Blighty's mighty tech skills shortage drives best job growth in years The UK is crying out for engineers and IT staff, according to a KPMG and REC report, which reckons demand for techies is at its highest in 16 years. Most vacancies were spotted in the engineering industry in August, while the medical industry came in just ahead of the IT sector in the nine categories of permanent staff …
As an employer, let me tell you that a dismissive, contemptuous and supercilious attitude like this is just the kind of think that I look for when I'm deciding which candidates to reject. And anyone thinking of downvoting me would do better to ask some searching questions about their suitability for the workplace.
We train people, but it can be genuinely difficult to find people who are really good enough and willing to be trained. We are willing to cross-train people in new languages, but we find many staff and candidates are reluctant to learn new skills. For example, staff with an MS backround (a common skillset locally) are rarely keen to acquire good Linux skills; C# developers (also common) are unlikely to jump at the chance to learn R.
So our plan is to work with the local university to hire new graduates who haven't yet settled on a preferred toolkit. But - as anyone honest will acknowledge - there is a very broad range of abilities and attitudes amongst new graduates.
Filling a skills deficit with training is easy. Finding willing candidates is harder. Finding willing candidates who have genuinely enquiring minds and a desire to continually advance and develop is harder still.
I think what you are really looking for is people who are easier to manipulate and control, a company with an army of young people is often a sign of weak management, and the tone of the comment generally stinks.
By pushing graduates in a particular direction you are making it much harder for them to then take different paths at a later date - as we all know that the employment agents/agencies pigeonhole you based on your experience, so you have to work three times as hard to then move in the direction you originally wanted to go in. Do you tell them this?
Maiakaat, it's clear that you aren't a good fit for our organisation. Goodbye.
Oh, and btw we pay above market norms, work hard to create genuine career progression, invest substantially in training and work on the cutting edge of our sector. More than half of our staff joined us on personal recommendation, having worked with our managers in a previous organisation or been encouraged to join us by a happy colleague. We are fast-growing with substantial backing, so pay rises and progression never suffer from 'dead man's shoes.'
Some people who don't work for us and know little about us think that we are manipulative control freaks who are weak and care little for our staff. We are very happy for those ignorant fools to damage our competitors' businesses.
@aahjnnot "above market rates" means fuck all when every employer in the market is desperately trying to ensure that the "market rate" for IT staff of all flavours is "poverty".
I don't buy for an instant that you can't find C programmers willing to learn R, or that you can't Microsoft sysadmins unwilling to learn Linux. I just don't buy it. Why? Because I have sysadmins and devs around the world who would be cheerfully willing to learn any technology required - and they absolutely have the background and diversity of experience to be able to pick up virtually any technology in short order - who have almost all walked away from IT due to low wages.
Employers want to pay "market rates" for fresh-from-graduation newbies that live 8 to a flat and don't own a car...but they want 10-15 years experience and a "group-oriented attitude" that boils down to "willing to work unlimited unpaid overtime and willing to never point out flaws in the manager's plans, even when they are glaringly obvious."
Building a business on picking up the young and naive, underpaying them and then burning them out like candles over the course of 3-4 years (which is what pretty much every employer seems to be into in the IT sector these days) is unsustainable in the long term. You are collectively poisoning the well; you are driving the only experienced people out there out of the industry and creating such a negative cultural perception (and rightly so!) of working in IT that "the best of the best" avoid it with a vengeance.
What kind of people would go into IT today? The pay is shite, the expectations are completely unrealistic, the hours are lousy and opportunities for advancement are functionally nonexistent.
There are a handful of positions out there paying decently and treating their staff well. Companies around the world never have trouble filling those.
If you want to obtain - and retain - IT staff then forget about "market rates" and focus on "a living wage" and the ability for your staff to eventually retire. Work on having an actual career path that includes advancement, definable goals, attainable and comprehensible job metrics along with adequate resourcing and staffing for the projects undertaken.
In other words, make IT more attractive than being a janitor. Being a janitor pays about the same most places, but they get more respect from the hoi polloi and have far fewer responsibilities.
Trevor_Pott, unless it's a parody, your rant is a hilarious career suicide note. I'd never employ someone who thinks broad generalisations are a proper substitute for analysis and discernment, or who is labouring under the weight of enormous chips on both his shoulders.
You know nothing about our business and your crass generalisations about working hours, remuneration rates, staff retention, career development and the balance between youth and experience are absurdly far from the truth. We have a fantastic team of technical staff, but it's been hard work getting there.
The motive behind my graduate plan is a genuine desire to help the next generation of bright young things to get a foot on the career ladder. If you cynically assume that I'm simply attempting to rip off the naive and vulnerable - your agument seemingly being based on the apparent grounds that all employers are bad people - then I really wouldn't want you poisoning my well head. If you have constructive advice on how to make a graduate scheme work well, I'll listen gratefully. If you want to rant, my ears are closed.
Well "aahjnnot", I'm glad to tender my career suicide note as I'm getting out of IT for all the reasons I intentioned, and more. Broad generalizations are a requirement for living in a complex world of 7 billion+ humans all with their own goals, hopes, desires and ambitions. If you think for a fraction of a second that any one person has the ability to consider each and every individual, business, customer and so forth "in depth" then you're mad.
Far more to the point: why bring to bear an in depth analysis on a comment on the internet? Why not simply take the tone of the comment along with the paltry information offered, extrapolate based on the most likely trendlines (using both personal experiences and the best available statistics as resources) and take a "best guess" at what the commenter in question is on about?
As for my "crass generalizations" hurting your feels, well...it strikes me that you doth protest too much. Even if you, personally, are paying people well, "paying people well" is absolutely not indicative of the industry as a whole. And really, that's what we're talking about here. The industry as a whole. Not your tiny little slice of it.
Regarding my cynical assumption that "all employers are bad people", well...yeah, most of them are. I say that as an employer and with a couple of decades as an employee.
If you want advice on how to make your "graduate scheme" work, I will point you right back up at my previous comments. Pay people a decent living wage for their area, and fuck the "market rates" in the face with a rusty tractor. Talk to people who have to buy a home to live in, raise a family, and so forth and find out what they need to survive. Pay that.
Invest not only in the young and desperate but also in the seasoned and the cynical. Show that you will support people through all stages of their career and have demonstrable plans for advancement. Give people a reason to believe in you. To hope. To nurture the dream that IT can be a real career and not merely a gigantic mistake that they've pissed away tens of thousands of currency units on.
The IT industry as a whole is a deep and unwelcoming abyss from which few emerge unscathed and fewer still emerge better off than when they entered. Whatever your belief in your personal and professional superiority you are a part of that industry and the overall trends and perceptions are absolutely something you will have to cope with - and counter - as an employer.
And if you consider the above a "rant", as opposed to advice learned the hard way, then you are indeed the worst of "ears closed" employers; exactly the sort that I railed against and that you claim so vociferously not to be.
Mind the hoi polloi, sirrah. They keep you in shoes.
I'm pretty handy at PHP, and I've been studying up - and practicing - on sucking less at them thar programing structures and practices. I'm probably not far from "competent" at that particular technology...at least as close as you can get, while still using PHP. But would I give up writing to be a PHP dev? Fuck no. That would be a pay cut of at least half.
There is no skills shortage. There's an unwillingness to work for chicken feed. Let the poxy blighters suffer, I say. Pay a man a living wage or get the hell off the job boards!
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And will you ever be even /offered/ a job programming in PHP? No, because those jobs are only open to somebody with 5 years' experience who is already working in a job programming in PHP. *THAT'*S why there's a "skills shortage". Employers point blank utterly REFUSE to even countenance taking somebody on who needs half a hour to get familiar with the new working environment and their new colleagues' and company's coding style and practices.
What a load of balls. Maybe you should work on your interview technique, I've been happily bouncing around different technologies and sectors for years earning more than sensible amounts.
I make a point of NOT highlighting specific technologies on my CVs, but rather show my skills well-rounded software engineer.
"There is no skills shortage. There's an unwillingness to work for chicken feed. Let the poxy blighters suffer, I say. Pay a man a living wage or get the hell off the job boards!"
Ain't that the truth.
The disturbing development recently is that every time I see an article promising good future earnings if you specialise in security / data science / networking / whatever, there's some sourpuss of an accountant telling us that once everyone's got trained up they'll squeeze the salaries in your chosen specialisation.
And this article with the KPMG laddie's comment is no exception.
It's clearly visa opportunities for overseas IT staff that will work for peanuts that we're short of hence the campaign by big business. If there were really a shortage then wages would rise across the board but, errr, they really don't seem to be especially when contrasted to living costs.
If you index the UK salaries vs standards of living UK IT salaries are one of the lowest in the developed world.
This is doubly so if you work for a UK company. I booked a salary increase of 25% by moving to a US company while a couple of years back. I have no intention to work for a UK one ever again - undervaluing technical staff and overvaluing useless middle management there is a matter of principle.
4) Medical can cost a $1000/month
I worked in the US for a few years and yes I got more after tax income but In the end, I had proportionatly less money remaining at the end of the pay cycle (two weeks as opposed to monthly) than in the UK.
Other costs get loaded because you are a johnny foreigner green card withstanding.
1, and you have security here when the firm closes down or outsources you?
Plus side is that you aren't behind 10 layers of managers who are useless but have been there too long to get rid of.
2, true but I work in startups so never get to take even that
3, sucks to be poor in the US. But after I got made redundant in the UK I tried to claim dole to get back some of my 40% tax - no chance. I got a fraction of my unpaid final months pay refunded.
Other advantages:
You can make management without having been to Eton. Even Geordies sound posh here.
Jobs outside the city pay well
You get to work on real stuff - not just another NHS/gov IT disaster project
There are three main issues with working in the USA:
Who said anything about working in USA? Working for a USA company != USA.
The best of both worlds is to work for a USA IT company in Eu. You get Eu work conditions, Eu holidays and at least in the UK this means working for up to 25% higher salary.
yep and try being in IT in the civil service. We're lumped in with general admin staff, we get nothing extra for being technically skilled.
Dry your eyes.
Maybe people would feel sorry for you civil servants if you didn't go around leaving laptops full of sensitive info in pubs or on trains.
If working for .gov.uk is so shit why don't you get a job in the private sector?
"If working for .gov.uk is so shit why don't you get a job in the private sector?"
Because civil servants are all lumped together by people like you, so they can't get a job in the private sector due to that bias.
All civil servants leave laptops in the pub or on the train? Not an awful lot of civil servants even have the use of a laptop, most use clapped out desktops - assuming they get in early enough to even use one as many buildings are hot-desk with only 60-70% capacity compared to staff & the desks have run out by 7:30am.
It's like when people talk about massive civil service wages; top management both centrally & in local government may get good salaries, but lower level staff definitely don't.
It's almost impossible to obtain an equivalent job in the private sector after having worked in IT for the state, in almost any capacity. Techies in education, for example, can't get out once they're in. Salaries are shit too, since they're on the same scale as the dinner ladies and cleaners.
I'm not a civil servant. But if you civil servant knockers are so sure of its perks then why not try to join? If you comain of CS incompetence, make a name for yourself: join and fix it. I have worked in egineering firms, three of the big names and sometime big success computing firms (two USA and one half British. I've worked in USA tech firms and pharmas, big and tiny. For the last few years I have worked in internationally known finance firms. I have worked in government research sites and fisheries departments.
I can tell you that all these places shelter astounding cynicism, incompetence and venality. The least so were the two government bodies, that also hosted very good technical staff. Their main problem is inadequate pay and constant knocking by the inexperienced, uninformed.
All the big, government project failures were carried out and managed by private sector parasites on the tax payer, aided and abetted by dreadful "political masters".
"The desperation to fill recruitment holes is leading to continued wage growth, which is creating a market that is both unsustainable and unrealistic”
Unrealistic and unsustainable for whom? I would argue the wage growth in executive salary is unrealistic and unsustainable but we keep finding money for it. Maybe we should divert some of that executive pay into into coal face jobs. Or perhaps dividends could be reduced to to pay for the people necessary to earn the money.
Is it really a skills shortage, or is it a shortage of employers willing to train people with the right aptitude? Technical skills are very specific but if someone understands the underlying principles there's no reason why, for example, a decent C# programmer couldn't be trained in Java, or someone with experience of Excel macros couldn't learn the more advanced VB.Net. Of course the problem of training is that sometimes people get trained up and then move elsewhere, but the employer could offer decent terms so that they don't want to leave. Offshoring and short term contracts avoid having to pay for staff training, but they have the risk of knowledge being lost when that particular piece of work comes to an end.
You were making sense until this bit: 'or someone with experience of Excel macros couldn't learn the more advanced VB.Net'
VB.Net is not VB6, it's just as fully featured as C# and Java. Having all the bad habits of Excel Macro writing would probably be a disadvantage when it comes to VB.Net.
On the original point, there is definitely a skills shortage and we (a .Net/Oracle software company) find it very difficult to recruit anyone half decent. As a result we have taken the approach of training people up and/or employing immigrants who do have the right skills.
But the salaries on offer are a total joke.
Until people start offering decent salaries (north of 40k) and benefits (training, bonus/shares, health insurance etc); I'll stay where I am.
I don't earn great money and the work sucks, but I'm not taking a pay cut. Also, better the devil you know and all that.
Would help the employers if they didn't seem to want only people who are experts in 3-4 different areas. A Junior PM/PMO role the other day wanted all the usual including stature to influence senior management whilst being happy to be the team dogsbody (travel, expenses, room bookings etc) plus be a specialist in complex finance, to be a SharePoint developer, do some BA work, and know VBA and SQL. So did they want an admin, a Programme analyst, a PM, a BA, an accountant, or a developer? Was paying £200-250 a day btw.
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