Shortage of IT staff?

Caseywhale · 01-05-2012 10:45AM

djpbarry wrote: »

Caseywhale wrote: »

And If I was a grad I would certainly be looking for perm paid work in the uk instead of being raped here.

I'd love to know this magical UK location that pays graduates multiples of what they'd earn in Ireland? Because from where I'm sitting, entry-level salaries in Dublin are very competitive with London, especially when you compare net salaries rather than gross.

And yet here we are with a tread full of
Grads who can't get work in Ireland.

Sparks · 01-05-2012 10:55AM

Caseywhale wrote: »

And yet here we are with a tread full of
Grads who can't get work in Ireland.

The two concepts are not mutually exclusive you know...

djpbarry · 01-05-2012 11:07AM

Sparks wrote: »

That's rather a specialised niche djp..

Yeah, I’m pretty special.

Caseywhale wrote: »

And yet here we are with a tread full of Grads who can't get work in Ireland.

That doesn’t answer my question?

Caseywhale · 01-05-2012 11:24AM

Sparks wrote: »

Caseywhale wrote: »

And yet here we are with a tread full of
Grads who can't get work in Ireland.

The two concepts are not mutually exclusive you know...

Grad can't get a Job in Ireland.
Lots of jobs in the uk.
Grad goes to uk. Grad gets job.
Grad stays in Ireland. Grad goes on the dole and post on boards that he can't get a job.

Seems straightforward enough to me.
I don't get the attitudes here. I'm saying go work where you can get work first off. And then go earn more where your skills are valued more.
It's not that hard to do. Start with recruitment websites. I already posted an excellent one.

Caseywhale · 01-05-2012 11:25AM

Sparks wrote: »

Caseywhale wrote: »

And yet here we are with a tread full of
Grads who can't get work in Ireland.

The two concepts are not mutually exclusive you know...

Grad can't get a Job in Ireland.
Lots of jobs in the uk.
Grad goes to uk. Grad gets job.
Grad stays in Ireland. Grad goes on the dole and post on boards that he can't get a job.

Seems straightforward enough to me.
I don't get the attitudes here. I'm saying go work where you can get work first off. And then go earn more where your skills are valued more.
It's not that hard to do. Start with recruitment websites. I already posted an excellent one.

Giblet · 01-05-2012 11:30AM

Except it seems these elusive graduates don't exist. My PM box and email accounts have tumbleweeds blowing through them. Any college I've contacted directly has said all their graduating classes HAVE jobs already! Crazy stuff!

kayos · 01-05-2012 11:41AM

You know what reading this reminds me of a quote from transformers 3 (sad I know).

"The only thing stopping you getting the job you want is this job now." or something along those lines.

Sorry but to the grads out there... take the crap money, work your ass off and get the experience and move on in the world. If the job is paying the same or more than the dole its better to be worked to the bone and get experience than waiting around for the job you think you deserve. After all if that job comes along while your in the crap money job you can always apply.

Two people with the exact same degree and results. One has been on the dole for the 12 months after college, the other has been in a job getting experience (paid in peanuts and worked hard). Who's gonna get the next job they both apply for?

MagicRon · 01-05-2012 11:46AM

Giblet wrote:

Except it seems these elusive graduates don't exist. My PM box and email accounts have tumbleweeds blowing through them. Any college I've contacted directly has said all their graduating classes HAVE jobs already! Crazy stuff!

Caseywhale wrote: »

Grad can't get a Job in Ireland....
....Seems straightforward enough to me.

Caseywhale, I have had the same experience as Giblet.
Find me one graduate, with OK to decent grades, who can't find a job in Ireland, and I'll believe you.
This person must be actively trying to find a job and not just someone who is sitting at home believing there is no point in looking because there is nothing out there for him/her ... a terrible attitude for anyone to have!

After months (and more months) of searching (searching, not choosing or sifting through CVs), our company has finally hired a number of graduates.

Did you have trouble finding a job in Ireland Caseywhale or what leads you to believe there are no jobs here?

MagicRon · 01-05-2012 11:49AM

kayos wrote: »

Sorry but to the grads out there... take the crap money, work your ass off and get the experience and move on in the world. If the job is paying the same or more than the dole its better to be worked to the bone and get experience than waiting around for the job you think you deserve. After all if that job comes along while your in the crap money job you can always apply.

Two people with the exact same degree and results. One has been on the dole for the 12 months after college, the other has been in a job getting experience (paid in peanuts and worked hard). Who's gonna get the next job they both apply for?

No. Just No. Terrible advice!
No IT graduate should take a job paying dole money.

What was the degree and what were the results?

djpbarry · 01-05-2012 11:50AM

Caseywhale wrote: »

Start with recruitment websites.

Any job site I look at is listing quite a few IT/software development jobs in both the UK and Ireland? What's more, I'm not seeing the massive pay differential you've been talking about?

djpbarry · 01-05-2012 11:52AM

MagicRon wrote: »

No. Just No. Terrible advice!
No IT graduate should take a job paying dole money.

Even if (hypothetically speaking) there are no other jobs available?

MagicRon · 01-05-2012 11:56AM

djpbarry wrote: »

Even if (hypothetically speaking) there are no other jobs available?

There are other jobs available. Loads of them.

I have never been in that position but if a job was only going to pay me dole money, I think I'd rather take the dole and work on my own projects!

djpbarry · 01-05-2012 11:58AM

MagicRon wrote: »

There are other jobs available. Loads of them.

Suppose there were not?

MagicRon wrote: »

I have never been in that position but if a job was only going to pay me dole money, I think I'd rather take the dole and work on my own projects!

Fair enough, but a graduate needs workplace experience at some point.

The Corinthian · 01-05-2012 12:05PM

kayos wrote: »

Sorry but to the grads out there... take the crap money, work your ass off and get the experience and move on in the world. If the job is paying the same or more than the dole its better to be worked to the bone and get experience than waiting around for the job you think you deserve. After all if that job comes along while your in the crap money job you can always apply.

A long time ago (pre-Celtic Tiger), coming to the end of your degree, you'd attend a series of company presentations known as the milk round. Anything less than a 2.1 and you simply weren't in the running. If you managed to get a job, much of the time you would likely be starting on about £12k p.a. - which considering that the Dole, with rent allowance and all the other benefit would probably come to about £9k, wasn't a terribly attractive prospect for what would often be a 60+ hour week.

However, within a few years of cutting your teeth, your salary would increase dramatically.

But that only works for the bluechip firms. If you start at a low salary in an SME, within a few years of cutting your teeth, your salary will not increase all that much unless you know how to play hard-ball in negotiations.

This has unfortunately engendered much of the job hopping, which is not very good for the industry, as well as a propensity for IT firms to hire yellow pack workers, leading to much of the cowboy coding that Ireland is famous for.

So, I don't know if I would agree entirely with you. If you're a graduate you should take the job with the crap pay, but only if it benefits your career path - many IT jobs simply don't; they specialize in often non-transferable, proprietary skills and the quality of experience in some firms is also questionable to say the least.

And in the longer term, I just don't think it's all that good for the industry as a whole.

run_Forrest_run · 01-05-2012 12:24PM

the place where I work we are constantly having problems finding suitable people for software development. And it's not as if we are using some obscure technology, Java (SWT, Eclipse Plugin development, EMF etc)...nothing too mad!

Out of the last 10 people hired, there's been only 1 who is Irish, the rest are from Italy, India and Portugal.

Sparks · 01-05-2012 12:25PM

Caseywhale wrote: »

Lots of jobs in the uk.

I think that's the line that highlights the assumption in the argument. Are there lots of jobs for new graduates in the UK?

I don't get the attitudes here.

They're based on a decade or more of Ireland being sold as a high-tech IT-based economy, with major multinationals basing their EMEA offices in Ireland, and then new graduates finding that suitable jobs are not as easy to find as the advertising suggested, after ploughing years of their life into qualifying for those jobs (and now we're seeing people retraining away from industries that are dying on their feet and they're finding it even tougher going).

Phrases like "It's not that hard to do", by the way, are almost dickish, given the context...

Duggys Housemate · 01-05-2012 12:44PM

It does seem to be harder in Ireland, my anecdotal evidence is that - living in England - I posted a CV to monster.ie and got about 15 calls from England ( from my address I supposed, even though I say Ireland on the CV) and one from Ireland.

BostonB · 01-05-2012 12:49PM

dazberry wrote: »

...Regardless, it all stood for nothing, my experience (since 1994 commercially, was cutting 8 bit code in the 80s) stood for nothing, the 9 to 5 RAD tool stood for nothing, my out of hours c# stood for nothing. The last 3 1/2 years in the place was on a Londonesque rate (in Dublin), but was otherwise effectively unemployable. I can't tell you the number of times I was told to my face I had NO EXPERIENCE. There were times I offered to work for nothing, but I won't recant any specific experiences or name any companies as I'll just end up ranting...

In 2011 almost 6 years later, I managed to get a C# contract. I love cutting code and being part of the process, it's the best job in the world, but I f**king hate this industry...

D.

All that is sellable experience. But not at the coder level. You need to move into a different role like project management, technical pre-sales, business analyst or similar roles to leverage previous experience and not be entirely at the whim of the latest technologies changes.

If you want to stay a coder you'll have to keep up with the latest technologies. Being a contractor makes this painfully obvious. They are really only interested in your current active skills, and the roles you've had in the last two years.

Sparks · 01-05-2012 01:03PM

BostonB wrote: »

If you want to stay a coder you'll have to keep up with the latest technologies.

OR, work with legacy systems. Which is the rather large and not-talked-about sector of our industry. Which is funny really, you'd think that banks and hospitals and emergency services and large (I mean *large*) companies were all out there rewriting the software that lets them operate, in a new language, using new programming paradigms, on a monthly basis.

Hell, half the underlying assumptions of the cutting edge crowd's techniques just don't apply to a lot of legacy code work. And the love of the "latest technologies" runs in to problems in the majority of the IT sector, with the conversation following the same general trend: "is it broken? No? Then why do you want to spend six person-months rewriting it? How much money will we make from the new features? What do you mean, no new features and an untested codebase? Who let this guy in the room?"

Don't get me wrong, if you want to do things with erlang (actually, quick question - when the hell did erlang become fashionable? I was teaching that in 1997 for feck's sake, and it was old then...) or ruby or whatever, then good for you and you probably can make a good and fun living doing it; I'm just saying that the constant churn at the bleeding edge is not a valid representation of the entire IT sector. It's a small, noisy, fun, highly visible facet of that sector, but it is not the largest or the most important facet.

the_syco · 01-05-2012 02:03PM

ixoy wrote: »

The idea that IT is full of empty roles is a bit of a false one - certain areas requiring certain skills sets have lots of demand for roles. It's almost impossible for me to get into these gaps now because in order to get the requisite experience you need the requisite experience...

I think the definition of "IT" is so loose, that it covers anything vaguely IT. I'd nearly wonder if a landscaper that needed knowledge of Excel would be classed as an "IT job"?

questiontime2 wrote: »

I get the impression that these "recruitment" agencies are employed to play tech buzzword soup while harvesting your details

Agreed.

Duggys Housemate · 01-05-2012 02:03PM

BostonB wrote: »

All that is sellable experience. But not at the coder level. You need to move into a different role like project management, technical pre-sales, business analyst or similar roles to leverage previous experience and not be entirely at the whim of the latest technologies changes.

The only way for him to do that is on the job, as he cant turn up at an interview with no experience in those things. In any case some people want to learn specific experience and code, like some people want to be doctors not managing them.

moycullen14 · 01-05-2012 04:14PM

Our friends over on politics.ie are having the same debate....

http://www.politics.ie/forum/economy/187357-open-ireland-wants-issue-75000-new-work-visas-per-annum-tech-grads-18.html

Seems the consensus there is that this is a bit of a conspiracy to reduce costs....

dazberry · 01-05-2012 04:58PM

Sparks wrote: »

"is it broken? No? Then why do you want to spend six person-months rewriting it? How much money will we make from the new features? What do you mean, no new features and an untested codebase? Who let this guy in the room?"

That makes perfect sense in an IT world, move that rationale into a bank and a completely different set of political factors take hold. Most likely the "guy in the room" is your pointy headed boss!!! :rolleyes:. Quite often I felt that problems were being specifically created so the creator could then officiate the fix and hence being someone who is of value to the organisation... /sigh/ ...

Broken is also a very variable term. I've seen very broken software released into production because it was politically beneficial to do so. At the same time (as someone who often ended up having to pick up the pieces after the fact), I had huge trouble getting sign off of on fixing broken code as there was no credit to be gleamed from me delivering it.

D.

BostonB · 01-05-2012 05:04PM

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

The only way for him to do that is on the job, as he cant turn up at an interview with no experience in those things. In any case some people want to learn specific experience and code, like some people want to be doctors not managing them.

I think my point is there no point being a turkey and voting for xmas. If you want to stay with coding you're going to have to accept the technology churn.

Sparks wrote: »

OR, work with legacy systems. Which is the rather large and not-talked-about sector of our industry. ...

or work with legacy stuff. Fair point.

You'd wonder how I missed that since I log on to a VAX at least once a day.

Duggys Housemate · 02-05-2012 11:11AM

moycullen14 wrote: »

Our friends over on politics.ie are having the same debate....

http://www.politics.ie/forum/economy/187357-open-ireland-wants-issue-75000-new-work-visas-per-annum-tech-grads-18.html

Seems the consensus there is that this is a bit of a conspiracy to reduce costs....

The numbers he wants are ludicrous. Ireland at 4 million strong needs 75,000 tech grads per year? Thats like calling for the immigration of 5.6 million tech workers per year in the US, or 1.125 million tech workers a year to the UK. This despite the fact the 400 million people - relative to the population an enormous number - can emigrate and work to Ireland.

Sparks · 02-05-2012 11:43AM

Sounds like the policy FF had a while back of producing thousands of new PhD students.
Which works... until they get their PhDs and suddenly you have thousands of new post-docs looking for work and there just aren't enough roles to go round, and now the people you've invested years and thousands of euros training are forced to leave the country for foreign universities. So short term, great PR soundbite for a TD; long term, it's paying money to destroy a sector of the high-tech economy (the sector that produces the workers for the rest of the economy).

BostonB · 02-05-2012 01:28PM

Last time I heard about the shortage of IT people was primarily the colleges and the agencies. Not from companies. Companies were simply looking for better experience and skilled people. They didn't want grads, and what ever they were offering wasn't attracting better skilled people from inside the EU to Ireland. It would suggest the salaries do not reflect the report demand.

Compare that with say the early 90's where companies would recruit directly in colleges for engineering students before they'd even graduated, I remember companies like Ford, Intel all head hunting large swathes of students, having recruitment nights with free drink and food those classes. Most of them would be recruiting for jobs outside of Ireland too.

Also many industries get employees to commit to a contract of a few years in exchange for training and professional skills transfer. If you want to break your contract you have to pay back the training etc. Theres nothing like this in IT.

Which suggest that IT has a problem with training its own industry, and reseeding the skills pool.

Brussels Sprout · 02-05-2012 06:08PM

mathperson wrote: »

So what's the deal with IT development jobs in Ireland then? What I seem to be picking up from the thread is that it's quite hard to a job in the first place, then when you do the wages are pretty crap, and as technology is fast moving your skills have a limited lifespan so there is not much in the way of progression up a ladder to better wages.

I just read through this entire thread and that was the same basic synopsis I was getting from it. Are people actually happy in this industry because what I've been reading here has been really demoralising.

02-05-2012 06:10PM

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

Are people actually happy in this industry because what I've been reading here has been really demoralising.

In a lot of cases Boards.ie is not representative of Ireland in general.

Duggys Housemate · 02-05-2012 06:23PM

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

In a lot of cases Boards.ie is not representative of Ireland in general.

It's got more IT people.

Shortage of IT staff?

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