=If ye IT people had 3-4 months free to upskill what area is in demand an paying well

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dimo

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IT Healthy?.If people had 3-4 months free to upskill whats in demand and paying well?

A word of caution, and I realise ..the answer to this rant by all may be business is business but anyway see what you think. I am interested in your opinion.


Is IT Healthy? If people had 3-4 months free to upskill what is now in demand and paying well? or should an IT Professional be considering a complete change of direction with these worrying observations?

I'm taking a stand back from my current IT b2b account management role which required an element of Tech experience...ie know the basics of networking administration challenges the usual MS apps client\server, cisco basics, business continuity stuff and customer relationship expectations to account for the customer facing responsibilities

Recently I'm taking a look at the IT industry and reading a lot of the press releases by companies of late which I have to say appear to me to be more advertising tricks and self serving rather than genuine recruitment drives. Personally I think having worked in IT with one of the 'biggies' that IT in Ireland has peaked and the 'biggies' the nasdaq crew are just about to depart bringing more services than the 'helpdesk' stuff that people seem to recognise to the loss of the rest of the services\employment across EMEA to the new IT Hub of the world that being India.
I personally notice Hungary and Dubai are also starting to suck them in one by one. The shock for me is that the silence is deafening by the Department of Employment Trade and Ent, and IT personal in general.

In Ireland I feel there are lot of companies posturing between each other with press releases even in the Telecoms market. Announcing that a data-centre's are being opened creating x amount of jobs or 'so and so' will create x amount of jobs over the next 5 years etc.
For instance:
Ericsonn for example released a similar press release regarding jobs in Cork a few years back and Cork is still waiting for these few hundred jobs.

IBM announced that a data-centre was being setup to service their customers in the south. This appears to be a total ploy to remind people they exist because HP who bought Schlumberger from under IBM's nose seem to be the only genuine data-centre in Cork. From speaking with people in Cork this IBM Data-Centre (which by the way was located next to the river lee in the Penrose wharf complex....going very much against how you would locate a serious data-centre) has bairly been used more than a handful of times.

There are however the exceptions for example Mcafee in Cork, Siemens.

What is your take on the above. Have you any suggestions? I'd be interested to hear all of your opinions.
 
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Theres good pay for these two skills - J2EE, Oracle Database Development. High daily contract rates anyways.
 
I've moved away from coding over the past couple of years. It actually took a couple of years to manage it and even now I still have to roll up the sleeves from time to time but very rarely.

My decision wasn't driven by what was paying well or what skills were in demand. It was purely down to not enjoying coding like I used to and being fed up of having to constantly learn new Technologies just to keep doing pretty much the same job. .Net was the final straw and I've never really given it a serious look.

My motivation was purely to do something I enjoy, that's how it's always been which means I'm usually earning a bit less than I could be if I did whatever was hot.

I decided that whatever I did after coding it had to be something where the knowledge and experience I picked up had a bit of Shelf Life. If you study a programming language or technology the knowledge is hugely de-valued when a new version comes along, or when that particar techology becomes redundant.

If you focus on what I call soft skills (Project Management, Requirements Elicitation, Requirements Change Management, Quality Assurance etc).
There may be new tools to help you, but you're not going to be forced to re-trainjust because some vendor has released a new tool. You'll still be a good Project Manager, or a Good Requirements Engineer.

My approach isn't for everyone but I'd allways advise people to find something they enjoy. IT s hugely diverse regardless of your personality type there's a roll the will suit you. If you like people get a roll that interacts with clients, if you don't get the coding in a dark room type job.

Also try to specialise. We turn out jack of all trades IT graduates who are then asked to do everything from Requirements Gathering to Design to Coding to Testing to Maintenance to Support. If you can at all I'd advise you to pick one or two areas in IT and focus on them.

The Software Engineering Body of Knowledge project identified 10 Knowledge Areas. You could start by seeing if any one of those appeal to you.
www.swebok.org

Good luck.

-Rd
 
Re: =If ye IT people had 3-4 months free to upskill what area is in demand an paying

daltonr said;
If you study a programming language or technology the knowledge is hugely de-valued when a new version comes along, or when that particar techology becomes redundant.
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I agree with everything daltonr says here. Additionally, it will always be harder to compete with younger, graduate engineers as they will most likely be up-to date with the latest prog language and tools. In the IT world these quickly go out of date. A shift to more generic areas in IT, such as QA and testing, would be less prone to change. Software programs will always contain bugs regardless of which snazzy ultra-modern language they are coded in. The techniques used to find these, are pretty much the same across all languages.
 
Re: =If ye IT people had 3-4 months free to upskill what area is in demand an paying

most likely be up-to date with the latest prog language and tools
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Ive found this to be not true. Grads might know ansi SQL but not Oracle PLSQL . They might be taught Java or an early version of VB but not .NET which is the current flavour of the month.
 
daltonr said:
If you focus on what I call soft skills (Project Management, Requirements Elicitation, Requirements Change Management, Quality Assurance etc).
There may be new tools to help you, but you're not going to be forced to re-trainjust because some vendor has released a new tool. You'll still be a good Project Manager, or a Good Requirements Engineer.
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There is a risk involved in this kind of move. Note that I'm not saying it's right or wrong - just want to call out the risk.

By moving to these less technical roles, you are almost certainly ruling yourself out of ever returning to a hands-on technical role, as your technical skills become more & more dated.
 
I dont think it will matter when you are a technical or non-technical IT specialist soon - I think both parties will have difficulty finding suitable jobs in the years to come as IT companies shift development, R&D and Proj Mgt overseas (Eastern Europe & India).
 
Re: =If ye IT people had 3-4 months free to upskill what area is in demand an paying

There is a risk involved in this kind of move. Note that I'm not saying it's right or wrong - just want to call out the risk.

By moving to these less technical roles, you are almost certainly ruling yourself out of ever returning to a hands-on technical role, as your technical skills become more & more dated.
Click to expand...

That's true and it isn't for everyone. Personally I'd get out of IT rather
than go back to a fully hands-on technical role. I don't see it as a risk, I see it as a decision to leave that stuff behind.

-Rd
 
I think both parties will have difficulty finding suitable jobs in the years to come as IT companies shift development, R&D and Proj Mgt overseas (Eastern Europe & India).
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I don't think that's true.
Multi-Nationals will look elsewhere if Ireland isn't competitive or(more likely)
if there aren't sufficient staff available here. Multi-Nationals may also move
abroad if they can develop their software elsewhere.

But we are never going to see a situation where there is little or no Business Analysis, Project Management, Risk Assessment, Quality Assurance happening in Ireland. etc, etc, etc.

There will allways be Blue Chip companies like Banks, Insurance companies etc based in Ireland, if only to serve the Irish Market, and IT will continue to become MORE not less important to them.

IT is traditionally under supplied with Graduates. At the first whiff of a multinational
leaving, the CAO forms start being filled out for Arts at UCD.

And hey! it's a global market. If your job goes overseas, there's nothing to stop you doing the same.

-Rd
 
daltonr said:
There will allways be Blue Chip companies like Banks, Insurance companies etc based in Ireland, if only to serve the Irish Market, and IT will continue to become MORE not less important to them.
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There is a valid concern that more & more of the Irish-based companies are being taken over by multi-nationals (e.g. PMPA/AXA, Friends First/Eureko, ACCBank/Rabobank). This can result in a lot of the IT work moving back to corporate HQ in some cases.
 
Re: =If ye IT people had 3-4 months free to upskill what area is in demand an paying

Theres good pay for these two skills - J2EE, Oracle Database Development. High daily contract rates anyways.
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There is definitely a move to outsource skills to asia however I dont believe that is death/demise of the (irish) IT industry. These are business cost decisions that need to be made.

I worry more about technologies becoming "saturated" for example I think J2EE is fast following CORBA, this is where companies maintain systems in these technologies but dont really seek to upgrade/expand/architect apon them...and unlike mainframe (and maybe oracle/databases ) these companies are not dependent on these technologies as a result the 3rd party vendors are trying to re-position themselves as enterprise service buses and web services and the latest "it" gartner/butler thing.

Based on that i would not recommend someone to pursue J2EE.

What i find interesting right now are opensource technologies, i dont think companies are as anxious anymore to spend money license fees, but rather investigate opensource and spend money (which is what an account manager is interested in) on training and consulting.
 
Re: =If ye IT people had 3-4 months free to upskill what area is in demand an paying

casiopea said:
Based on that i would not recommend someone to pursue J2EE.

What i find interesting right now are opensource technologies, i dont think companies are as anxious anymore to spend money license fees, but rather investigate opensource and spend money (which is what an account manager is interested in) on training and consulting.
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J2EE and open source technology are very closely linked and will continue to be so in the future.
 
Re: =If ye IT people had 3-4 months free to upskill what area is in demand an paying

casiopea said:
What i find interesting right now are opensource technologies, i dont think companies are as anxious anymore to spend money license fees, but rather investigate opensource and spend money (which is what an account manager is interested in) on training and consulting.
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Me too but I know from experience that many companies are perfectly willing to spend money on non F/OSS tools and applications especially when they are more efficient/effective and better supported. For example, on a recent project we had great intentions of using F/OSS development tools across the board (e.g. Eclipse, GCC/G++, wxWidgets, MSYS/MinGW, Subversion etc.) but eventually had to compromise - e.g. use MS VC++ on Windows (and GCC/G++ on Linux)because the development tools were so much easier and faster to use. Obviously the cost of VC++ compared to the cost (free) of the other tools was significant but was justified by the increased productivity. As it happens we are working on stuff related to the ARM7 processor and one can easily get free (e.g. GCC based) development tools for this target but they are a lot less efficient and easy to use than the de facto market leader which is the ARM RealView Developer Suite toolset and which costs between $5K and $10K for a complete embedded target solution but which most ARM7 developers can easily justify due to the increased efficiency and productivity benefits accruing.
 
Re: =If ye IT people had 3-4 months free to upskill what area is in demand an paying

Gabriel said:
J2EE and open source technology are very closely linked and will continue to be so in the future.
Click to expand...

As is CORBA, that doesnt change the fact that these technologies are being maintained and not being developed apun at the rate they were before.
 
Re: =If ye IT people had 3-4 months free to upskill what area is in demand an paying

Some more good news as an antidote to some of the more downbeat long term assessments for the industry here...


My own employer's R&D centre in Dublin (one of the few outside their US base) probably involves c. US$10M in investments over the next five years or so. I also know of somebody at a very senior engineering level in a well known operating system and application software development company who is encouraging them to establish an R&D centre in Ireland/Dublin within the next 5-10 years.
 
a well known operating system and application software development company
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There aren't too many of those around. When should we expect an announcement from the Microserfs?

-Rd
 
All speculative at the moment so don't expect any news imminently from the unnamed company in question.
 
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