Originally posted by amcdonald
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Sadly, people do. I know of people working in IT in various Welsh public sector organisations, etc for under 15K a year.
This just causes loads of problems because such guys often think they are brilliant on Cisco or Microsoft kit but they actually have little or no idea about how the technologies should be implemented - and you often see this in how the IT systems have been set up and run.
But the trend has already been set when they take those jobs for so little money - because there are plenty in Wales who are prepared to work for such low salaries then the management think that is the going rate.
Or when they decide they need a contractor in then they get one boy in and want him to be a master of everything. There was a role for a TA in a Welsh public sector body a few weeks back that the sharks were advertising and it was a killer role, IMPO, from the various skills they wanted in one person.
Design & Build redundant data centre.
Set up SAN
Design and build SQL DB redundant cluster for new national DB
Design and build Exchange redundant cluster
Internet Portal to be accessed by senior staff
Intrnet Portal to be accessed by mobile devices
Internet Portal to be accessed by Joe Public single sign-on
Citrix implementation.
Full Cisco network infrastrcuture
Full Firewall infrastructure.
Bespoke DB design and implementation using third party legacy kit
Bespoke Archival design and implementation using third party legacy kit
Plus a few others things that I forget - then they admitted they only had cash until the end of March and were waiting for the Assembly to give them budget for the contractor for the rest of the year.
I was told that this poor contractor would be reporting to about 10 to 15 permie public sector managers so you can imagine how messed up that would be - pressure enough to do the role without having all those people wanting meetings, reports, etc. You and I know it should be 10 to 15 techies and 1 manager but that is not the way large parts of the public sector in Wales works.
I could not believe it when, a week after the closing date for this role, what apeared to be the same role was being touted by the agents - but this time VOIP, Cloud Computing and SC had been added to the list - and I assumed they had not got anyone to do it but had decided to add to the list anyhow.
Turned out it was a different public sector body in Wales - so I can only assume that the some manager in the second PS organisation had seen the first job spec, decided he wanted the same and then added his must-haves on the end. Again, wanted one person.
The good IT boys and girls usually head outside of Wales to the South East/London/World or they get out of IT. Most of my contracting has been done globally. There are some good private sector companies in Wales now and they pay the rate, know the business but they are few and far between.
I have looked at lots of Public Sector organisations in Wales and often the IT is appalling but the arrogance of the permie IT staff is amazing - they think they know it all but, as has been pointed out, they are often, IMPO, the last people you want running the core technology part of your business.
Sadly, most of the people running Wales simply have no idea how important IT is to a business or organisation now and as 80% of Welsh people work in the Public Sector, and always have, the mindset is that being a permie middle to senior manager who sits behind a desk and shuffles paper is more important than a boy who can set up complex state of the art IT systems.
I have a friend whose gf runs an IT department within a Welsh PS organisation - her background for this is that she was a nurse, moved to management and now runs an IT department... but she has trouble sending email and switching on her PC.
Or the Public Sector organisation that, until recently, used excel to control their traffic light systems.
Or the Public Sector organisation that decided CAT5 was not as good as buying in vast numbers of laplink cables and building their 'network' around that - I kid you not.
Or the Public Sector organisation that thought using open source freeware for virtually everything was the best solution and who now have a nightmare trying to manage it because there is little or no support in the real world, who are unable to get updates, security patches, etc, and whose staff do not have the abilitiy to code the stuff themselves.
As you say, why have all hassle that for lousy money - better off in MacDs or simply being a non techie admin person.
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