After 30yrs in IT, working across every sector you can name, I have noticed one thing, a “Skills Base” devaluing. It seems with every chuck out from the local University or Tech College, the IT jobs in the area all take a shuffle down in pay. 15years ago I was the assistant IT manager of a local NHS Trust, pay circa £25k + car + Bens, recently that same job was re-advertised, with the “Calling all IT Post Grad’s” strap line, salary £13 to £18k!
It is sad to say, this is not the only case. Just look around at the job vacancies and you will see a falling amount of IT Tech support vacancies and a higher need for IT Development or Sales Managers. There is an ever increasing gap in salary there as well. A Senior Analyst / Sales Manager can earn £35k+, whereas a Junior Analyst gets just £15k+ commission, if they are lucky.
I feel if I had my time over again, I would have studied Law. You never see or hear about a solicitor taking a £10k a year pay cut. Is that because they study “Law” as a whole subject, and not like us Techno heads, who are now forced to specialise in a particular field? A Doctor is another good example, and I feel even better demonstrates how the IT world is suffering. A GP gets £80k +, but if he specialises, his salary is completely uncapped, the sky, is literally the limit.
In the good old days of computers filling buildings and not your lap, I did a B-Tech in computer sciences. Apart from the odd bit of extra training here and there and learning on the job, I only gave in to the “Bill Gate’s Dollar”, when I needed to have an MCSE to get more recognition and opportunities in the work place. Personally I have to say, that it was a complete waste of 5 days. All the stuff taught on that MCSE course, I already knew and did every working day. Only now, I had a bit of cheap piece of paper to prove it, and many of the older IT guys out there will know what I mean.
It seems that the old style of training gave you much better grounding in the world of IT. Just like a Solicitor or Doctor, in those days, we rarely specialised in an area, we were expected to know and do it all. From building a PC to Network Administration, Supporting Software, Training End Users and Analysis.
Perhaps it is now because Colleges and Universities are businesses in their own rights, selling the teaching programs on the strength of how many passed on pervious years. Ergo, they just run the courses and degrees purely based on what they know they can get the highest pass rate on.
I have found that in most cases IT sells itself, with great public knowledge and dumbing down of the technologies like Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Office 2007, where wizards and on screen help puts the user in control, people know what they want and how to get it. An IT salesman has a relatively easy job selling it, providing the price is within the buyer’s budget. However the cost of ownership and managing IT is still a problem. Seemingly addressed by the glut of newly qualified and often under skilled IT bods.
If you think the average “Care Worker” with an NVQ 2 or NVQ 3, gets around £13k a year, and all the IT students who have just finished a B-tech or Uni Course can expect to get the same salary, how is that? Is the threat of paying off student loans forcing them to take less and less money? Which is devaluing all our roles! Many of these Grads have it all on paper, but can’t really do the job when faced with an “off the bat” problem.
As an IT Consultant, I expect to be paid around £30 per hour, £200 per day, but if this trend continues, I can see this going down to just £10 per hour, just to secure future work. With many crucial businesses now relying on IT to operate, how can they expect highly skilled people to take around minimum wage? Whatever the business, they all depend on IT, especially the Doctors, Hospitals, Banks and finance houses.
Take it from me, any good IT person is worth a minimum of £20k a year. You would be better off working as a Care Assistant if you took less than that, regardless of who you are. We often work long hours, are constantly widening our skill set and only to get poor, ever devaluing salary. I personally would persuade any would-be student against a career in IT. With this current trend, 3 years at Uni, and getting a limited skill set, only to get a working salary of £13k a year when they finish, it’s just criminal!
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Posted on December 8, 2009 by Paul Read
Which could well be the reason older guys (like me!) have a perception, possibly true, that ageism is rife in the IT industry. Possibly it’s not so much ageism but, rather, the realisation that older workers expectation in terms of pay will be higher. That being the case, it’s not ageism so much as greed on the part of the employer!
After all, if you can get someone to do the job for £13k why pay more? Problem with that view is you get what you pay for. All the IT shops I’ve seen with low paid staff have been disasters waiting to happen…