Most grads from my university had that type of progression.
Depends if your classed as a trade or profession by management really.
IT Professionals- In here!
- Thread starter Bes
- Start date
Most grads from my university had that type of progression.
Depends if your classed as a trade or profession by management really.
It makes me feel more sad about my lack of progression. 8 years in IT; same role, same salary *sigh*This thread makes me sad at how under valued software engineers are in the UK.
:O Have you never tried to progress? 8 years!?!? Damn!
Caporegime
- Joined
- 7 Apr 2008
- Posts
- 25,877
- Location
- Lorville - Hurston
This thread makes me sad at how under valued software engineers are in the UK
how?
Soldato
- Joined
- 19 Apr 2004
- Posts
- 4,793
- Location
- London
My career so far
1) Out of uni, didn't fancy grad schemes, took a Dev role at a financial company outside of London on pretty medicore wage
2) Less than 2 years later get bored so join a small consultancy firm
3) 2 and a bit years later, fed up with lack of career progression opportunities after working on various client sites so I go contracting at a finance company
4) Still contracting 2 years later
I am considering going back to PS but the freedom of contracting makes it a difficult choice
1) Out of uni, didn't fancy grad schemes, took a Dev role at a financial company outside of London on pretty medicore wage
2) Less than 2 years later get bored so join a small consultancy firm
3) 2 and a bit years later, fed up with lack of career progression opportunities after working on various client sites so I go contracting at a finance company
4) Still contracting 2 years later
I am considering going back to PS but the freedom of contracting makes it a difficult choice
Last edited:
Associate
- Joined
- 7 Feb 2008
- Posts
- 2,377
- Location
- Surrey
This thread makes me sad at how under valued software engineers are in the UK
Do you realise how many IT people we have coming in all the time? We started a big recruitment drive about 2 years ago and now our IT dept is about 70% Indian. We got so many Indian CVs in and hardly any English people. Good money too (London rates). There are loads of qualified Indian people immigrating all the time and this drives down salaries. Also, companies off-shore IT jobs, not even just 1st line support, development and database stuff too. FYI, I'm am immigrant too, so not having a whinge, just stating the facts
Outside of contracting I don't see many engineering jobs over 60k or so, whereas IT seems to have ample opportunity above that. I guess I need to go where the money is and look at Oil & Gas/Finance companies to get good permie wages.
What is 'consultancy' in this context? (2)
Last edited:
Do you realise how many IT people we have coming in all the time? We started a big recruitment drive about 2 years ago and now our IT dept is about 70% Indian. We got so many Indian CVs in and hardly any English people. Good money too (London rates). There are loads of qualified Indian people immigrating all the time and this drives down salaries. Also, companies off-shore IT jobs, not even just 1st line support, development and database stuff too. FYI, I'm am immigrant too, so not having a whinge, just stating the facts
Sorry but Indian coders just aren't as good. Unless you like all your code comments, method names, variable names and documentation to be written in some bizarre form of pig English.
Many big firms put up with this, and have huge auditing processes in place to bring all code into line. But the startup scene around London definitely wouldn't allow it from the get go.
Not saying that it's all like this, but generally speaking...
Soldato
- Joined
- 19 Apr 2004
- Posts
- 4,793
- Location
- London
First - sorry I miss-read your point about software engineers, hence my post probably made no sense.
Was a small PS firm that were specialised in a niche area of software - I was frustrated because it was a mixed bag in terms of what clients I ended up on, but I made use of some good opportunities
What is 'IT' in this thread? I wouldn't associate code with IT unless it's high level stuff like database/website etc.? Am I correct? IT to me is the IT department.
I'm a software engineer, we have an IT department. I am not in IT. Does that make sense or am I being silly?
Soldato
- Joined
- 19 Apr 2004
- Posts
- 4,793
- Location
- London
What about if you're a software engineer in an IT department? Different roles mean different things at different companies as they are structured differently, in this context coding would certainly be a part of IT.
Maybe I misread or something but I could have sworn he was talking about software development. Hence all the stuff about "development and database stuff too"
But yes I would agree that software development isn't IT in the strictest sense. No software dev would want to be in the same room as the support team where all the phones are ringing off the hook all day, for example... Many firms separate the two departments for this very reason. Concentration, creativity, design, art... can't really be interrupted all the time by phones and primitive talk about IP addresses or reimaging boxes.
Last edited:
A chronic lack of confidence, combined with a lack of ambition and a large dollop of complacency. I am working on it, though.
I started my first 'proper' job in September after graduating in July. My company, albeit small, is recognised as the UK's leading performance and stress testing company. Joined as a graduate, training and learning what the company do, how they do it, and the technical aspects (obviously a major factor).
I'm now working full time as a scripter, recording web-based applications and writing C Code. Can be quite menial but also rewarding.
The starting salary was good, generally higher than other graduate jobs that I was looking at, but the career progression within the company is fantastic with some great financial incentives.
I hope to made a consultant by 2013 where the salary should start going into the £30-40k region.
EDIT - just read the comments regarding off-shore work. This is very prominent in our area and at the end of 2011 we were doing a lot of work with a national retail chain who then decided to send their work to off-shore companies. Whilst it's cheaper, most UK firms find that the quality of the work produced lacks a lot of quality and is constantly sent back for reworks/corrections.
I'm now working full time as a scripter, recording web-based applications and writing C Code. Can be quite menial but also rewarding.
The starting salary was good, generally higher than other graduate jobs that I was looking at, but the career progression within the company is fantastic with some great financial incentives.
I hope to made a consultant by 2013 where the salary should start going into the £30-40k region.
EDIT - just read the comments regarding off-shore work. This is very prominent in our area and at the end of 2011 we were doing a lot of work with a national retail chain who then decided to send their work to off-shore companies. Whilst it's cheaper, most UK firms find that the quality of the work produced lacks a lot of quality and is constantly sent back for reworks/corrections.
Intredasting. I'd never really considered that.
IT seems to be me about finding off the shelf solutions to problems and putting a thin layer of niceness on the top for the client to actually use. Regardless it's seems quite a high level abstraction which you wouldn't expect would command more $$$ than low level(ish) software engineering.
I think the whole industry is just too vast to be able to tell anything about a persons job from their title nowadays!
Not quite sales part of IT, though I must admit I considered pre-sales during 2009, but I wasn't in the mood for all the hours and travelling.
2001 - 2005: Security guard/Office Temp/World of Warcraft - £18k
2005: Marketing assistant £20k
2007: BS my way into BA/PM £28k
2008: BS my way to lead BA/Scrum master £42k
2010: Self employed contractor BA @£290 per day
2011: Self employed contractor BA/Solutions designer @£400 per day (no gap in contracts)
2012: Self employed contractor BA/PM @£450 per day (1 month gap over christmas)
LOVE my current role. I get to work among some very talented people working on some very cool stuff also touching on UX (user centered design) principals, which I find very interesting. iPhone/iPad/Android/Mobile web/electronic browser/Web multichannel applications, so it's quite interesting.
2001 - 2005: Security guard/Office Temp/World of Warcraft - £18k
2005: Marketing assistant £20k
2007: BS my way into BA/PM £28k
2008: BS my way to lead BA/Scrum master £42k
2010: Self employed contractor BA @£290 per day
2011: Self employed contractor BA/Solutions designer @£400 per day (no gap in contracts)
2012: Self employed contractor BA/PM @£450 per day (1 month gap over christmas)
LOVE my current role. I get to work among some very talented people working on some very cool stuff also touching on UX (user centered design) principals, which I find very interesting. iPhone/iPad/Android/Mobile web/electronic browser/Web multichannel applications, so it's quite interesting.
Last edited:
Soldato
- Joined
- 19 Apr 2004
- Posts
- 4,793
- Location
- London
I can certainly see how some forms of software engineering might not have anything to do with IT, but in something like a finance or telco, you're going to have software engineers working within an IT department, but you're also going to have various other divisions in the IT department concerned with other areas. The software I specialise in is mainly used for data ETL, so it's very much within the realms of IT, but a lot of the time the kind of role I'm doing is really development/engineering
Of course a company could be constructed solely around company areas (an MIS team, HR team etc.) - I've not come across any large companies doing this but I'm sure there are some out there - where you might have software engineers/devs, support, testing, business folk all sitting in harmony working on a system. I've been told in the past that this was the way things used to be done "back in the day" before the classic "waterfall" approach to software delivery spread everywhere like the plague which led to all kinds of rethink. It'll probably all go back to that way again in a few decades time!