A career in I.T.

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Is it fair to say that there's a growing glut of qualified I.T. workers and the salary boom is nearing its end? Just trying to make sense of my mate's brother-in-law's endless whining.</p>

 

I work in the IT field, it's safe to say - that experience wise, the last 2 years has been great. Pay-wise, compared to the rest of the nation it's terrible. I'll be on the lookout for a new job when I get my next batch of training finished, Exchange and Cluster Server maintenance training....wooo!

 

most IT workers are on 18k

all these "get a career in IT qualifications" are 2-a-penny. only the genuine IT experts earn shedloads i think

 

Possibly something to do with the increase of IT work being offshored to India.

 

Its all wrong

Staying over there, taking our jobs. Disgrace

 

Only if your a layabout coder like that there City Tyke geezer and the erstwhile YorkRed.

I once hired an Informix / Unix writer from Bombay to work in Dhahran, he was on $265 US a month. When I offered him $2100 a month (the bare minimum, under DHL's HR policy) he burst into tears bless him.

He was good too.

 

Exchange and Clusters

.............. should be exclusively my fields ! If you train up, my salary will go down. Learn DOS instead. You know it makes sense.

 

IT bods.

Car mechanics for the new generation.

"Who put this operating system in, mate? it's f**ked. Going have to bypass the metadata and core processes to speed up the bit rate in the carpet valve. It's a long job, and it'll cost you. Now, if you wouldn't mind leaving the room while I press ctrl-alt-delete and then search Google to find out exactly what it is that's wrong..."

 

RE: Supply & demand

Depends on type & level of skills, plus the region... but wages are falling. I used to contract out at £450/day but now could only do so at £250/day cos there's more consultants than there is work in many skill areas.

Here are a few other factors:

IT graduates are now 10-to-a-penny. It's fun watching them realise the world doesn't owe them a living, but this dearth is affecting salaries for more experienced IT workers too.

Most SMBs can't justify paying big bucks for top bods, so they make do with low-level IT staff and rent-a-consultant in once in a while.

Large businesses are having to make cutbacks to prop up profits. Pay rises are usually negligible, outsourcing is common.

Some IT services companies (especially EDS) handle outsourcing by retasking the most experienced existing staff to generating new business. The shortfall in supporting the outsourced contract is made up by recruiting graduates. And they wonder why outsourced government IT projects fail (NOOO)

Off-shoring is increasing, but there seems to be some backlash as companies realise they have even less knowledge of their IT systems internally on which to base strategic decisions. Also the quality of communication for day-to-day operations is not what it should be.

Another factor is the importing of IT workers that the government instigated in the last 10 years... they perceived a lack of IT skills (read "at a reasonable pay rate") so they fast-tracked visas for thousands of IT workers, often from India. This has also reduced IT pay in the UK /poo

For some reason Yorkshire seems to have v poor pay rates for IT. This may be due to the closure/relocation of several large IT departments & companies in Sheffield/Leeds over the last few years. Many IT folk i know have to commute at least as far as that for work now, often to Manchester though!

In Yorkshire you would earn much more as a plumber than an average IT worker. Even some consultant roles are advertised for only £22-25k.

Of course you could do what i do... live in Barnsley, work in London where salaries are much better!!! (blaze)

 

What's your field ? nt

 

RE: What's your field ? nt

Main techie skills are databases (Oracle, Ingres, bit of Informix), and UNIX/VMS. Worked in finance, education systems, retail, central government, local government, now in mobile telecoms

 

RE: What's your field ? nt

Ahhh the joys of Oracle and logging into d3

Not used Ingres though. What's it like?

Dabbled with Fortran, sucks ass.

Also, how many people here are actually running Linux on their home PC's? Anyone?

 

Thanks for the replies. I think that's a yes. nt

 

No

But you need to be good - there are a glut of people who do these micky mouse "let's get into IT courses" who don't know a lot and can do even less. You also need to understand the market and make sure you get into the lucrative areas and stay in those areas.

 

RE: What's your field ? nt

Ingres used to be better than Oracle, but since around 9i Oracle's marketing hype has actually been true... still more expensive & resource-hungry though

 

RE: Maybe

Maybe not as simple as staying in lucrative areas.

You've got to make sure you jump to a different field if your marketplace gets crowded... switching to newer technologies seems a popular way of doing this

 

That's exactly what I meant! If the marketplace gets crowded it isn't a lucrative area anymore.

 

Fair enuff

 

RE: Supply & demand

It helps if you're prepared to move further afield too in order to get the experience. When I was getting going I did a few years in Sweden which was well outside my comfort zone, if you'll pardon the buzzwords, but which made a huge difference to my CV and subsequent career. And again over the last few years there's better money to be had in places like Scandinavia so I've taken the decision to go there and get it. The best jobs are rarely on your doorstep, or even in your country of residence.

 

RE: Supply & demand

One thing for certain the opportunities/rates in Yorkshire are fairly poor. London must offer some of the best rate for IT in the world - particularly if you can get in to the financial institutions in the city - A decent Microsoft programmer with good knowledge of say derivatives trading can earn £800- £1000 a day.