The state of the IT industry

Basher

Basher

Basher

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I've seen a lot of threads here recently with people struggling to get a job in IT, this led me to think about the current state of the industry.

Why can't people get jobs? Is it a simple case of there are so many people with so many skills that employers can afford to pick only the very best achievers? Perhaps this, coupled with the fact that IT is playing an increasingly vital part in our day to day lives, and systems have become so critical, that businesses can not afford to risk employing anyone without, say, 5-10 years of prior experience.

And what about peoples perception of IT, does this affect the way the industry performs? For example, the use of technology, in many cases is transparent to the user, as the way in which the product is delivered could remain unaffected.

What are peoples opinions on this? Where do people think the industry will be in 10 years?
 
I think some of the problem has been down to people gaining MCSA/E qualifications and assuming this will get them a job. Unforunately these aren't worth anywhere near what they used to be, so it doesn't really help you into a role.

I'm currently recruiting the replacement for myself (senior administrator) at my company and I've been mainly looking for years of experience. This shows to me that the person has been dealing with IT on a day-to-day basis rather than just in books. The only time an MCSA would make a difference to me is if it was deciding between two people with the same level of real world experience.

An MCSE only shows that you can learn whats in a book and regurgitate it on queue. After doing a few courses myself, quite a lot of the stuff Microsoft want you to learn is stupid anyway.
 
I cannot say for certain how the IT industry will be in 10 years, anymore than anybody could have predicted the current status, a decade ago..

However, I can say this for sure, with the ever diversifying industry, and the increasing number of highly skilled people seeking employment, it is becoming much more a recruiters market.

A decade ago, you could approach an employer and say "hey, I've got a microsoft certification" and they'd say "wow.. how much can we pay you for you to come work for us?" now, it is "yeah? so have the other 500 applicants"

The skills that we had a decade ago, that got us the nice jobs, are now, not even enough to be allowed to sneeze in the same room as a computer.
 
I don't really know what the reasons are maybe it's just so easy to find people with experience?
I graduated in Information Systems Technology and my lack of experience means I'm about as desirable as leprosy. Pretty much given up on finding a job before the year is over. Rest of my life spent as a temporary clerical assistant @ £6.50 an hour sounds good...
 
Probably more to do with the fact companies are outsourcing more and more roles to India with a view to cost saving. A lot of 1st line roles are now in Indian call centres, and a lot of monitoring/NMC type roles are also offshored.

In short, companies are selling out the UK industries to save cash money - I work for a company that's doing it right now and I despise them for it so I won't be hanging around here for much longer. Makes me sick to think that 20+ year seniorities are being made redundant so some shrink wrapped call centre moron in India can "do" his/her job.

/rant off.

edit -on the upside, apparently the EU is screaming out for skilled IT staff - so as this country is going to hell in a hand basket and everyone else is coming over here why not move elsewhere in the EU?? A couple of years somewhere on the med-coast, Italy maybe?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7057575.stm

:D
 
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Recruiters market? I wish it was in the web industry. Whenever we try to find new people we are bombarded with absolute crap. People with rubbish portfolio's asking for ridiculous money (at least for their skill ability). For every 50 CV's we get sent theres maybe 1 or 2 thats even worth interviewing.
 
Alas, as has already been said, experience is the key.

When I recruit, you can have all of the qualifications going, but unless you have experience applying such skills within a particular enviornment, it's unlikely I will even interview you.

Don't presume that one can walk into a job with a degree or a qualification.

All you have to do is look at the amount of jobs out there on jobserve (for instance) - hundreds are added each day. There are plenty of jobs available.
 
Well I see it like this.

It's filled with systems that are much more complex than they need to be, providing about 70% of what the actually company needs and unable to provide the other 30%
Staffed with employees that are either blinding or mediocre making the entire workforce look average. Recruited by persons in Agencies that don't know how to use basic IT apps or have sufficient reading skills to place said employees.
 
I think it's pretty much all been said already. The IT industry is primarily based around experience, not qualifications. There are too many people that think just because they have x, y and z qualification it will get them a job. Wrong. You do need the qualifications but they only really count for anything in conjunction with real world experience.

The only way to get your foot on the ladder is to pimp yourself out at way below market rates for a year or two and then leave the company for a better paid position elsewhere.
 
I've seen many changes in IT over the past 25 years.

From a development point of view, the biggest change is knowledge availability and afforadability of desktop PCs.

20 years ago, PCs were 5K plus and no one had a PC in the house. There was no internet and programming used to be pretty much restricted to BASIC and a few others. Mainframe programming was specialist. You have to have trainning provided by your company. I was taken on as a trainee and spent 4 weeks training with IBM.

Nowadays, with PCs become mainstream and affordable along with interent access, anyone can pick up programming even from the comfort of there own bedroom. Pieces of code can be download and can be jigsawed together like building bricks without hardly any previous programming experience.

Development isn't so specialised anymore and the skills of students coming out of college and uni is quite competitive but the employers now have plenty of choice of who they take on.

Another big change has been centralisation. This has been a growing trend over the past 8 years. Companies saving huge amount of money by moving their systems to one big data center and sometimes this is abroad. Like many trades, this can work out much cheaper than british labour.
 
I think the main problem is the types of roles people are looking for.

There seems to be a large increase in the number of people qualified for and wanting to do support type roles, these are the areas I see people having trouble getting decent jobs. These are the types of jobs where companies know they can pay peanuts and get plenty of semi-decent monkeys ;)

Actual highly skilled roles though, there is a serious shortage of skilled people to fill the positions. I'm currently finding it impossible to find decent developers, there's either no-one even applying OR people turn up to the interviews clearly not having the required skills, even though they're listed on their CVs. People give a good interview, seem confident, tell you all about the projects they've worked on, then fall apart when asked simple technical questions.


Mick.
 
Sagalout said:
Recruiters market? I wish it was in the web industry. Whenever we try to find new people we are bombarded with absolute crap. People with rubbish portfolio's asking for ridiculous money (at least for their skill ability). For every 50 CV's we get sent theres maybe 1 or 2 thats even worth interviewing.
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Yep, that's if you can manage to get CVs in the first place.
 
For me the IT industry is not in too bad shape. We could do with less poeple who think if you can install XP from a CD that makes you suitable for 3rd line work. Most people i know who are starting off see what i do, know what i earn, i tell them if they ask, and want the same wage without having to put the 10 years in that i did to get the knowledge and contacts i have built up. Some people seem to think having a degree is the be all and end all of it and of course they should be given a 2nd line support team to run at 21 and a car and a wage of 30K please...

Give them a OS without any wizards, a pc to build with no instructions. A group of angry users to calm down. A secruity guard to talk round into letting you park for free outside the door. Getting a discount of 50% from Dell. the list goes on, the people that i see for interview just seem to think its a walk in and do it job with no learning involved, and that does scare me a little. Still, there are some out there who will stay that extra hour to get the job done, will ask when stuck and dont mind saying, how does that work, these people i can work with.

Over all the industry is lacking in basic 1st line staff that are willing to learn from the ground up for a year before moving to 2nd. Most seem to want to jump to 3rd line, not as they want the work, just for the money.

In ten years time i hope we have moved on from the people in IT just here for the money, and get back to people who are paid well as they do a good job. Could also use more female staff, they seem to be lacking in IT.

People who make it past 2nd line should be the people who are good enough, and for that they get paid more as the job gets to them, they must fix it, there is no one else to pass it too, while they may not get 200 calls a day, they also can spend 3-5 days on one job, sometimes doing many hours more than they should. This is why they get paid well. What should not happen is people wanting to do 3rd line or even 2nd line as they see the wage and find they are not able to do the work.

MCSE's hmm..... boot camps kind of killed them off for me and as another poster says, if its coupled with time serverd, they are good, but i have seen so many people with 3 months 1st line skill and a full set of MCSE... something doesnt add up. Come for an interview for me an you will be given tests to do, format that drive, use the web to find patches ect, basic stuf i know, but so many people dont even know about technet or even how to look for a patch that have left uni, scares me some times...

Others are good though. time will tell...

See you all over in the EU i guess!

ColiN - stuck in leeds doing IT lol.
 
I used to work for an US owned IT Company who's role in the UK was to set up and provide solutions for communication via sms, voip, txt, fax and email to major corporate players like Nokia, Dell & Pharmecutical Companies.

It got to the point where more and more work was being outsourced to offshore countries. Mainly India, Thailand & Amsterdam, we were all made redundant and the whole building was closed down.

This was mainly down to the fact that it was cheaper not only for staff (India), but also for the equipment for server farms as the origional one was in the UK but soon sourced over to Amsterdam.

I felt used, as it seemed all the hard work had been done in the UK with regards to designing, testing and going live and then it was moved.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
Nowadays, with PCs become mainstream and affordable along with interent access, anyone can pick up programming even from the comfort of there own bedroom. Pieces of code can be download and can be jigsawed together like building bricks without hardly any previous programming experience.

Development isn't so specialised anymore and the skills of students coming out of college and uni is quite competitive but the employers now have plenty of choice of who they take on.
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Sorry but that's rubbish. Employers have plenty of choice yes, but if they want good developers then it's a struggle to find anyone at all.

When I graduated Uni, there were people graduating along side me with software development/computer science degrees who still didn't understand the very basics of writing software. The problem is with these types of courses is that it's too easy to find someone who will carry you through the course. Most of the people I know who graduated have gone into IT roles, god help the companies they're working for.

You only have to look on these forums (HTML, Graphics & Programming) to see some IT professionals asking questions which any decent developer could solve with a 10 second google AND somtimes giving stupid/un-educated answers to others questions.


Mick.
 
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