This is why I support Jezza Corbyn

[Milkyway]

He's for open borders/moar immigrashun, so not sure what supporting him will achieve.

... and the Tories are not??
Th current contract market chaos certainly can prove a point or two with regards to the recent levels of immigration and outsourcing, courtesy Tories!

[Cirrus]

He's for open borders/moar immigrashun, so not sure what supporting him will achieve.

Yes - you're right.

I don't support him any more.

What I want is someone who supports the Working Class.

Unfortunately Labour now mainly support feather-your-nest-by-saying-nothing-contraversial, or are like Jezza: just plain anti-wealth/power. They thus back the Underclass, economic migrants, the IRA, North Korea, whatever, and these factions are by no means helping us workers.

Anybody fancy starting a new political party?

[Zero Liability]

... and the Tories are not??

Never said they aren't, but my point is that he's certainly not going to change that, as he isn't against it even in principle.

Anyway, an article relevant to the OP:

Government agrees to relax tech visa system amid skills shortage - Telegraph

[uk contractor]

There is no tech shortage whatsoever thats crazy for any politician to think otherwise.


There is a big tech shortage of people willing to be mugged off for a very low salary however whilst the consultancy keeps all the rate to themselves to boost non existent otherwise profit margins!

[fool]

It's an interesting thing this IT skills shortage, heard it on the news this morning, and made wonder how many are on the bench? Or is it a shortage of people with skills willing to work for sweet fa?

Honestly, I don't think the shortage has much to do with the actual skill or the desire to import cheap workers. Most businesses are just lazy or stupid when it comes to hiring and it's either full day technical reviews where pandantic tulip pick at what you don't know when put under pressure or it's a non-technical manager.

Example, you're a linux expert but they're looking for Ubuntu. You go in the bin. Same vice versa. Or, rather, I need a node expert. That guy who knows, Python, Perl, Java, PHP and frontend JavaScript doesn't have node, so goes in the bin.

I do see cheap skate contracts and I do wonder why people looking for my niche buzzwords refuse to even match my current rate, but they'll still be offering £500 a day which is way more than they'd be paying those offshore workers.

[squarepeg]

There is shortage of people who know what they are doing. Opening the UK market to Eastern Europeans was supposed to help with that, but there are just not enough good IT people with the language skills to fill that gap. The tech visa is not going to solve this problem. I'd say that you do not have to worry about not getting a job if you have a strong skill set, experience, and can think outside of an 12-month rolling contract with a bank. The tech visa is going to bring maybe a couple of hundred really top-level devs, if that. The rest is going to be a few thousand clueless certificate collectors with no language skills and no idea how to survive in the UK. I really do not worry about immigration, because half of our job is soft skills, which most tech visa holders from outside of the EU do not have. I've seen them, worked with them, most of them do not last long on the job.

If you want to survive on this market keep upgrading your skills, sometimes take a lower-paying contract if that puts something new on your CV that you can charge more for on the next one. Ignore politicians, they are after your money one way or another.

[Sausage Surprise]

It's an interesting thing this IT skills shortage, heard it on the news this morning, and made wonder how many are on the bench? Or is it a shortage of people with skills willing to work for sweet fa?

Nail on head...

[oliverson]

Corbyn is a clown.

I voted Tory this time around. Biggest mistake of my life in hindsight, not that it would have made a difference in this labour stronghold.

Best thing for labour would be the 'correct' Miliband leading the party and boy does that party need a leader. David Miliband, the job is yours. Let's put these Tory f***witts out of business.

[Cirrus]

You can't just step back and say 'Foreigners won't hack it. Employers will have to come back to us.'

The rest of the world is a very very large place and there are millions of extremely clever people out there just waiting to come and take a piece of our vastly superior lifestyle.

You have to issue explicit instructions to our businesses that our citizens are to be protected from invasion.

[squarepeg]

You can't just step back and say 'Foreigners won't hack it. Employers will have to come back to us.'

The rest of the world is a very very large place and there are millions of extremely clever people out there just waiting to come and take a piece of our vastly superior lifestyle.

You have to issue explicit instructions to our businesses that our citizens are to be protected from invasion.

Businesses can do nothing if there are laws that allow foreigners in and enforce equal treatment. What businesses need to start doing is asking some very simple questions about the way devs solve problems that are beyond the realm of pure CS. It is one thing to be able to answer questions about the internal workings of a programming language but another being able to apply that knowledge to solve real life problems. For that you need some local context.

I still remember with disgust the day when I had to fight over an 'if' clause with a Southern European dev fresh out of uni who wanted the codebase to be 'clean' and did not understand the difference between terminologies used in Europe and the US that necessitated adding that said clause. The idiot kept removing the code I was adding to the repo and we had to call for the manager to resolve that stupid dispute. I am tired of devs who can do backflips programming but cannot write a working payment gateway integration module. When a foreign dev can describe how he can go about writing such code taking into account the specifics of the UK market, I have no problem with a UK business hiring him or her as such person will be a useful asset. But if they can barely speak English, cannot understand what 'a couple of quid' is and will argue agains using PayPal instead of implementing the code that they were told to do I see them as a waste of money no matter how many Ph.D.s they hold.