Is The long term future of Irelands IT industry under threat Discuss

aidan_mc

Hi

I am currently looking for a job in the Irish software industry and only graduated in the last two years. I have 18 months experience working with java. However the industry seems to be looking for highly experienced dividuals. This has caused a catch 22 situation where new graduates cannot get jobs without experience and cannot experience with out jobs.
Will this cause graduates to leave the country to gain experience? Therefore causing the irish industry to lose an important knowledge base. Therefore making the industry dependent on knowledge base outside its control.

Look forward to your input

Aidan

hobochris

I think its just a by product of the recession, many companies that are hiring don't have the cash to spare for someone who might not be as up to speed as an experienced dev.It will get better but its a question of if you can stick it out that long.

I'm in the same boat, I graduated 2 years ago, working with .net(even though I want to get into java as that's where I'm strongest), not much out there, best to stick with what you have if you have a job and build up the experience.

The Uk, Canada and new zealand seem like good places to look if your planning on leaving the country for work.

ei.sdraob

did no companies come to your uni hiring in the final year?


ive several connections who told me that
2-3 years ago (2006-2007) in NUIG you had Nortel,SAP,Cisco,Siemens,Fidelity all poaching for graduates from the IT dept there (only dozen or two students)
same time in GMIT there were local companies and several startups poaching for elect+soft eng students


dont despair you have better prospects than alot of graduates, there are still many opportunities nowadays, paid research positions, startups with EI grants
if you have any own ideas/projects (and as a graduate you should) follow them you never know it might lead to a business
did you make connections in your work placement? did you have a work placement?
also get involved in opensource projects, gives you great experience and looks good on cv/interviews
do Cisco networking exams, they are worth their weight in gold


im talking from experience here in IT/engineering, this catch 22 you talk about existed for a very long time, and its actually bull since these job specs are written by HR people
and remember IT is not all about programming and you constantly keep learning, constantly

DublinWriter

I think that there's a global dumbing-down and segmentation of the I.T. industry in general, some would argue that it's maturing as an industry.

For example - oh you worked with Tool V2.1?, sorry, we're only looking for candidates with Tool V2.2 experience, etc etc.

There's a greater specialisation and segmentation now which leads to the Catch-22 situation you described. A couple of years ago I had an I.T. consultant fresh out of college and working with one of the biggest global consultancies around, ask me what 'bandwidth' was.

I also despise the whole industry certification phenomena.

Maybe it's me being an old curmudgeon, but I find the quality of most I.T. people these days (tech and management) far below par.

Greater specialisation means people are getting better and better at less and less.

aidan_mc

ei.sdraob wrote: »

this catch 22 you talk about existed for a very long time

I agree and thank you all for your advise.
I''l give a little information about myself
I'm 43 have been working in IT for 10 years as a localization engineer and did a short stint as a java developer.
I did my degree at night which I started with great hopes.
at this stage I'm very disillusioned.

thanks

ei.sdraob

aidan_mc wrote: »

I agree and thank you all for your advise.
I''l give a little information about myself
I'm 43 have been working in IT for 10 years as a localization engineer and did a short stint as a java developer.
I did my degree at night which I started with great hopes.
at this stage I'm very disillusioned.

thanks

uhm yeh theres a problem of discrimination based on age and sex in the industry :mad:


check google few positions there, basically it all depends on how you get on in the interviews with the tech people, very little HR bull****

http://www.google.ie/support/jobs/bin/answer.py?answer=34883

there are also some student openings
http://www.google.ie/support/jobs/bin/answer.py?answer=164259
http://www.google.ie/support/jobs/bin/answer.py?answer=164259
http://www.google.ie/support/jobs/bin/answer.py?answer=112436
http://www.google.ie/support/jobs/bin/answer.py?answer=77328
worth a shot

i suppose in 40s you probably have family so be harder to move


a little story circa 2 years ago. an EI grant for software/hardware project in partnership with an institute, 2 graduate positions (JAVA required, ironically very little was used and project was done in C and PHP) and one position was for senior engineer, they could not find one! asking salary was 66K 5 years experience and all that crap, and 90K for "system architect" in the end the whole project was done by 2 graduates, the "system architect" was fired for being to expensive and useless and senior engineer post was never filled

so moral of story is not what you have on paper but how much determination and experience you have to get job done

if a company cant see that, then you probably better off not working with them

MysticalRain

This has been a problem since the last dotcom downturn in 2001/02. Since then IT has been an employers market, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Even when things picked up in 2004/05, I knew of software development companies that had 80 applicants for just one position. I personally wouldn't advise anyone to get into the industry. I sometimes wish universities would focus more on producing higher quality graduates and not churning out large quantities of graduates with dubious job prospects. That might help, although I suspect that Irish employers wouldn't want them anyway regardless of quality.

One potential way around the problem is to emigrate. It's much easier to find work in countries like New Zealand for instance where the employment market is little less one-sided. It might have changed a bit now with the downturn. But things should be improving over there soon enough.

professore

aidan_mc wrote: »

Hi

I am currently looking for a job in the Irish software industry and only graduated in the last two years. I have 18 months experience working with java. However the industry seems to be looking for highly experienced dividuals. This has caused a catch 22 situation where new graduates cannot get jobs without experience and cannot experience with out jobs.
Will this cause graduates to leave the country to gain experience? Therefore causing the irish industry to lose an important knowledge base. Therefore making the industry dependent on knowledge base outside its control.

Look forward to your input

Aidan

Sorry, I see you're not that young anymore .... oops ...

Have worked as a programmer in the industry since '93, a large stint of it abroad in Belgium. The exact same thing happened in the late 80s - early 90s. Lots of people emigrated then too. Back then the focus was on having a 2.1 or better - and ticking certain HR boxes for experience - e.g. 5 years experience in a 1 year old technology - regardless of what course you did or what other qualities you had. I would go so far as to say that your qualifications tell nothing about how good you are as a programmer in the real world. I found that in Belgium they were less concerned about your academic credentials but actually gave you practical tests of ability as well as a job interview, which was more geared to finding out about you as a person. IMHO as a result they got a much better level of person as opposed to impractical people skilled at regurgitating large tracts of info that they may or may not understand.

The fact is that in Ireland a lot of IT recruitment (at least for programmers) is done by people who don't know jack about IT. So go abroad, see the world (not London or somewhere close by, go further afield) .... you're only young once.

aidan_mc

MysticalRain wrote: »

One potential way around the problem is to emigrate. It's much easier to find work in countries like New Zealand for instance where the employment market is little less one-sided. It might have changed a bit now with the downturn. But things should be improving over there soon enough.

This is the point I was making the only option for IT graduates to get trained somewhere else other than Ireland. And then in the future we will hear how there is a shortage in IT skills and graduates. I'm not sure about graduates in other disciplines but the current situation seems a short sighted one on the part of the IT industry

MysticalRain

aidan_mc wrote: »

This is the point I was making the only option for IT graduates to get trained somewhere else other than Ireland. And then in the future we will hear how there is a shortage in IT skills and graduates. I'm not sure about graduates in other disciplines but the current situation seems a short sighted one on the part of the IT industry

In the end, that's what I had to do. My biggest regret is coming back to Ireland. I found I was treated much better when I worked abroad as well. Most of the people I worked with didn't even have degrees.

The problem is Ireland is still only a small country and there are far too many IT graduates competing for a limited number of jobs. I had hoped things would have improved after the numbers of people doing IT courses dropped. But that turned out not to be the case. The situation is still as bad as ever.

dvpower

professore wrote: »

The fact is that in Ireland a lot of IT recruitment (at least for programmers) is done by people who don't know jack about IT. So go abroad, see the world (not London or somewhere close by, go further afield) .... you're only young once.

A lot of job specs may be written and CVs screened by HR people, but interviews (and hiring decisions) usually have tech people involved.
So if you think you broadly have the qualifications for the job, tell a white lie about particular skillsets (just to get you through screening). HR people just don't understand the technologies, so you might get rejected for not having some obscure skill that can easily be picked up by someone with any competance. In any case, I find that once you pass the technical bar, employers are more interested in non tech skills (like comminication and critical thinking skills).

I've been in Software Dev for 15 years now and I've still never seen a job spec where I match on all of the skills. I've also never had a job that actually required me to have all of the skills on the job spec.