Posts by oomonkey 15 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Aug 2013
Given the median software architect salary is £51K http://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Software_Architect/Salary; Software Engineer £40,527 and this http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/uk-average-salary-26500-figures-3002995 article lists median salaries for other professions I don't think IT people are paid a "low price"
If it's not a skills shortage boosting salaries of software people up compared to other professions what is it?
What is the "going rate"? Perhaps there is a skills shortage in certain skills. We advertise @ £70K + bens outside London and still get no applicants perhaps that's not the going rate, although it's close on 3 times average earnings so it's definitely not a low price. Any more and as the other post says you may as well pack up and go home.
If this is true;
Outsourcery has approved the grant of new options to the joint CEOs over an aggregate of more than 2.7 million shares under the existing long term incentive plan at an exercise price of one pence with a 12-month vesting prior to this.
1 year from now they will vest and funnily enough at the current issue price is about the value of the salary they have sacrificed. Not really a sacrifice more of a punt.
I agree with John.
"Worst of all, there is no standard, reputable way of evaluating the contribution each employee makes in the long term" there is a way and it's basic business.
Easier in some roles e.g. Sales i.e. have they hit their quota, or as in the case of consultancy see the posts below wrt charge out and billable days. Trickier for development or operations although I recommend you go away and try as it will help in your pay discussions!
I think it was a genuine question rather than a statement of fact, so when do you stop paying someone more?
I agree most professionals aren't fungible but they do deliver a level of value. How do you determine they are paid correctly for the value they bring to an organisation. I think you have to ask yourself is the individual proactively adding increased value to your organisation or are they just "doing their job" the same as last year. If you are doing the same job as last year, and you can't get paid more money elsewhere (market rate) why should you get a pay rise higher than inflation? Treasuring experienced staff has little to do with continual year on year pay rises as that direction just leads to bankruptcy.
It's getting worse. As a programmer of 20+ years the "young uns" seem to be absorbing this geek chic rubbish and think they are masters of the universe, just because they can write some crappy code.
To paraphrase Tori Amos. "So you can make some code, doesn't make you Jesus"!
I could rant all day on this but from a perspective on both sides as I've worked in this industry for 25 years+ as a techie, consultant, freelancer but lately as CEO at a startup.
IMHO there are two things that determine your salary, in the small-mid private sector, no matter what you do. Market Rate and Value. If you are getting paid above market rate it means you deliver superior value if you're getting paid below it's because you are mediocre (and you believe so or why are you still there). If you are on market rate why should you be paid more?
Value is determined by your ability to contribute to the bottom line, because if the business makes little to no money, due to high fixed salary costs, the shareholders/investors will pull the plug as it's their money you are burning and maybe they can get better return on their investment elsewhere. The person likely to get paid the most in a company, even more than the CEO, is a star sales person because bottom line is they deliver more value.
I believe our profession has an over-inflated view of our worth due to skills shortages holding up salaries compared to salaries in other professions with more professional training requirements, responsibility, stress and accountability.
In general as a profession we also have a disparaging view of people who deliver other essential elements of a successful business, customers, suppliers, sales, marketing, administration, finance, debt collection, legal, recruitment etc. all of which need dedicated professionals to be in place for a business to be successful. Many of which are likely to be paid less than the average IT professional.
Bottom line, if you want to be paid above market rate, deliver more value to your employer. There are some star tech professionals that do this and believe me they get paid more than their managers.
I don't think anyone complains that the big IT players prime these projects due to financial risk. The problem is they do not bring in specialist SMEs to work on these projects, they try to do it all themselves. The big IT players are generalists they should bring in specialist SMEs to help with aspects of delivery, Database Specialists, Network Specialists, Agile Specialists, Middleware Specialists etc. etc. etc. and programme manage the lot. Do they do that? Do they F*** Instead they have their new grads and off shore devs google stuff to keep their margins up.
A good analogy is big civil engineering infrastructure projects. Do the big civil engineering primes try to shoe-horn every single one of their employees in to do the job right down to employing the brickies and chippies. No they build a supply chain of reputable specialist companies for steel, structural design, cladding, concrete pouring, architecture, costing, testing ad infinitum.
The IT industry supply chain is FUBAR because of these big IT guys and their greed.
Computer Weekly reported a few weeks back that;
"Less than 1% of the IT spending for the government’s flagship Universal Credit programme has gone to SMEs, according to a Computer Weekly investigation."
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240203691/Less-than-1-of-Universal-Credit-IT-spend-goes-to-SMEs
Hmmm so you know who all the money went to then. The usual suspects and their army of "specialist" new grads and offshored cheap as chips devs I suppose. Maybe they should engage some experts to do some of the hard stuff.
Why aren't Big IT projects run like civil engineering projects where they get specialists in for each area (specialist steel, specialist glass, architects, Lifts, A/C, Quantity Surveyors etc. etc.) . Why do the big SIs continually try to do it all in-house. Shouldn't they just be big programme management outfits hiring in specialist engineering teams?
Here's the trough breakdown from
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240203691/Less-than-1-of-Universal-Credit-IT-spend-goes-to-SMEs
DWP spent just 0.1% of this £2.4bn directly with SMEs - £2.5m - which went to four small firms of consultants: Emergn, Bramble, Evolve Business Consultancy, and Compass Management Consulting.
Most of the £2.4bn was spent with just one company, HP, which earned £1.3bn, or 53% of the expenditure. BT claimed £400m (17%); Accenture got £277m (12%); while £117m (5%) went to IBM; £89m to Capita (3.8%); £81m to SCC (3.4%); and £73m to Atos (3%). (See also the table below, which shows the breakdown by supplier for Universal Credit).
As everybody says tablets do what most consumers need. My parents have moved from a Windows 7 crapware ridden Toshiba laptop with a boot time measured in many minutes to an iPad and are overjoyed.
As a techie the manufacturers aren't serving us either. Personally I want a cheap laptop that I can stuff full of RAM, with 1080p an SSD boot disk with second 2.5 inch data disk. Most laptops are still getting flogged with 4Gb RAM and crap screens.
I'm typing this on an out of warranty Dell 3350, i5 2410M so second generation, which has 16Gb RAM (unofficially not supported but works a treat) and a 256Mb SSD. Why buy new kit when £200 - £300 of upgrades blows away the current generation!
Only 32Gb RAM and a hi res screen would tempt.
Memory = more VMs yippeee. Yes I am a developer.
$1000 for;
4GB (1x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3L Memory
320GB 5400rpm Hard Drive
14.0 HD (1366x768) Wide View Anti-Glare WLED-backlit
Who the hell is going to "upgrade" to that my 4 year old laptop has the same core specs and when has the CPU ever been the performance limiting factor.
And they wonder why PC sales are tanking.
16Gb + SSD + 1080p as a minimum for the same price and ppl might consider otherwise why bother. Stick some RAM and an SSD in your old laptop.
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