Who killed the reputation of UK IT?
I heard on the radio recently that a growing number of IT graduates are choosing not to pursue a career in the industry. If it’s true, that would be a huge shame. Where did we go wrong? How did we kill the perception of IT as a desirable and worthwhile career?
Rant mode is now fully engaged, but to me IT seems like a fantastic career choice. The money’s OK, and you get the chance to work in an exciting area with generally bright and interesting people. A lot of them have a sense of humour (but not all of them would win “best dressed” awards I admit).
I think what we’re lacking is good role models in UK IT.
We need to celebrate the achievements of people or teams in the IT industry in a way that young people can relate to. The perception has to match reality more, in that an IT job really can be cool, fun, and rewarding.
Let’s examine some of the suspects with means, motive and opportunity in our murder mystery;
Number One - The recruitment process.
It’s not particularly easy to break into the IT industry. The talents and potential of prospective employees is reduced down to having X years of experience in technology Y. Not only does that create barriers, getting a job with no experience is hard, but it is incredibly restrictive and backward looking. Talented people might not want to define themselves in terms of a technology, be that Oracle administrator, Java developer, or whatever. Perhaps we’d have more luck attracting people to IT if we treated technical skills as only part of the overall picture when looking at the potential of talented people.
Number Two - Short-sighted IT vendors
When you are growing your business you need partners you can trust. They help you grow your business, you help them grow theirs, and everyone wins. A lot of vendors still don’t get it, though. They contact you on a quarterly frequency and align internally by product. You therefore need to talk to multiple people from the same company if (heaven forbid) you’re looking at more than one product. Some vendors even allow different countries within the global structure to openly compete with each other. It all wastes time - time that could be better spent pushing boundaries for your company.
This is really sensible advice. Most IT techies love taking on a challenge and picking up new skills. There is little point in hiring someone based on what they have spent the past 2 years doing. It makes more sense to get people with the potential to figure out what they should use next...
Posted by: Mark Kobayashi-Hillary | Wednesday, 26 September 2007 at 10:47 AM
One factor dissuading people from joining the IT industry (and persuading many to leave) is the knowledge that in many employers, costs are being cut ruthlessly and work is being exported to low-cost economies. This has a number of effects - many of the roles which are being outsourced are the entry-level roles, so it is harder to get into the industry; the supply of more experienced staff is reduced as the training posts disappear; salaries are depressed by competition with low-cost countries; and a lot of the interesting challenges (doing things with technology as opposed to telling someone on the other side of the world to do something) are no longer there, so we end up as Project Managers, Business Analysts and Pen Pushers as opposed to Technology Experts!
Of the two competing trends - the drive to outsource versus the growth in the need for IT, I expect outsourcing to win and IT in this country to go into a slow decline in the long run (certainly the 30+ year working life that a new grad would be looking forward to).
Andrew
Posted by: Andrew H Wood | Tuesday, 15 April 2008 at 05:51 PM