Need opinion on IT jobs in UK for HSMP

[oracleslave]

Many UK contractors don't have the opportunities for migration based work due to the fact they have children in schools and elderly parents so its not as easy as it sounds...

I am staggered that you appear to think that doesn't apply to people elsewhere in the world.

Globalisation and a migrant work force is here to stay. Time to find ways to maximise the other opportunities this brings or suffer. The sooner we stop whining about it and start thinking of ways to use it to our benefit the better.

[Gonzo]

In any case skilled migration is important to any country and globalisation has ensured that a transient workforce is here to stay. If you can’t find a role here move somewhere where you can, fortunately or unfortunately that is the new paradigm.

The concept of the Nation State is sooo last millennium.

I wonder how long it is going to take for people to realise that.

[bobspud]

I am staggered that you appear to think that doesn't apply to people elsewhere in the world.

Globalisation and a migrant work force is here to stay. Time to find ways to maximise the other opportunities this brings or suffer. The sooner we stop whining about it and start thinking of ways to use it to our benefit the better.

No I think you are missing a point I _do_ think that it applies to all economies and I have already seen companies wanting to pull out of India for brazil... So its a continual trend..
what you don't address is that we let people in for a TEMPORARY period not forever...

You are of course right about opportunity. My last gig went on for 15 months. Mainly because of the wonderful skills of the globalised off shore team. They did their utmost to grind a million pounds worth of sun kit into the ground because they could not understand That:
1) You do not open a weblogic session every time someone visits your front page...
2) You do not perform full table scans on 2gb tables and try to store the ******* contents in memory just to see if the user can log in
3) Don't hard code your dev environments IP addresses into PRODUCTION CODE
4) Don't make up 52 different variable names for the same value only to put it in property files then forget what they all do...
5) Dont keep your own copy of the sources on your own laptop and spend six months coding against that instead of the code tree...
6) Even if the design specifications do not contain the need for application logging its a very good idea to include _SOME_ (by the way "I got here" does not count )
7) You don't fiddle with deployed code in production EVER... More over you don't openly lie about not doing it to the guy who took snapshots of the code and ran a diff before he accused you of doing it
8) When you have all your connections setup via a data service bus you don't go writing java database connection procedures yourself (and NO your really should not leave the ******* PASSWORD in plain text all over the CODE)

I think the end customer got very good value for £16m I am really sure that six good java guys + a weblogic admin could never have done the job in six months rather than the 40 Indians that hacked at it for 18 months

The customer shot their onshore budget by a considerable margin (due to the fact that we were working 24/7 to undo the mess that was being brought in). The stake holders were overjoyed and wanted these offshore clowns to start the next job...



I'm sure you get the point ...

Globalisation benefits mega corps and not much else. Its destroying our IT industry...

It will be interesting to see how India takes it when we start to pull all the work out of there and take it else where because they are too expensive...

[GreenerGrass]

It is not Canadian, US. Euro or Australian workers that are the issue. They largely compete on the same terms as us and have the same values as us both monatory and culturally. Similarly we can and do go to work in their countries as they do ours.

The third world, low rate imports are the problem. These guys (rather their sponser companies) ultimately threaten to export by stealth our entire knowledge industry.

I pretty much agree with this.

And I have more of an issue with Indian companies "offshoring by the back door" by using UK IT companies as portals to place cheap Indian staff in UK-based roles. Independant Indian people who live here and charge full market rates and actually contribute to the British economy are not so much an issue.
At least the latter are on a level playing field.
But it's good to see the government shutting the VISAs at last. Doesn't seem "fair" all this one way traffic from protectionist India.

[oracleslave]

No I think you are missing a point I _do_ think that it applies to all economies and I have already seen companies wanting to pull out of India for brazil... So its a continual trend..

Disclaimer: I know less than Atw about economics so I could be missing the point completely

If it's a continual trend then my take is still that we should be looking to maximise the potential it brings rather than screaming for the government to introduce protectionist measures which will ulitimately lead us to industries that cannot compete in the global market.

what you don't address is that we let people in for a TEMPORARY period not forever...

[quote=bobspud;758279]
Are we unique in that characteristic? AFAIK we do have one of the most open economies that provides multi-nationals with decent tax rates, access to markets etc but surely we are not the only economy that utilises temporary skilled workers in industries that require it?

snip

Whilst your personal experience appears to have been of an off-shoring project gone wrong and it ultimately created work for you I think the time has come to accept that menial development/programming/testing is likely to continue to go offshore in great numbers due to the attactiveness of the cheap labour market. What we should be concentrating on as IT folk in the UK is getting expertise in the domain/industry/service knowledge in growth industries rather than focussing on being the best (insert programming language) developer, architect that we can be.

Globalisation benefits mega corps and not much else. Its destroying our IT industry...

I can't claim to know specific examples but am not convinced that is the case. Whilst I agree it is all good and well that globalisation has made say 'cheap electrical goods' available to Joe Public this is of little consolation if it has also taken his job away.

[GreenerGrass]

[QUOTE=oracleslave;758341]

If it's a continual trend then my take is still that we should be looking to maximise the potential it brings rather than screaming for the government to introduce protectionist measures which will ulitimately lead us to industries that cannot compete in the global market.

What exactly is this "potential"? You have to ask who is actually gaining from this. It isn't the general working population of this country.
It's not so much protectionism as having a level playing field. We can never compete on costs due to having a welfare state and higher cost of living.
It is insane to not only offshore everything that can be done remotely but also "onshore" jobs that can be done by people in this country for what will prove to be temporary marginal savings in the long run.

I think the time has come to accept that menial development/programming/testing is likely to continue to go offshore in great numbers due to the attactiveness of the cheap labour market.
What we should be concentrating on as IT folk in the UK is getting expertise in the domain/industry/service knowledge in growth industries rather than focussing on being the best (insert programming language) developer, architect that we can be.

Can we not do both? Why abandon our tech industries to just become business analysts and project managers?
Not all specs can be farmed out to offshore programmers, maybe only a small % of them. I see a grim future for the UK if we just provide a conduit of managers - in fact why not outsource them as well to the cheapest cost source?

People are confusing international business and freedom of movement with corporate globalisation. The former is good for us, the latter often isn't.

We have already lost agriculture and most of the manufacturing industries as major employers, if we offshore much of the service and IT industries and just have a handful of fifth columnist managers and BAs acting as go betweens what sustains the UK? It is a really shiit and short sighted model. It will not support a developed nation of 60 million people.
It seems the government is only just realising that their policies of the last decade have been totally flawed.

[Dextor]

Thaks for your replies

Dear All,
I want to thank you all for such an overwhelming response. Subtracting sentiments expressed from the content, I get clear picture. There are other issues highlighted mainly immigration, UK life & IT skills in general, I will put them in a different thread as it deviates from current objective.

Following is the situation analysis:

1. UK IT spending on new projects is currently on hold, so no new positions are being created on regular basis. Possibly non-priority projects are being or have already been shutdown. This is mainly because liquidity crunch has hit UK as much as it has hit rest of the world. But there are other factors to this as well.

2. There are already more than enough people (I mean real Professionals & not just 'skilled workers') available locally to handle needs of the hour. Any company will want to hire from available pool instead of looking for some one who is not readily available & doesn’t have UK work record. Fair enough!

3. Situation will loosen up once governments pump money into economies. But this could take at least 3-6 months. And for IT scenario to become demanding again could even take up to a year.

4. I am 33 years old. I am programming since 16 years, right from my school days. I am doing commercial development for 9 years or so. Worldwide there is slowdown in new software development. Indian IT companies earn 90% of its revenue from western markets, hence we are moving towards maintenance / remote admin / back-office outsourcing work. There are less green projects, which is my area of work (system architecture / design / new born development). Its fun in creating my own 'kids' instead of babysitting other's. I want to establish myself in banking / finance domain within European markets (UK, D-A-CH) over next 3-5 years time frame. For that I need to pickup lot of domain knowledge / experience. I believe I can safely target for ₤600 – 900 PD range to begin with. I would like to have your opinion on this as well.

Conclusion:
In current scenario, the only way for me, to take up a possible position, is to accept compensation considerably lower than fair market price or use backdoor provided by an Indian off-shoring company. Both options are not acceptable to me as it will lower my standards of life. So I will just put my UK contracting plans on hold for sometime & go in ‘wait-&-watch’ mode. As situation changes, will definitely approach consulting agencies like (Anson Mcade / Aston cartor etc.), though I have no idea how they would respond.

Thank you again.
-Cheers

[oracleslave]

What exactly is this "potential"? You have to ask who is actually gaining from this. It isn't the general working population of this country.
It's not so much protectionism as having a level playing field. We can never compete on costs due to having a welfare state and higher cost of living.

I have already agreed that not everyone will benefit. However if the reality is as you say "that we can never compete on costs" then isn't it time to face reality and find areas that we can compete in. Will protectionism or any other legislation forcing organisations to employ locals/not onshore/offshore (which ultimately has the effect of forcing them to make a decision that is not the the best cost/profit decision for their shareholders)
will drive away foreign investment with dire consequences.

It is insane to not only offshore everything that can be done remotely but also "onshore" jobs that can be done by people in this country for what will prove to be temporary marginal savings in the long run.

What's the solution? How do think you could stop it happening? My point is we may as well face the fact that it is happening and adapt or die.

Can we not do both? Why abandon our tech industries to just become business analysts and project managers?
Not all specs can be farmed out to offshore programmers, maybe only a small % of them. I see a grim future for the UK if we just provide a conduit of managers - in fact why not outsource them as well to the cheapest cost source?

In short I don't believe we can do both and compete globally. (Adam Smith and comparative advantage at play). I don't think I said all specs can go off-shore and I take that point. However for me the trend will remain that more and more will go and the market and hence margins to be made for those here will shrink.

We have already lost agriculture and most of the manufacturing industries as major employers, if we offshore much of the service and IT industries and just have a handful of fifth columnist managers and BAs acting as go betweens what sustains the UK? It is a really shiit and short sighted model. It will not support a developed nation of 60 million people.
It seems the government is only just realising that their policies of the last decade have been totally flawed.

I agree. I just don't see the trend being stopped, hence my "adapt or die" statement earlier. Unless you can think of a means of changing the situation?

[bobspud]

[QUOTE=oracleslave;758341
Whilst your personal experience appears to have been of an off-shoring project gone wrong and it ultimately created work for you I think the time has come to accept that menial development/programming/testing is likely to continue to go offshore in great numbers due to the attactiveness of the cheap labour market. What we should be concentrating on as IT folk in the UK is getting expertise in the domain/industry/service knowledge in growth industries rather than focussing on being the best (insert programming language) developer, architect that we can be.
[/QUOTE]

Programmers start with the menial stuff and grow into architects. You can't just wake up and say today I'm a BA or an Solutions Architect. Well actually you can but you will be crap at it and get fired fast.
I'm an infrastructure architect by trade however I started as a junior sysadmin more than 15 years ago. If you give the junior roles to another country you lose the chance to grow your architects for the future. Then when you have done that you will get screwed by India/China/Poland/<next offshore buzz> because they now know you don't have the ability to do the BA/ Senior roles because no one invested in the early years.

[lightng]

(Adam Smith and comparative advantage at play).

Comparative advantage only really works if you've got something left to trade.