General / Off-Topic So London Has a skills shortage

starman · Feb 9, 2017

http://www.cityam.com/258592/london-wage-growth-reaches-10-month-high-recruiters-report

Have they not heard of training.

Outsourcing caused this problem. Loss of skills.

Its just an excuse for so called cost cutting.

Minonian · Feb 9, 2017

You know what i found very intresting? The lack of specialised workforce UK going to have, after closes his borders, alongside with the economic collapse.

metatheurgist · Feb 10, 2017

Yeah, companies have real funny ideas. Hire mercenaries for the highest buck because training "is a waste of time and money". Get surprised when those mercenaries leave for a better job. I wonder how they expect loyalty is cultivated, I guess you can't buy everything after all.

Boomer Kay · Feb 10, 2017

The survey found shortages for skills in audit, risk, and compliance roles ...

Ha, explains the increase in Xing cold contacts.

starman · Feb 10, 2017

And then this report http://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2017/02/08/brexit-will-cost-uk-30000-finance-jobs-says-brussels-thinktank/

samuelb · Feb 10, 2017

Oh for God's sake,

Lack of investment in N.H.S., N.H.S. is falling to it's knees.

Lack of investment in infrastructure. Roads, schools, housing, etc. are all in short supply and falling apart

Lack of investment in people. More skilled immigrants needed, degrees too expensive, lack of suitable employees, more social deprivation, etc.

When are the U.K. government going to realise that we are in deep doodoo and need to start planning for the long term (50+ years) now, not just thinking about their term in office.

</rant>

Nerwan · Feb 10, 2017

To be fair many companies tend to split their efforts between hiring grads who they then do train (and who act as generalists for a while) and hiring experienced people for a particular specialist role. I'm a driver developer, and while it would be possible for me to hire someone and train them to do driver development it would take a very long time and if you're trying to get a project off the ground sometimes you're better off trying to find someone with those skills and pay them a lot to come over... It's not simply that you'd have to invest the time in training someone new, but it'd be hard to know if they were any good at it for quite some time.. There's always going to be a strong market for experienced people with a proven track record.

Leper Messiah · Feb 10, 2017

How can London have a skills shortage, it's full of immigrants and from what I hear immigrants are the saviours, they poop money and live above us all in cloud cities raining the money down. Unless of course all the propaganda about migrants the left spouts is and always was nonsense?

Nerwan · Feb 10, 2017

Leper Messiah said:
How can London have a skills shortage, it's full of immigrants and from what I hear immigrants are the saviours, they poop money and live above us all in cloud cities raining the money down. Unless of course all the propaganda about migrants the left spouts is and always was nonsense?

I'm not sure about London (I work in Manchester) but it does seem to be getting harder to hire people from Europe in the wake of Brexit because of the uncertainty about whether they'd be definitely able to stay here. I bet London property prices aren't helping either.. They have a lot of work in London, but as a youngish person you have to be willing to live in a shoe box to come and do that work..

Boomer Kay · Feb 10, 2017

http://news.efinancialcareers.com/de-en/248069/brexit-pay/

The difference between "income" and "cost of living" is getting worse, the larger your family is.
And the 11% net earnings more as analyst .. not cutting it, considering the price of those shoeboxes. It's really more an investment in your career with international experience than actual net benefit for yourself.

Heathrow is the worst of the 3 Airports from a "getting there" perspective - Frankfurt the best, in case you consider working there during the week as expat or for business travel.
Border checks take forever in Heathrow.

No idea bout City airport or the other 3 -- flights there are usually less frequent and more expensive, and I'm not in a position where ze company lets me use their heli fleet.

Additionally: not entirely sure about the specific regulations, but as an expat working in those fields and living in a foreign country, you already had to go trough the residence permit process once to get there. You're in a well payed job and switching jobs usually (at least over here) requires you to get a new working permit. Add in things like probation period and the additional risk you take, raising company benefits and career opportunities trough staying with a company etc. - Expats are not the most flexible ressource you have.
Plus moving back to their country to get a worse payed (compared to London, but better than the local comparison) job there is usually a priority.

starman · Feb 10, 2017

Driver development is very specialised skill.

Most of the time you don't get driver updates for hardware and have to buy new hardware just because the OS changed slightly.

Is this any good ? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Linux-Device-Drivers-Jonathan-Corbet/dp/0596005903/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1486731067&sr=8-8&keywords=driver+development

- - - Updated - - -

Its a strategy to import migrants with short contracts at a lower salary so they don't pay benefits.

I will discus this issue as a developer with my job search coach at the Jobcentre based in London

Have a play with this system tell me what you think https://jobsearch.direct.gov.uk/register.aspx?redirect=http%3a%2f%2fjobsearch.direct.gov.uk%2fhome.aspx

Nerwan · Feb 10, 2017

starman said:
Is this any good ? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Linux-Devic...er+development

I only really write Windows drivers (for which there's only a handful of books, most of them old) and I've also never written a device driver (I mainly work on file system drivers) so I can't really tell you much about Linux device drivers.

starman said:
Its a strategy to import migrants with short contracts at a lower salary so they don't pay benefits.

I think that's more a thing at the lower paid end of the job market. I haven't seen much of that in software development. Mostly we hire people from abroad because they have skills we want and we pay them much the same as a UK employee would get paid.

starman · Feb 10, 2017

Nerwan said:
I only really write Windows drivers (for which there's only a handful of books, most of them old) and I've also never written a device driver (I mainly work on file system drivers) so I can't really tell you much about Linux device drivers.

I think that's more a thing at the lower paid end of the job market. I haven't seen much of that in software development. Mostly we hire people from abroad because they have skills we want and we pay them much the same as a UK employee would get paid.

What it really means those companies think they can get them to work longer hours. Also companies outsourced there software dev work over last 20 years. Also there is a lot of inertia within the UK regards to work mobility. I'm from London and calling to work for a company based in Midland they're not interested. Maybe they just don't want Londoners who knows. I went to university in Wales got a first yet faculty hired Welsh with lower qualification and told me to off back to London.

FuzzySpider · Feb 10, 2017

starman said:
Its a strategy to import migrants with short contracts at a lower salary so they don't pay benefits.

Untrue. Migrants are subject to the same sorts of restrictions, benefits, and wage rules that natives are.

starman said:
I went to university in Wales got a first yet faculty hired Welsh with lower qualification and told me to off back to London.

My girlfriend is an expert in employment law. According to her you should have sued the asses off them.

How long ago was that? You still might be able to.

Nerwan · Feb 10, 2017

starman said:
Also companies outsourced there software dev work over last 20 years

Yes, although a lot of companies paid a heavy prices for that and some have brought work forces back to the west to ease communication with customers etc etc. I'm not sure outsourcing is a big a fear as it used to be in the software industry. There's a lot of hidden costs to outsourcing.

starman said:
Also there is a lot of inertia within the UK regards to work mobility

I've moved around quite a bit. I was on the south coast initially (where I studied) but got a job in the north when I wanted to be nearer my family. I think it all depends on having skills which are in demand (and being good at interview etc which is true for all jobs).

starman said:
I went to university in Wales got a first yet faculty hired Welsh with lower qualification and told me to off back to London.

Are you relatively newly qualified? I've heard it's fairly tough for grads at the moment.

starman · Feb 10, 2017

Untrue. Migrants are subject to the same sorts of restrictions, benefits, and wage rules that natives are.

Originally Posted by starman (Source)
I went to university in Wales got a first yet faculty hired Welsh with lower qualification and told me to off back to London.
My girlfriend is an expert in employment law. According to her you should have sued the asses off them.

How long ago was that? You still might be able to.

What happens in Theory and Practice are to different things.

Zero hour contracts are great aren't they? If your girlfriend want to contact me directly then msg me.

Employment law is a joke. Congratulations on having a girlfriend.

I'm also an 'Expert'. What about when they tell you are too old to work there? How can you sue someone for not employing you.

starman · Feb 10, 2017

Nerwan said:
Yes, although a lot of companies paid a heavy prices for that and some have brought work forces back to the west to ease communication with customers etc etc. I'm not sure outsourcing is a big a fear as it used to be in the software industry. There's a lot of hidden costs to outsourcing.

I've moved around quite a bit. I was on the south coast initially (where I studied) but got a job in the north when I wanted to be nearer my family. I think it all depends on having skills which are in demand (and being good at interview etc which is true for all jobs).

Are you relatively newly qualified? I've heard it's fairly tough for grads at the moment.

I have 25 years professional software development experience and started dev when I was 7. the reason ya al here with easy tech life is because of people like me.

Tech people tend to be slightly autistic so I'll over look those comments.

FuzzySpider · Feb 10, 2017

starman said:
What happens in Theory and Practice are to different things.

True. However the law is the law. Businesses aren't undercutting local populations through immigrant labour. That much is a certainty. There is a small effect. But we're talking about 1% reduction over 8 years.

http://www.niesr.ac.uk/blog/how-small-small-impact-immigration-uk-wages#.WJ3NaH_4WUl

This is very much offset by the contribution made by immigrants to the economy overall.

starman said:
Employment law is a joke. Congratulations on having a girlfriend.

Employment law is pretty strong in this country, as it is in most western EU countries, after your probationary period has finished.

starman said:
I'm also an 'Expert'. What about when they tell you are too old to work there? How can you sue someone for not employing you.

No doubt you are an expert. But nobody here is telling you how to write machine code, are they? I haven't written "software development is a joke".

You can't sue someone for not employing you. You can sue someone for unfair dismissal. Arbitrarily firing one worker and replacing them with someone else is against the law, unless they can find a reason (misconduct, poor performance etc). In all such cases there are procedures which have to be followed. For misconduct there needs to be warnings (unless it's gross misconduct such as failing a drug test at work), for performance there need to be performance reviews and an improvement plan tried first.

The is a law there and it works. But sometimes employers need to be forced to apply it.

starman · Feb 10, 2017

Are these your words or your girlfriends?

I work in a industry where 1 month contracts are common. We are leaving the EU or didn't you get the memo. Oh and software development is a joke.

Next Robot rights to Employment.

I have contacted my legal representative and this is what they have to say.

[video=youtube;xs3_hNYAVRw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs3_hNYAVRw[/video]

Boomer Kay · Feb 10, 2017

starman said:
Oh and software development is a joke.

The survey found shortages for skills in audit, risk, and compliance roles ...

Software development is changing.
Started 20 years ago on AS/400 with the first feeble attempts at EDI (car manufacturing) - what a mess. 150.000 standards and noone adhered to it. Spent weeks customizing "standards" for fricking BMW. (my boss was the one who sold it, so he -naturally- got all the credit and I got scolded for "taking too long" [noob] )

Nowadays it's a lot more compliance focused (which includes standards). Can't build that much on experience, if compliance isn't part of it (is "compliance" a big pile of rubbish? yup, but insecure managers require something they can grasp)

Maybe there's some training available in those fields. Increase marketeable skills, increase value, secure job.