Reply to: C# Devs Needed - 3 Years Experience

[d000hg]

I know (a bit) someone who works for IBM. Apparently he loves it - inbetween playing basketball etc he mnages to get some work done.

No idea where he's located though.

[Moscow Mule]

Worked on-site at Sony. All the interesting work is done overseas, so scratch them.

Worked with IBM jointly on projects for the last 12 years. Believe me, you'd never want to work for them in the UK.

Misys are another body-shop with a bad rep.

I think you need to do a bit more trawling.

No that's not my experience.

I was recruited out of uni to design micro chips for Sony - interesting and bleeding edge at the time.

I know loads of people who work for IBM UK. Nice people who enjoy their jobs.

Misys - plain wrong. Summit, Opics, Midas, Equation, Bank Fusion - all Misys products.

[nomadd]

Hi nomadd,

Just wondering what you found wrong with IBM out of curiosity? Im with a rival consultancy and in banking (albeit thinking of leaving hence why im on here) so would be interested to hear.

Well, to qualify my comments, I think IBM - like many of the other companies I and others have mentioned on this thread - were once a great company to work for...

But, let's be honest, it's all about the "bottom line" in these companies these days. And that means most, if not all, of their design and development, etc. work has been offshored for cost reasons.

I know many long-time, i.e. 20 years plus, IBMers who have seen the place change dramatically over the last few years; as one of them put it to me: no-one can stay in the labs doing research these days, we are all pushed out onto a paying customers sites, whether we like it or not. If we don't like it, we are told where the door is.

And they are paid peanuts for being there. And are forced to work very long hours, with no overtime pay. I worked with IBMers (and all the other large consultancies) at Tesco, PWC, Marsh Insurance, numerous Banks and Finance Houses, etc. Their staff have all been highly overworked and poorly underpaid; and none of them have been happy with it - in fact they've all told me how "lucky" I was to be a contractor... And they've all been treated like dirt by the clients, as the clients know they can't say anything back for fear of upsetting IBMs Account Managers; those same clients never tried it on with me, as they knew what they'd get back in return...

I think the "starry-eyed" view that some people still have of certain companies is misguided. As I say, in 21 years of contracting (plus another 3 permie), I've worked with most of these outfits. And each of them today is just a body-shop, looking to fleece their permies for all they are worth, until they are burnt-out and tossed aside. And the great "benefit packages" - i.e. final salary pension, 13 day working fortnights, 3 months per year off for research, etc., etc. - have all long since been dropped from all the companies I know who used to offer such incentives in order to stop their staff leaving. In other words, what's left to stay for?

Still, that's just my two cents... If someone does have that "dream job" (Google, maybe? Although even they seem to have dropped their once great working practices..) then I'm all ears. All I can say in my defence is that I've worked with most of these companies and they didn't seem that great to me; and nor have they seemed that great to the permies who toil for them. But then that might be just the misguided perspective of a old, hardcore contractor.

[dkennedy1001]

Worked with IBM jointly on projects for the last 12 years. Believe me, you'd never want to work for them in the UK.

Hi nomadd,

Just wondering what you found wrong with IBM out of curiosity? Im with a rival consultancy and in banking (albeit thinking of leaving hence why im on here) so would be interested to hear.

[kingshuk]

Worked with IBM jointly on projects for the last 12 years. Believe me, you'd never want to work for them in the UK.

I thought IBM Hursley lab was nice. They do some good product development work there - IBM JVM/JDK, MQSeries, Via voice etc. What was it you didn't like?

Misys are another body-shop with a bad rep.

They have a good retail banking product stack (health care products too but don't know much about that). From what friends working there tell me - big chunk of the work is still done here. So why do you say body-shop? Were you in their 'services' division?

[nomadd]

What bank do you mind me asking??

I'll let you know when I've finished fleecing them myself.

In my experience banks are always behind the curve

Retail banks: I agree. IB: I disagree (at least based on the three I've worked for.)

And hacking away....

There, I would have to agree. But as long as they keep signing the timesheet for my "hacking", well...

[nomadd]

Misys, IBM, Sony Home Entertainment all spring to mind as software/hardware companies with a significant UK presence.

I could go trawling for more but I don't want to.

Worked on-site at Sony. All the interesting work is done overseas, so scratch them.

Worked with IBM jointly on projects for the last 12 years. Believe me, you'd never want to work for them in the UK.

Misys are another body-shop with a bad rep.

I think you need to do a bit more trawling.

[kingshuk]

Didn't know that. Their website http://www.hpl.hp.com/bristol/ doesn't say much (expected I guess) and talks about the work done in the 2 labs left now (i,e not 'completely gutted'). Interestingly they have labs now in Beijing and Bangalore too.

[Scary]

There are more - HP (Bristol HP lab)

Hasn't that recently been completely gutted as HP culminates its transformation from an innovative hardware company that does good research into an assembler and badger of other peoples' bits.

ETA: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05..._labs_closure/

[kingshuk]

Misys, IBM, Sony Home Entertainment all spring to mind as software/hardware companies with a significant UK presence.

I could go trawling for more but I don't want to.

There are more - HP (Bristol HP lab), Sage, Temenos, Fidessa, Symbian, ARM smaller startups in oxford area, game writing companies...Granted not as many as in silicon valley or even Bangalore but still fairly large number.

I worked for IBM after college and it was treasure mine for people who want to be programmers. Great library, really good senior programmers around, mentoring for grads and very good code to look at in really large complex products. Compared to that the work I see grads doing in IB are not really that interesting. They get dreadful code examples to look at and not enough time to learn things properly.

[Moscow Mule]

And those companies would be..?

Misys, IBM, Sony Home Entertainment all spring to mind as software/hardware companies with a significant UK presence.

I could go trawling for more but I don't want to.

[swamp]

Working as an IT permie for an IB out of uni would be an excellent choice. Stick it out for two or three years and you'll be made. Much better than working for a body shop.

[conned tractor]

Ah **** it.

Im just gonna start 'updating' by cv specially for the roles Im applying for. Every other ****er is doing it to get in front of the interviewer so they can blag it from there and I dont see why I should miss out!

That and changing my name to Mr A. AAAAA!

It seems that way from where i'm sitting also.

[BolshieBastard]

Ah **** it.

Im just gonna start 'updating' by cv specially for the roles Im applying for. Every other ****er is doing it to get in front of the interviewer so they can blag it from there and I dont see why I should miss out!

That and changing my name to Mr A. AAAAA!

[joey122]

Yep, my current IB client uses all that lot, plus Mockito, JUnit, etc. Mind you, they've decided all of that is "old hat" now and have jumped on the Groovy/Grails bandwagon. That's now put them up against the other part of the Bank that thinks Scala is the "new Java" and are going that way. Interesting times, even if only for my cv.

What bank do you mind me asking??

In my experience banks are always behind the curve

And hacking away....