metalmike wrote:
yoganmahew wrote:
I'm still wondering when I'll get back to 1999 levels. Y2K... happy days 
.
Yep - maybe the reason that we have been doing so well in IT is that our wages are well below UK and European levels. This has one bad side effect though - we can't attract IT labour into this country because the cost of living is so high. The turnover in contract staff from other countries is very high - few last more than 6 months. All the work is in the urban ring with crap public transport and no social life. These guys don't expect to have to buy a car to get to work and they expect to be able to live in an attractive city centre. The word is getting around and its now impossible to attract qualified foreign contractors. At the beginning of the year the issue was visas and work permits for Eastern Europeans - now they're not even appearing on the lists. Almost every job I have seen filled in the last 3 months has been an Irish graduate, usually replacing someone from Europe - they seem either to go home or to Scandinavia -seems that the pay/lifestyle balance is optimal in Scandinavia.
Mike, my experience of wages in the IT sector is different:
*Irish software developers are on good money and many below 30 have never experienced tough times in the industry and can be unreasonable in terms of wage demands.
*There are loads of developers trying to move to Ireland, or have already moved here, from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Romania and even Brazil where wages are generally a good deal lower and the economies are in bad shape (excluding Brazil). Less so from France and Germany where salaries seem to be similar to here. Lots of Indians and even Chinese seem to get in here every year as well of course, one way or the other.
*So these IT people are coming here because the IT sector in many European countries is not as good as here (or the UK). They get higher salaries here, tax is not too bad, they get international experience and get to improve their English and most seem happy enough to stay here for several years (and they rent).
*And without these people there would be a huge shortage of development staff here
*By the way salaries are actually usually lower in the UK than here for permanent roles but higher for daily rate contract roles particularly in the London area - not sure why that difference between perm and contract is there really
Now I am talking above about software development related roles and some other specialist roles such as specialist telco or DBA roles - things are not as good for infrastructure/support roles etc. where salaries are usually not nearly as good. The IT job market should not be considered as a single market or uniformly buoyant - for instance there is probably a slight surplus of senior IT managers and PMs out there.
Statistics: Posted by caledonia — Fri Oct 05, 2012 11:19 pm