Skills shortage could cost thousands of software jobs

beauf

It's got many times more complex. But they do less training and only take on experienced people.

It's like driving a car never filling it. Then wondering why it's empty when they need it.

yosser hughes

This thread is really illuminating. House of Blaze makes very valid points and the mindset in Ireland as usual is very conservative.
Get out of Ireland, if you want to get ahead would be my strong advice. You won't regret it.
The "skill shortage" thing is bull****, it's a ruse to get more visas for non eu. Simple as that. It's a concerted campaign. Sean O'sullivan being one of the foremost advocates.
This is about wages and driving them down.

Eoin

I think people underestimate the overhead involved with taking on someone with zero experience. Hiring someone is a huge risk. Even allowing that you can let someone go easily while on probation, it can be very disruptive (not as much as for the person being let go, of course). I think it's understandable if a hiring manager tries to minimise that risk.

For the person asking how you demonstrate an interest - if you're looking to get in development; then get involved with open source projects, write a relevant blog, write your own mobile app etc. Basically show that you're interested in your area outside of 9-5.

yosser hughes wrote: »

The "skill shortage" thing is bull****, it's a ruse to get more visas for non eu. Simple as that.

It's not though. It's not some conspiracy by hiring managers who quietly bin good CVs from people with visas, just so we can get some non-EU visas sorted out.

House of Blaze

Eoin wrote: »

I think people underestimate the overhead involved with taking on someone with zero experience. Hiring someone is a huge risk. Even allowing that you can let someone go easily while on probation, it can be very disruptive (not as much for the person being let go, of course). I think it's understandable if a hiring manager tries to minimise that risk.

Thanks for the advice.

Still though, of course there are going to be costs and risk involved with new hires, I used to work in recruitment myself years ago so I can definitely attest to that.

But as I have repeatedly pointed out, the same risk and cost factors exist for any new hire, in any industry. And not just for inexperienced candidates.

I have yet to hear why this is such an issue for the IT employment market over any other industry.

Phoebas

House of Blaze wrote: »

I have yet to hear why this is such an issue for the IT employment market over any other industry.

I can't speak for other industries but, in my experience, the difference in productivity between a good quality experienced developer and a poor quality inexperienced one can be huge. I hear- anecdotally - that this gap is particularity large in IT.

In an industry where people tend to move jobs frequently and where the productivity gap between the good and poor devs is many times larger than the pay gap, its understandable that people want to hire experienced people.

Mr. Loverman

House of Blaze wrote: »

the same risk and cost factors exist for any new hire, in any industry.

It's not the same.

Software development is a very highly skilled job. Most people can't do it.

It's also a job which has little supervision -- it's almost impossible to micromanage a developer.

There's also a weird culture in the IT industry where you have to be sort of hands off and extra nice to developers.

Another issue is training. People who aren't developers won't understand this, but it takes a long time to understand the code you have to work with each day. At least 80% of a developers job is editing someone else's code. You can't give them a week's training on this. It's something which just takes time.

Then there's the inhouse coding conventions, etc.

Basically even experienced developers take a few months before they're properly up to speed.

Other industries are not like this. If you don't believe me, ask yourself why this thread exists.

I don't know what a realistic solution is.

Phoebas

beauf wrote: »

It's got many times more complex. But they do less training and only take on experienced people.

This is certainly true in IT. I think there is a general expectation that in an industry that involves a high rate of change, people are expected to keep their skills up to date at their own expense and mostly in their own time.

beauf

Phoebas wrote: »

This is certainly true in IT. I think there is a general expectation that in an industry that involves a high rate of change, people are expected to keep their skills up to date at their own expense and mostly in their own time.

It used to be most training was done in house. But as budgets got tighter this got cut and cut so now it up the individual to do it. The flaw in that is it only suits people with spare money and time to do it. So if you cut salaries this has an impact, and obvious as people have partners, families and other commitments, it only going to possible by an even smaller subset of IT workers. So it shrinks the pool of people, and of people with the right skill set even further. Its one of the reasons experienced people move out of IT and into management, or into the business side of IT.

beauf

Mr. Loverman wrote: »

It's not the same.

Software development is a very highly skilled job. Most people can't do it.

It's also a job which has little supervision -- it's almost impossible to micromanage a developer.

There's also a weird culture in the IT industry where you have to be sort of hands off and extra nice to developers.

Another issue is training. People who aren't developers won't understand this, but it takes a long time to understand the code you have to work with each day. At least 80% of a developers job is editing someone else's code. You can't give them a week's training on this. It's something which just takes time.

Then there's the inhouse coding conventions, etc.

Basically even experienced developers take a few months before they're properly up to speed.

Other industries are not like this. If you don't believe me, ask yourself why this thread exists.

I don't know what a realistic solution is.

Can't disagree with any of that. IT skills and people are like a piece of equipment that needs regular maintenance. Or something like a pilot. where they have to be retrained and re-certified on a regular basis. Cut corners and you pay a price. I think it takes a lot of experience companies realise they are cutting their nose of in spite of their face. Some places never learn and just keep repeating it.

Also managing IT projects and people is different to other types of management. There's a lack of skills in that area too. There's also a lack of people in IT with business and management skills.

But as you say there's no fixing this unless there management who have experience of it, and the desire to fix it.

Mr. Loverman

beauf wrote: »

But as you say there's no fixing this unless there management who have experience of it, and the desire to fix it.

Yeah, typically I've found CTOs are the most open minded about things, but if they've managed to get themselves to a CTO level that means they know how to protect their ass, which means they probably don't want to run to the CEO saying we should hire graduates...

I almost think the government needs to step in and sponsor some sort of coding bootcamp.

beauf

You learn the fine art of saying something without actually saying it, and managing to have it not recorded. But having what someone else said recorded.

... and/or you let a business unit have enough rope...

evolving_doors

InReality wrote: »

I think its a bit misleading for the authors to focus on education when the demand ( and always has been ) for experience.

Also pay is a huge deal and wasn't mentioned.
Irish IT people with experience have far more choice and ability to picking high pay jobs due to contacts ; hence overseas workers pick up the ( relatively speaking) lower paid jobs.

Competitiveness is just jargon for lower pay in most of these type of reports

No doubt its all the primary teachers fault

Eoin

Armelodie wrote: »

No doubt its all the primary teachers fault

huh?

Bogdanistan

Very intresting thread.

I've recenlty changed careers to IT after 10 years in another profession.

From what I've seen so far, the problems, and the tactics, are not very much different to any other private sector profession.

Phoebas

beauf wrote: »

It used to be most training was done in house. But as budgets got tighter this got cut and cut so now it up the individual to do it. The flaw in that is it only suits people with spare money and time to do it. So if you cut salaries this has an impact, and obvious as people have partners, families and other commitments, it only going to possible by an even smaller subset of IT workers. So it shrinks the pool of people, and of people with the right skill set even further. Its one of the reasons experienced people move out of IT and into management, or into the business side of IT.

Its a time rather than a money thing (there are heaps of free or almost free resources out there), especially for more experienced people where the fundamentals don't change too much but the technologies are ever changing. Also, the range of technologies that people are expected to be able to work with is ever expanding.

If I look back even 12 months, I hadn't even heard of many of the technologies, frameworks and libraries that I work with every day now. This also contributes to the skills shortage - the 'skills'* required seem to be ever expanding.

* Some of this is employers expecting too much - they want you to hit the ground running using Web Application Framework A, and discount your experience with Web Application Framework B

House of Blaze

Mr. Loverman wrote: »

It's not the same.

Software development is a very highly skilled job. Most people can't do it.

It's also a job which has little supervision -- it's almost impossible to micromanage a developer.

There's also a weird culture in the IT industry where you have to be sort of hands off and extra nice to developers.

Another issue is training. People who aren't developers won't understand this, but it takes a long time to understand the code you have to work with each day. At least 80% of a developers job is editing someone else's code. You can't give them a week's training on this. It's something which just takes time.

Then there's the inhouse coding conventions, etc.

Basically even experienced developers take a few months before they're properly up to speed.

Other industries are not like this. If you don't believe me, ask yourself why this thread exists.

I don't know what a realistic solution is.

This all rings very true to me, especially the difficulty in interpreting code that you haven't written yourself. I have always thought that this is precisely why software development is difficult, in that everyone approaches a coding problem with a particular and idiosyncratic style which is unique to them, and that trying to follow another developers mindset as you read their code is incredibly difficult.

Also, as I believe Phoebas pointed out, I can imagine the large gap in productivity between experienced and inexperienced developers to be a huge issue.

It does seem to be an issue that will be only become more of a problem as time goes on. The impression I'm getting is that there is almost the development of a skills 'singularity' effect, in the multitude of technologies you are expected to be fluent in, and the pace at which they advance.

In which case, the logical outcome should be that fewer and fewer people will get into IT in the first place if there is no real way to get started on the path as the barriers to entry are too high.

There is no way an educational institution can prepare you for this, and so a college degree becomes meaningless in the context of the advancing rate of technology.

I can even see this myself as I have been mostly developing in web technologies recently. When asked by a recruiter about my C++ skills, I was forced to admit that I would be rusty and out of practice with the language, essentially an admission that there would be little point putting me forward for such a role.

In order for become any way proficient in the technology you are currently using, by definition, your other skills must be neglected as you funnel more energy into getting better at what you are currently doing.

Even when I was going to build my blog I faced the question of angular.js versus ember.js versus backbone or meteor or what have you. Trying to pin down the technology stack that would be of most benefit for me to work with.

beauf

House of Blaze wrote: »

This all rings very true to me, especially the difficulty in interpreting code that you haven't written yourself. ...

That actually comes with experience. Unless someone has deliberately made it hard to read. Or its very old code that's had about 10 different people working on it, and its been re purposed numbers of time over many years. But in general code is doing generic things and its usually easy to work out what.

The problem (sometimes) is the code usually maps to a business process. A business process that may not be defined anywhere, and that the business has not documented anywhere.

House of Blaze

I admit at times I've kind of bemused by the idea that most businesses have incredibly unique requirements that make skills / experience non transferable.

I would have thought most businesses, or at least commerce oriented businesses had a broadly similar architecture in terms of having a customer base, a product base and a means of processing transactions but obviously my exposure is very limited.

Phoebas

House of Blaze wrote: »

I admit at times I've kind of bemused by the idea that most businesses have incredibly unique requirements that make skills / experience non transferable.

I would have thought most businesses, or at least commerce oriented businesses had a broadly similar architecture in terms of having a customer base, a product base and a means of processing transactions but obviously my exposure is very limited.

In the area where I work - mainly financials - the businesses I work with have built up very complex convoluted business processes over time, with various IT systems to support them. In many cases there is nobody who fully understands the whole process so individual managers are reluctant to make changes that may have unintended consequences.

The software they deploy often has to fit into their existing systems and processes so rather than doing what seems sensible - using a software project as part of wider business change, they often require the software to integrate with them in weird and wonderful ways.

I've had the 'It would be better if you would change how you do ...' conversation many times, with a range of sensible and daft answers, but at the end of the day, he who pays the piper calls the tune, so you end up with overly complex software doing things that can only be understood by someone who understands both the code and the business process it is part of. And that's often a very narrow group of individuals.

beauf

Writing software for say managing mixing paint in a factory is going to be different to managing repeat grades and classes in a college. How about the software to balances the distribution of Dublin bikes? Tracking aircraft weights for cargo? The business processes are often very different.

House of Blaze

beauf wrote: »

Writing software for say managing mixing paint in a factory is going to be different to managing repeat grades and classes in a college. How about the software to balances the distribution of Dublin bikes? Tracking aircraft weights for cargo? The business processes are often very different.

Of course, I understand that. which Is why I prefaced my comment with a reference to commerce focused businesses!

I may only be a graduate but i'm not that thick!

beauf

One thing doesn't preclude the other. Anyway the point is there a lot of knowledge outside of simply development, that you need in order to do development. Often specific to the business area.

seamus

Elessar wrote: »

All fair points Mr. Loverman, but you are thinking about it from a very narrow viewpoint. If there is a skills shortage, and you are in the software business, why not take on one or two inexperienced developers, give them the experience needed (assisting with smaller projects etc.) and then after a number of months you'll have one or two developers with experience in your business and your products.

I see what you're saying, but as he mentioned a few posts above, you are better off with your existing devs being a little bit squeezed than having an inexperienced dev hanging off your projects and tying up their time.

In effect, if you hire 2 junior devs to do a project, then you are also consuming an existing experienced dev resource for about six months to babysit them and field their queries. Productivity will drop for that period, but the software methodology du jour is lean - all of your resources are in use, all of the time. So bringing in entry-level devs is a medium term cost to the company, that few companies, especially small companies, can afford to shoulder.

I agree that software companies need to make more of an effort to build internal talent than to assume it will always be available in the marketplace. This should in theory be the purpose of an internship programme, but that's become skewed in recent years - internships in big and popular companies like Google and Facebook are coveted prizes of strong graduates (and people with experience) who could easily land a paying job elsewhere, but want to work in big tech.
These are people who don't really need an internship, but they occupy all of the best places. So the graduates who actually need an internship to get their foot on the tech ladder are left out in the cold.

Smaller companies don't have the resources to run software internships. The problem is most likely one of education methodologies. Software devs are engineers, they build stuff. Yet they're taught in college like they're scientists.
Certainly my experience from college was that you learn how to code in general terms and if you want to take that career path, then you get real experience working in a company. Other "creation" careers like carpenters, graphic artists, etc, don't learn in this way. They learn the craft and then spend time practicing the craft, building a portfolio for themselves that they can show to employers when they leave.

I don't believe software developers are encouraged in college to build a portfolio, yet the number 1 thing most employers will look for in a junior developer, is a body of work that proves they know and enjoy the craft.

beauf

All true. But that still leaves the problem of almost all companies big and small are doing the same thing. All fishing the same pool with out replenishing the stock.