of our generous Corporate welfare.

Honestly, after several years doing the SME/startup thing, I wouldn't disagree with you, but I wouldn't go work for one (an SME/startup). For every one of those that's well run, a good place to work and financially successful (even if only to the break-even point), there are quite a lot which are badly run, horrible places to be stuck in and which lurch drunkenly from one missed goal to the next, somehow scraping enough together to pay most of the bills until eventually the whole house of cards falls over, usually leaving the current employees standing round without a chair after the music stops.

They are only here because of the tax breaks, what is to stop IBM or Intel or Google from relocating to India? Not much.

IBM is already in India - I work with the team there every day. And the team in Canada, the US, China and Israel. IBM Ireland isn't going anywhere anytime soon, corporate tax or not. Can't speak as to Intel and Google, but Intel has quite a large capital investment here and Google Ireland is the largest Google site outside of the US last I looked.

Now big pharma and other manufacturers, yeah, I can see them legging it as soon as the tax breaks (both the straightforward and the slightly murky practices like the dutch sandwich) go away.

questiontime2

Sparks wrote: »

Yes, but IBM pushes them (by making doing such things a metric for your annual performance review) to write white papers, best practices papers, patents, academic papers - all things that turn up in a google search.
But I take your point - and I'm not disagreeing with it, I'm just saying that if you're doing interviewing and you can go into the interview with more information on the candidate's technical ability because of stuff they've done that you can see in blogs or papers or whatever, it does really good things to that candidate's chances.

Better to write stuff under your own name with no other co authors, at least then you can retain the copyright.

questiontime2

Sparks wrote: »

Honestly, after several years doing the SME/startup thing, I wouldn't disagree with you, but I wouldn't go work for one (an SME/startup). For every one of those that's well run, a good place to work and financially successful (even if only to the break-even point), there are quite a lot which are badly run, horrible places to be stuck in and which lurch drunkenly from one missed goal to the next, somehow scraping enough together to pay most of the bills until eventually the whole house of cards falls over, usually leaving the current employees standing round without a chair after the music stops.

IBM is already in India - I work with the team there every day. And the team in Canada, the US, China and Israel. IBM Ireland isn't going anywhere anytime soon, corporate tax or not. Can't speak as to Intel and Google, but Intel has quite a large capital investment here and Google Ireland is the largest Google site outside of the US last I looked.

Now big pharma and other manufacturers, yeah, I can see them legging it as soon as the tax breaks (both the straightforward and the slightly murky practices like the dutch sandwich) go away.

Very valid and fair points overall.

Duggys Housemate

some of these fly by night corporations have been here since the dawn of the computer age, or near enough.

Sparks

questiontime2 wrote: »

Better to write stuff under your own name with no other co authors, at least then you can retain the copyright.

I would disagree.

Write a best practices paper in IBM and it's what IBM recommends as the official procedure to all its customers. If your name is on that paper, that's a pretty serious thing in your CV, at least to anyone who's ever used that product.

Patents cost on average €30-40k to file (realistically). If you have that to spend, cool - if not, you don't get the patent.

White papers... well, they generally only mean something coming from companies that are about to go implement the things in them, or who are leading that field. If Joe Random writes one, that's nice, but it doesn't have a whole lot of weight really. So you tend to see them coming from companies and academic groups, but you don't see them coming from individuals that often.

And so on. Besides, the value in these things to you is how far they're circulated, not in maintaining the copyright...

Stheno

questiontime2 wrote: »

Better to write stuff under your own name with no other co authors, at least then you can retain the copyright.

IBM contracts tend to contain a standard clause which gives IBM the IP (intellectual property) rights over anything you produce while employed by IBM, at least mine did when I was there

I agree with sparks, I work in IT and the likes of PMBOK and several other organisations that different specialists would be associated with include in ongoing development that as you rise up the levels you must produce evidence of authoring/volunteering or mentoring to maintain your membership. It would be a differentiator for me if I were hiring.

questiontime2

Sparks wrote: »

I would disagree.

Write a best practices paper in IBM and it's what IBM recommends as the official procedure to all its customers. If your name is on that paper, that's a pretty serious thing in your CV, at least to anyone who's ever used that product.

Patents cost on average €30-40k to file (realistically). If you have that to spend, cool - if not, you don't get the patent.

White papers... well, they generally only mean something coming from companies that are about to go implement the things in them, or who are leading that field. If Joe Random writes one, that's nice, but it doesn't have a whole lot of weight really. So you tend to see them coming from companies and academic groups, but you don't see them coming from individuals that often.

And so on. Besides, the value in these things to you is how far they're circulated, not in maintaining the copyright...

Feck. Never thought of the patent and recognition factor. In theory I would like to disagree with you, but you aren't lying when you say associating your name with a company like IBM or some fancy research think tank is going to score you some serious cred. If that were not the case, professional bodies would not exist. Anybody can hack some obscure, junk open source project together and put it on github.

There are some awful, awful coders out there. I have to admit, I really like using IBM's well written online documentation. Their publib.boulder.ibm documentation is fantastic and professional. Ever tried looking through the OpenSSL "documentation"? You might as well just rip your hair out. It's nothing short of a joke.

DublinWriter

srsly78 wrote: »

Interviewer: I really liked your book on "complicated topic".
Me: wat

The correct response is "Thank you, now back to my proposed salary..."

Irishwolff

moycullen14 wrote: »

I-Sean O'Sullivan of Dragon's Den fame was on Morning Ireland saying we should allow unrestricted access to IT workers (suitably qualified) as a help to boosting the economy.

Now I know we are constantly been told that there is a shortage of IT workers but is this scheme going to help or is it that there is only a shortage of cheap IT workers?

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.
I dont think this scheme would be good because it will make it even harder to find work, with competition from people from india coming over to work for a lesser wage.

My own story is that I have a degree in software development and have been applying for jobs for the last 8 months. Most of the interviews I do are in Dublin and takes me 4 hours to get there by bus and 4 hours back so a total of 8 hours in one day on the bus. I sat in front of interviewers who told me that they were crying out for software developers right now, only a week later to recieve a "you have been unsuccessful" response. Some interviewers have told me during the interview itself, that it is "doubful" that I would get the job, despite me travelling all the way to Dublin. He had his head down studying my CV for most of the interview. So I dont think he appreciated the distance I travelled to get there. In general I do well in interviews, I answer all the questions right but in general I dont get the job and the reason why I dont get it? I dont know because I get a generic responce like "the other interviewees had more of the skills we wanted". So I get alot of BS responses and dont know where exactly I am going wrong in interviews so that I could actually improve in that area. Surely its not my skills as I have got a degree, a portfolio and I am applying for graduate positions.
Another place ask me to make a game as part of the interview process, I did and then got called in for an interview. The game took me a week to make. I nerver got any feedback after the interview despite me following up 3 times after the interview over a 2 month period. Just got a response from HR, he will get back to you when he makes a decision. That was at Christmas, no response since.

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.

Duggys Housemate

It seems pretty hard for grads, right enough. Government intervention could help here.

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.