Questions about the work place

[kkinlondon]

Hello guys,

I am moving to the UK in a few weeks time to work and do the OE thing. I am coming from NZ on a Tier 5 Visa, and I hope I can continue doing I.T. work. I am planning to stop in London first and then see how it goes, all depending on work and money etc. I have skills and certification in VMware and also some background in general Wintel system administration, so I hope that I can land a job (fingers crossed).

I would like some insight on a few things that has been bugging my mind, as I decide what to bring from here and what to buy over there....

- What kind of attire is acceptable in the work place? In NZ, as an IT guy, I can rock a pair of jeans, a shirt or IT related polo, with shoes and is accetable, or maybe even a leather jacket. I understand that if I am contracting, I will need to keep up a good image, but how far do I have to go? Do I have to be in a full suit the whole time? Or smart casual would work?

- I am not planning on bringing a lot of clothes as its a big trip, and I dont know if I will find work or not, so for interviews, if I just have a long sleeved shirt and business pants with black shoes, would that be suffcient? or is it necessary to wear a suit? I don't wanna carry a suit from here, coz it will just get messed up in the luggage, and also i don't even know if i'll find work there or not, so will end up being pointless. I can purchase on there if need be.

- As an IT contractor, what tools are provided in the workplace? I.E. if it's a support role, do they generally provide you with laptop, phone for after hours/call outs?

[bobspud]

Hi,
Attire will vary from place to place, most of the time smart casual will work. But more importantly your skills are fairly vanilla to be frank and there are far too many guys with your skillsets looking for work. Even worse than that many companies rate engineering as something for offshore workers to do, making the remaining jobs even harder to come by. Not sure how a t5 visa works but the way most contractors work here is buy running their own limited company. Working through an umbrella is highly inefficient from a tax point of view and leaves you little cash to built a warchest for time between jobs.

Good luck.

[UglyBetty]

You would normally wear a suit to the interview.

Workplace attire varies from place to place, for most places smart trousers, shirt and shoes is normal, for a few, anything goes. Many places have a 'dress down' Friday.

[MadDawg]

Apply for a job here - dress code not an issue.

Nude House - Home

[Paddy]

Hello guys,

I am moving to the UK in a few weeks time to work and do the OE thing. I am coming from NZ on a Tier 5 Visa, and I hope I can continue doing I.T. work. I am planning to stop in London first and then see how it goes, all depending on work and money etc. I have skills and certification in VMware and also some background in general Wintel system administration, so I hope that I can land a job (fingers crossed).

I would like some insight on a few things that has been bugging my mind, as I decide what to bring from here and what to buy over there....

- What kind of attire is acceptable in the work place? In NZ, as an IT guy, I can rock a pair of jeans, a shirt or IT related polo, with shoes and is accetable, or maybe even a leather jacket. I understand that if I am contracting, I will need to keep up a good image, but how far do I have to go? Do I have to be in a full suit the whole time? Or smart casual would work?

- I am not planning on bringing a lot of clothes as its a big trip, and I dont know if I will find work or not, so for interviews, if I just have a long sleeved shirt and business pants with black shoes, would that be suffcient? or is it necessary to wear a suit? I don't wanna carry a suit from here, coz it will just get messed up in the luggage, and also i don't even know if i'll find work there or not, so will end up being pointless. I can purchase on there if need be.

- As an IT contractor, what tools are provided in the workplace? I.E. if it's a support role, do they generally provide you with laptop, phone for after hours/call outs?

Tier 5 visa is for the youth mobility scheme and the idea is that you gain some work experience in the UK by being employed. You are not allowed to be a self employed contractor or have your own company however, no doubt agents will tell you differently. Technically, you are not allowed to stay after one year.

There are masses of people with your skills in the UK who are out of work, My guess is that you will find work by under uttering the locals.

[kkinlondon]

Thanks for the infor..

I made the decision to come after reading some job market reports, that cloud computing was on the rise, which is where most of my experience lays.

However I am open to even permie roles, answering phones on the help desk.....whatever makes ends meet I guess as travelling and experiencing the different cultures around the UK and Europe is the bigger reason for being there. If all else fails, Nude-House doesn't sound so bad at all and now I am thinking about buying me a return ticket as well (just in case lol).

[bobspud]

Thanks for the infor..

I made the decision to come after reading some job market reports, that cloud computing was on the rise, which is where most of my experience lays.

However I am open to even permie roles, answering phones on the help desk.....whatever makes ends meet I guess as travelling and experiencing the different cultures around the UK and Europe is the bigger reason for being there. If all else fails, Nude-House doesn't sound so bad at all and now I am thinking about buying me a return ticket as well (just in case lol).

I know the kiwi's that used to come over had lower living standards/cost because they were on an adventure and was enjoying the scenery more than anything else. Most didn't mind the occasional sofa surf now and then. But you really will be coming over at a time of mixed markets in one of the most expensive countries on the planet. If I were you I would contact a few agencies over here and get some idea of what the market will be like if you arrive. Get your CV in front of a few natives and see how keen they are. If the cloud market really is picking up then I doubt windows or VMware are part of that scene. (I am working on AWS and general infrastructure design at the moment. Yes the market is good but then its the Linux guys that are benefiting)

Several thousand miles is a long way to come to answer phones on a helpdesk.

[Paddy]

Cloud could be killed stone dead with the revelations from Snowden that the US is stealing industrial secrets from Europe to give to US companies. I know of one 5k user client co who has cancelled cloud for that reason

[vetran]

Cloud could be killed stone dead with the revelations from Snowden that the US is stealing industrial secrets from Europe to give to US companies. I know of one 5k user client co who has cancelled cloud for that reason

Hadn't heard that, it gave my best laugh of the day!

not like most IT people didn't mention it as a risk.

[malvolio]

Lots of people talking about cloud and citing it as a requirement: although most don't actually understand it any more than they do SIAM, they seem to be flavour of the month.

But...

Not that many providers that have cloud solutions ready to go, and they tend to be (a) very big like Azure and Rackspace and (b) well organised and provisioned else there's no margin. That means there isn't a lot of call for people to build cloud solutions: the whole point is that it's ready to go. So as a career move, probably not the best idea.