Attention, CIOs: Stop outsourcing or YOU will never retire

Re: Full time?

I'm full time because I'm not so fussed about the money and prefer the social side but I am considering going back to contracting in part because of the lack of training.

But I wouldn't necessarily agree that what people want is industry recognised qualifications - there are always people who do but personally I just want to know how to do things. One of the great problems with training course is that they often focus solely on getting people through the exams - to the point of including information that is not actually true but is what one is expected to know.

If someone won't employ me because I've never bothered acquiring the qualifications then that's fine - it's probably best for both of us that way.

Re: Full time?

"Outsource projects have never worked" Rubbish. The problem is that a working outsource project is not news, a failing one is. You have to have understanding and management skills in the company doing the outsourcing as well as the provider of services, if you do - and you don't go for the cheapest option - the chances are that your project will be ok.

It's very much like the "All BMW drivers are idiots", they're not, you only remember the ones who are a meter away from you doing 80 on the motorway, not the ones who drive in a non-memorable manner.

Well i'm currently on £600 a day doing very little. You must be in the wrong market segment....

Agree that money is part of the problem.

When I started in IT in 2000 the typical salary for your 1st line desktop support monkey (outside London) was about 13k. It's now about 16k. That's a 15% rise in salary in 10 years when living costs have doubled and house prices have quadrupled. Yes, you earn more as you learn more but you don't earn THAT much more in desktop support. Your skills have been scrapped and your job outsourced to India. Never mind that they don't do it well, they do it cheaper and that's all that matters to the Board. And if the Board need that specialist skill, they'll get a contractor in for 6 months.

I wouldn't encourage anyone to go in to IT, knowing what the job is like now. Poor salary, no respect from the rest of the company (because if it's computers, it can't be hard, right?), no training, no career progression (because how many people make it out of IT in to management?) and no job security.

Well said

Not in UK, but I started my IT career in France, in the early 90s.

Back then it was made very very clear that being a developer after a 3-5 years was a sure sign of LOSER and unable to progress in your career.

You had to:

- become a manager

- becomes a salesman

- become an IT architect

Developer salaries reflected those priorities.

Now, I like working with computers to code, debug and even admin. I would even do it for less pay, but that's not necessary and being a undervalued is both annoying and a red flag.

None of the fields above hold any great attraction to me (too many useless architects encountered for #3).

But most clever products, websites or inhouse programs require at least a small cadre of highly skilled devs and that takes education, and years of experience, drive and just plain old curiosity to achieve.

How the heck do you attract clever folks if you make it very clear a given field is a dead end?

Canada and USA salaries are quite comfortable, for higher end programmers. I was flabbergasted when I saw the pay differences with France back then (things may have changed, dunno).

And, yes, we gotta compete with India, but... that's life, suck it up.

As a starting graduate I feel that £26k is a decent starting wage, considering the difficulties that I would have in getting a starting job in the USA, as I don't have the requisite experience for a visa. I also think that £26k is not correct. I am currently job hunting before I finish uni this year, and most of the positions I am looking at as a junior network/systems administrator are more like £22k average.

And I can confirm that the university course I have been on has taught me very little. I now know a bit about C, have learned and forgotten a bit about Java (useless flawed lump that it is), a fair bit about the very basics of networking, and a bit about configuring routers and switches using the CLI. I have not been taught, however, anything at all about almost any system or network administration task that you could mention, like how to properly make a backup plan or what backplane speed is, or how to configure a VoIP phone, or how PoE works, or how to configure any server other than apache or IIS (or the very basics of this is how you follow the Active Directory wizard). I have essentially spent about £13,000 (in tuition fees alone) paying a university to give me somewhere warm to be bored, not to mention the cost of feeding myself or having somewhere to live.

I know the stuff I have learned is good grounding and may be useful, but most of the topics I have found out about through internet research have not been taught at university and likely won't be until years from now.

Re: Getting your foot in the door is the hard part.

Agreed - but much of the blame lies in Schools, Colleges and Universities.. They need to explain and teach what current requirements are, then the individual needs to have drive and commitment to learn it.

I have people applying for a basic level IT role, many quote their experience as "building their own PC".. Well Sonny, guess what.. a 12 year old could do that these days.

Don't get me wrong, I don't expect an applicant to be certified up to the eyeballs, understand Layer 3 routing or VPNs etc... But I do expect them to at least have an idea of what technology is, such as Virtualisation etc.

Re: No brainer

I don't want to work with a lot of bankers.

Re: No brainer

Rephrase to "why would anyone in IT want to work in the UK?" ;)

Re: No brainer

Because IT also pays well in banking and finance? e.g. VP in IT in an investment bank - circa £100-£150K + circa 50%.

Re: UK Companies are getting exactly what they desrerve

Correct, seen this done wholesale in banks, port authorities, you name it. Whole squads of "indentured IT labourers" or, let's be honest, modern slaves, brough in by abusing Inter Company Transfers. Sooner or later there will be some kind of tragedy, like substandard overcrowded gangmaster-provided housing going up in flames, then it will really hit the fan.

Re: UK Companies are getting exactly what they desrerve

The problem is that cheap overseas contractors are being brought in too late in the project.

If we have a generation of youngsters un-interested in computer science, as the falling A-Level results suggest, then we should outsource them.

In today's highly dynamic, cloud, mobile parenting environment 0 having permanent children on the payroll for 18years or so just doesn't offer the sort of flexibility that modern parental managers demand.

We should follow the role model of people like Madonna + that actress with the tits and the lips, and outsource the children. Many SE asian economies can supply well qualified suitably cute children at a fraction of UK rates.

Unfortunately government regulation and red tape has limited the international transfer market in this sector but we are sure people like the current leadership can look back to the example shown by their C18 ancestors and Britain will once more be a leader in the global human cargo supply business.

Re: UK Companies are getting exactly what they desrerve

"I contracted for 18 years in the UK and saw the market killed in 5 years by the wholesale importation of cheap labour" - I do my best to work against this - as does pretty much everyone else I know. All CVs are thoroughly 'WASP' checked before we will even interview candidates, or pass on CVs. Any hint of foreign / non indigenous British = straight in the bin.

Re: UK Companies are getting exactly what they desrerve

AC @Thursday 14th March 2013 11:31 GMT

That's exactly what I was going to say. The difference in my case was that I left the UK in 2001 after many months out of work. Despite the post Y2K slump (everyone had all new gear before Y2K) and telcos/networking companies making thousands of people redundant, the government started to bring in people from India to solve "the shortage of skilled people in the IT sector". I went to Germany and stayed.

I still get emails from UK recruitment agencies, offering me daily rates which are about half that which I received in the UK in the 1990s and more importantly, considerably less than I make now in Germany.

Re: Quality versus Quantity

>s it more the quality of what is taught in the academic route?

The good places teach "computer science", the graduates wonder why they aren't earning the same as all the people who did other technical degrees (never mind the ones that did PPE or law)

The employers want to know why their new Oxbridge First doesn't know the install procedure for Exchange-Server 2013 off by heart - and blame the universities.

The crap universities who are "sympathetic to the needs of industry" churn out people who can just about manage to click on the right button in whatever Microsoft where pushing that year.

The employers complain that they aren't able to independently master new skills on their own - and blame the universities.