Is IT dead in this country

[SantaClaus]

The high paid IT contractor is going the way of the DoDo.

Sure there will always be an IT industry but wages will be fraction of what they once were in real terms.

Take the last 10 years, IT rates have been flat.

An IT contractor earning £120K a year back in 1999 had status, now all sorts of professions are paying that kind of money. And you could have bought a decent place with a £400K mortgage back then too (would be worth £1million+ today).

In fact some banks wont even give IT contractors mortgages these days.

I tend to agree. IT staff are treated as commodities now, rather than professionals.

When I took a Computer Science degree 20 years ago, I had the minsconception that I was embarking on a career that had professional status, such as an accountant, doctor or lawyer.

Maybe I was naive, but I was certainly earning the kind of money that afforded such a status.

It was also very easy to get a contract in those days. I walked straight into my first contract at a well known bank after 2 very informal and easy interviews.

Because of the cheap supply of programmers from India and pressure from management to hire these people, artifical hurdles have been erected for the hire of UK staff. So what used to be a very simple and easy interview process is now a Brainbench test, telephone interview, followed by 5 interviews with everyone from jealous permies up to the director.

The 1990's up to the year 2000 were good. After that, it got progressively harder.
And now there are so many people chasing so few well paid contracts, that it has become a lottery I am no longer willing to take part in. That's why I gave it up almost 2 years ago, but I still frequent this forum because of my interest in BN66.

[VectraMan]

Take the last 10 years, IT rates have been flat.

I wasn't a contractor back then, but surely 1999 was the Y2K BS boom, and 2009 is the after the longest recession in UK history. Drawing a line between boom and doom doesn't give you an accurate long term trend.

Having said that, a more experienced contractor I worked with recently told me he was earning double in the 80s than he does today, and that's not taking into account inflation.

[Board Game Geek]

It's a complex subject and there are so many factors as to why IT has descended to the status is has today.

One factor that particulary interests me is the fact that IT (as a whole profession) never seemed to adopt a professional image and recognised society in order to protect its members interests, in the same way that such organisations exists for Doctors (BMA), Lawyers (Law Society), Surveyors (RICS), and the like.

Is the fact that computing blossomed in the home environment with spotty teenagers writing games on spectrums partly to blame for the the general public's perception that IT was less of a profession and more of a hobby ?

If, for example, back in the 80's there was a surge in Home DIY Doctoring, with various magazines covering everthing from DIY vascetomies, to COPD treatments, fun for all the family, etc, would Doctoring be as well regarded as it is today ?

As I said, I recognise that other factors are at play, and even the Medical profession has issues with cheaper foreign labour, but then again, it has a professional body to protect some of its interests.

Are we victims of the public perception of our industry and its origins ?

To an extent, I would say yes.

[Tingles]

Surely the BCS will save us all???



Buncha muppets!!!

[sasguru]

Why not leverage your IT experience and get a cushy manager's job for a six figure salary with an IB?

[Sysman]

Surely the BCS will save us all???



Buncha muppets!!!

That's part of the problem though, isn't it?

The BCS have always struck me as too academic, with little to offer in the commercial arena. In contrast the legal, medical and surveying bodies mentioned above do have relevance to their members.

[swamp]

That's part of the problem though, isn't it?

The BCS have always struck me as too academic, with little to offer in the commercial arena. In contrast the legal, medical and surveying bodies mentioned above do have relevance to their members.

Nobody quite knows how to do IT properly. It's not engineering, though it has been treated as such in the past, and it's nothing like medical. IT is also moving very fast, though it has slowed in the last decade. Not really sure what a professional IT body would do. For instance, you could have all the Chartered Software Developers you liked, but if the management are tulipe (which they usually are) then the project is still going to go tits up.

[suityou01]

Nobody quite knows how to do IT properly. It's not engineering, though it has been treated as such in the past, and it's nothing like medical. IT is also moving very fast, though it has slowed in the last decade. Not really sure what a professional IT body would do. For instance, you could have all the Chartered Software Developers you liked, but if the management are tulipe (which they usually are) then the project is still going to go tits up.

Most IT projects fail because time and effort is not spent up front doing the analysis. The business does not see the point in hiring a BA, Data Architect, Lead developer, Project Manager, System Analyst, System Architect.

What you get is a PM, and some code monkeys. The end result is something limps into life and gets patched and patched until its usable, usually at 30 or more times the cost of "doing it properly" in the first place.

Now things are more and more framework driven there is less and less to do. Presentation is sorted through IDEs, Data access layers and web service layers are auto generated. I reckon the only interesting stuff is real time and embedded C apps, as at least that has the 'trainset factor'

[newblood]

I tend to agree. IT staff are treated as commodities now, rather than professionals.

When I took a Computer Science degree 20 years ago, I had the minsconception that I was embarking on a career that had professional status, such as an accountant, doctor or lawyer.

Maybe I was naive, but I was certainly earning the kind of money that afforded such a status.

It was also very easy to get a contract in those days. I walked straight into my first contract at a well known bank after 2 very informal and easy interviews.

Because of the cheap supply of programmers from India and pressure from management to hire these people, artifical hurdles have been erected for the hire of UK staff. So what used to be a very simple and easy interview process is now a Brainbench test, telephone interview, followed by 5 interviews with everyone from jealous permies up to the director.

The 1990's up to the year 2000 were good. After that, it got progressively harder.
And now there are so many people chasing so few well paid contracts, that it has become a lottery I am no longer willing to take part in. That's why I gave it up almost 2 years ago, but I still frequent this forum because of my interest in BN66.

I THINK I AM GOING TO CRY ! honestly.

[MPwannadecentincome]

Nobody quite knows how to do IT properly. It's not engineering, though it has been treated as such in the past, and it's nothing like medical. IT is also moving very fast, though it has slowed in the last decade. Not really sure what a professional IT body would do. For instance, you could have all the Chartered Software Developers you liked, but if the management are tulipe (which they usually are) then the project is still going to go tits up.

I don't understand the comparison, don't the engineering companies (full of Chartered Engineers) not have tulipe managers? If not, then how come, what special attributes or training to these managers have that IT managers do not?

I think the difference is more down to expectations, no business expects to undertake an engineering project or to hire engineers without going through the full life cycle (not so easy to offshore maybe?), hmm can you imagine a bridge being built using Agile?