Daily Mail: Ocado turns to Poland for IT staff; UK IT graduate shortage blamed

[woohoo]

First-world principles!

Just told the missus that we are not using Ocado, which is a shame because they are pretty good.

[mudskipper]

So half price then.

well done on getting the job! Its not personal - honest .but I wish companies didn't lie about their motives to short change UK workers.

Not half price - I don't know many new graduates who earn £54K. I imagine the average, out of London, is probably pretty comparable.

[formant]

I have done my fair share of graduate recruiting/interviewing. The graduates of today really are a deluded lot. Some were asking a starting salary of 30K odd. The expected salaries seemed to depend on how much mortgage they had to take to buy a house. The expectation level among graduates is quite high in terms of how much they can earn. The attitude was one of them doing me a favour by taking up a position in our company rather than actually being grateful that there were companies hiring graduates in this climate.

Ok, old quote, but whatever.

My first graduate job (after MSc) paid £32k. In 2010. Just thought I'd throw that at all those people who think they're doing the smart thing by getting 'useful' degrees. My degrees are in Linguistics/Phonetics.

Nah, but seriously, if you aren't doing a degree like mine (where everyone will constantly tell you that you'll be lucky to find any paid employment at all), that's just what you get told at university these days. 30k+ is thus a common expectation. It's indeed pretty delusional, not just because there just are enough of those types of graduate jobs out there, but also because most graduates are completely incompetent at selling their degree related skills at an interview or on their CV. (Oh and most of the people that graduated with me are indeed still either unemployed or working in retail/hospitality/customer service).

Oh, and I'm not going to boycott Ocado over this. They're doing the sensible thing from a business perspective (and honestly, I don't think they even need to justify this move, although if they are, sure they may as well be honest). Also, they're just the only supermarket that reliably delivers on time (or early) with next to no substitutions.

[vetran]

Not half price - I don't know many new graduates senior devs who earn £54K.

Yearly salary for a senior dev is around £27k

FTFY

[mudskipper]

FTFY

Ah, missed that

[vetran]

Ah, missed that

NP, possibly a little sharp reply sorry.

[mos]

nothing to do with the average wage being 3646,09 PLN (£680)

I don't think that wages for programmers in Poland are that low. When I graduated years before EU and all that my 1st salary was 4,400 PLN. You have to give up 50% for Taxes, NI and compulsory pension.

I wished it was that low ... I could retire and live there like a king.

In countries like Poland with communist past behind iron curtain, averages can be misleading.

[eek]

We have some really good IT graduates (or at least we used to have them in olden days ). Still it is unfair on UK grads. And why they cannot be honest about their real reason?
boycott Ocado!

ironically the best intern at clientco is Polish. I'm keeping an eye on her in case plan b is in a position to recruit next year.

[eek]

FTFY

I think it depends where we are. We discussed this exact topic today and couldn't think of a single firm that paid £50k for senior devs. Most maxed out at £45-8k and rarely pay over £40k.

[SantaClaus]

Shouldn't be too hard to boycott Ocado.

Every time I ever used them (years ago), the fruit and vegetables were always near their sell-by date.

I prefer to visit the supermarket and reach for something fresher at the back of the shelf.