Reply to: Questions about the work place

[Paddy]

A few tips from an honest agent:

1. get yourself an agent
2. £10.00 an hour is a fortune
3. Accept the fact that your rugby team is "sh*te"
4. If you cannot accept the above there are no jobs in Scotland or Wales.
5. If you have personal issues best to discuss them ehere.
6. get some more clothes.

You forgot to mention KY Jelly

[DodgyAgent]

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?

A few tips from an honest agent:

1. get yourself an agent
2. £10.00 an hour is a fortune
3. Accept the fact that your rugby team is "sh*te"
4. If you cannot accept the above there are no jobs in Scotland or Wales.
5. If you have personal issues best to discuss them ehere.
6. get some more clothes.

[CoolCat]

[QUOTE=malvolio;1784710]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.

QUOTE]

I know the people who invented SIAM and they dont understand it either. It is mubo jumbo designed to impress clueless senior execs, the amount of substance is zero.

[EternalOptimist]

Attire - there is a simple trick. Wear a suit for the interview, then look to see what everyone else is wearing.

Providing it's not a charity 'Vicars and Whores ' dress up day, you should be ok

[NotAllThere]

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.

I know a CIO who thought putting confidential clinical trial information on dropbox was a good idea... I suggested that posting to wikileaks directly would save a lot of effort.

[CoolCat]

Re "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? " usually you will get a laptop and phone, depending on nature of role and seniority etc.

you wont pass a credit check to get a contract mobile phone here, certainly at first, as you wont have bank records and you wont be on the electoral register. depending what kind of phone you want (whether you just want voice or if you want a smart phone etc) you can just get a Virgin or "3" pay as you go SIM and buy a cheap handset outright. you are unlikely to be able to land a role without a mobile for folk to contact you while organising interviews etc, so just get a Virgin pay as you go SIM and buy a cheap handset for a tenner if nothing else.

if you are in London there are a surprising number of places offering free WLAN internet, coffee shops etc, and if youre lucky the place you are staying will be in range of one of these...

[CoolCat]

Blooming Good Luck,

I did it the other way around, went to NZ as a Brit and ended up working there a fair while. Ah Takapuna beach etc so fine...

In general in the UK for any half decent role a suit and tie is expected for the interview. Dont worry you can pick up a cheap suit in Primark or Marks and Spencer which is good enough for this, if this is all you need the suit for I would just get a cheap one. And when I say cheap I mean cheap, you will be surprised how very cheap a new off the peg suit is from these places if you are prepared to take their low priced offering.

Working environment differs. I have seen everything from jeans and T shirt, which normally infers a dirty environment, or in the data centre, close to production environment or similar. More usually you will get by with work trousers, shirt and tie, and you can wear what you like to and from the office over the top. Some offices suit is routine, but this is getting less and less common. And some big places have inherited the American culture of dress down Friday where its normal attire Mon to Thu and then jeans and T shirts on Friday. Some places which are normally scruffy will put the word around to dress smartly if they are expecting senior customers to visit - dont be the only one to come in scruffy on those days.

Basically you only need to get through the interview and your first day, where you can play safe and go in a suit, and figure it out from there.

[Scrag Meister]

Banking IT in London black jeans, black Timberlands, collared shirt.

It varies, client facing, get the suit on.

[tomtomagain]

"Cloud" ( I am really starting to hate that term ) is definitely here to stay.

The impact will be much bigger than outsourcing/offshoring .... and it's going to really impact the Indian outsources as well.

[MarillionFan]

Yebbut OP isn't an dev, he's a sysadmin...

Currently working on three programmes, two cloud-hosted managed service solutions and an enterprise-wide 120k user O365 rollout, so I have a basic understanding of the end-to-end cloud services market, thanks. And how many of your 400 are building cloud solutions, as opposed to applications that run on a cloud platform?

Most of the roles are Solution Consulting, Sales or Professional Services mostly configuring/selling/implementing our platform. As we move into PAAS more heavily were leaving the dev work on apps to partners. In theory we've supposed to have removed their requirements for an 'Admin'
;-)

Ill bet with the field you work in you're implementing our product. :

[malvolio]

Cloud is here to stay. First SAAS and now PAAS. Disagree with Mals earlier assertion. Plenty of roles available for developers in these markets. My company alone has 400 open positions.

Yebbut OP isn't an dev, he's a sysadmin...

Currently working on three programmes, two cloud-hosted managed service solutions and an enterprise-wide 120k user O365 rollout, so I have a basic understanding of the end-to-end cloud services market, thanks. And how many of your 400 are building cloud solutions, as opposed to applications that run on a cloud platform?

[MarillionFan]

I don't think the cloud is dead nor dying but the cloud as most people know it, that of where a 3rd party provides the service, is under suspicion. What I have seen though is companies deploying their own cloud services in-house to not only their own staff but also to their daughter / parent / subsidiaries / competitors / etc. which is where I think people with this experience are required.

Cloud is here to stay. First SAAS and now PAAS. Disagree with Mals earlier assertion. Plenty of roles available for developers in these markets. My company alone has 400 open positions.

[darmstadt]

I don't think the cloud is dead nor dying but the cloud as most people know it, that of where a 3rd party provides the service, is under suspicion. What I have seen though is companies deploying their own cloud services in-house to not only their own staff but also to their daughter / parent / subsidiaries / competitors / etc. which is where I think people with this experience are required.

[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.

[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.