'LONDON IS THE CENTRE OF THE technology WORLD' Demand for IT jobs in London grew by 18 per cent in the last quarter compared with the same period in 2010. Meanwhile, code monkey jobs dominated the recruitment market, according to employment outfit CWJobs. It said London positions now make up 33 per cent of all UK-based IT jobs advertised on its site. More than 37,000 job …
IT Jobs can be done anywhere (outsourcing anyone?) - yet this 'sucking sound' from London that seems to want to consume all and sundry continues.
The salaries look good where you are now but you'll be living in a one-bed flat till the end of time or commuting for 2 hours each way if you actually take the job and move to London. I really don't see the draw.
Agile I remember from when I was last looking for work.. it's agency speak for 'what everyone does normally'. Scrum? That's a new one..
My c# they almost always mean 'web designer' so real c# numbers are inflated (they've just replaced the old ASP jobs). Frustrating when you know a fair bit of c# but can't stand web development... <pick up phone> 'We've got a c# job' 'great, what's it doing', 'designing a website in asp.net for xxx'. <hang up>
Not sure how VMWare is a 'skill'. But then agencies have with a straight face asked me if I could program in 'TCP or IP' before.
Mind you, they couldn't pay me enough to work in London. And I've been 'offered'* 100k for it.. Nowhere near enough, even if it was a real offer.
* Agency speak for 'we need to fill our quota so we're sending 20 mugs down and telling they employer you have lots of skills that you don't, so lie as much as possible there's good chap'.
Just a thought. Is it possible that the is a high percentage of IT jobs in the city becuase the recruitment companies can't fill the posts. Possibly due to the high cost of standing in a smelly overcrowded transport system with no home life and having to pander to a load of £ankers?
"The quality of IT candidates in the UK is extremely high and often underestimated, so by positioning London at the centre of the technology world, we hope students, graduates and IT specialists will be inspired to take advantage of the opportunities available to them."
Odd statement considering the difficulty we have in finding people who haven't obviously lied on their CV's. Taken us 6 months to fill three places, simply because the quality wasn't there. Of the three, two are from foreign climes which does make me despair of the education system here.
Still, we are not in London, perhaps all the good people hang out there, rather than sunny Cambridge. (The other centre of technology - Barycentre perhaps?)
The CV claimed something like: 4 years C, 3 years Pascal, 5 years Basic, etc,.... a total of 21 years just on different languages. Which meant that to have that so called experience this guy must have started programming about 3 weeks after conception.
also...
Where I'm working now (in London spending ~3hours a day commuting) they did a telephone interviews before even asking candicates in. Dispite every other candidate for the job stating they had years of C++ and multithreading experience in their CVs, I was the only one out of ~20 candidates who new what you'd use a mutex for.
Personaly I beleive the real problem is the thousands of mostly useless IT graduates who don't have a clue how computers work. Yet think they should be paid paid the same as people who have been developing software for decades.
With good reason. Who wants to live and work in London (or even worse, work in London and endure a ridiculous commute into and out of the smoke?)
Why does any business want to base itself in London when the UK has lots of other great cities and towns which provide much cheaper, nicer and more friendly places to live and work?
After being made redundent a few years back, I looked for work within an hours drive for 8 months, and saw nothing other than a few web jobs and that's not what I do.
After changing my scope to include the dreaded commute I was back in employment within 2 weeks. The pay is about 80% higher than my previous job, but I would far rather have those 8 to 10 hours a week to do things I like back .
As someone who'se just been on the HR end of the agencies, I don't believe that 37,00 for a second. As soon as you post a job somewhere, the agencies decend and then repost the same position on the same site.
I think I counted 5 versions of our advert last time so I'd be very surprised if the real number is greater than 20,000.
London is dirty, overcrowded, over expensive and quite frankly I don' t understand why companies seem to be drawn to London. Companies even have to pay more for their staff, which to me is a false economy.
There are far better cities to operate from that don't have the London costs, have a good transport network and have highly skilled worker, especially in IT & Technology. Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds are all good hubs, central to every corner of Britain.
you bunch of miserable bastards - seriously just get a life and stop moaning. Don't like london? Fine, dont go there.
Dont wanna work in london?
Fine dont work there.
Just shut the hell up and enjoy what life you do have and stop posting on websites moaning about things constantly.
Yokel tossers (joke!)
19 months to find my current 3rd line position in London, and I live there.
Every agency call was for a helpdesk bod, i've never and will never be a phone support person.
My CV states last salary as £32K, why offer me £18K and expect me to even accept an interview just so you get your 10%?
Not every IT person is a 25 year old single no life person who plays C O D from supper to breakfast, some of us know what we're doing, not NVQ "get a certificate for actually turning up" trained
anon@ 08:47 - oh thank god it's not just me. last salary 40k, and i get "so will you take 20k then?".
nnnngh!
anyway, any java devs want to bang out a 6 month contract at £650 a day? seems if you're a good dev you can get some decent moola *in laaandaaan* these days.
gutted i didn't stick with code bashing and went server route instead.
Govt should be investing in training plumbers not IT, it costs more to get a plumber than to get a code pisser.
But I need a shower unit more than I need a NHS IT system coz my GP does not need one to diagnose me.
-- The quality of IT candidates in the UK is extremely high and often underestimated --
And that is why we have some of the most brilliant and costliest world class failures.
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