There is no skills shortage, just lots of companies who want to pay developers less.
Last week I shared a thought on Linked in - ‘There is no tech skills shortage. There's just loads of companies who want to pay developers less’. This received more attention than anything I ever wrote before on the site. This may be due to it going against the grain a little of established opinion and therefore is naturally going to catch peoples attention. But judging from the comments it struck me that a lot of people at least didn’t disagree with the sentiment.
So I thought I should try to back up my statement with some points. Firstly though, I’m not saying there aren’t any skills shortages or that the country wouldn’t benefit from some companies having access to more skilled workers. Cyber security being a big one. Although I have my own views on this that I go into in a bit more detail below.
For a large section of companies they could achieve all their staffing needs by offering 20% -30% more on day rates or salaries. This isn’t to say just automatically rise salaries for everyone but if you have a need for need people to do a job and it’s a profitable project offer a day rate that beats the market rate. Albeit in a small way, I have experience hiring contractors and sourcing staff. I can honestly say that 100% of the time if the money was good the role got filled. Forget about pool tables and hackathons or a dusty playstation left in a corner somewhere. Pay up in cold hard cash and get rid of the gimmicks.
Now the argument against this is that it makes the cost of doing business too high. To that I say, have you ever looked at how profitable IT projects are? And if the cost of business is too high now why is the industry still growing? It’s an absolute tosh point with no truth behind it. Unlike brick layers where the brick layer may take half per brick of what the contractor is charging the client which works out as a relatively low margin an IT project that has received the proper planning can keep making a profit for as long as it lives. This is anecdotal but not untypical, I worked on a project last year that cost about £400,000 and took about 6 months to complete. This project had more than paid for itself in three weeks after it went live. But even if you look further afield. Whatsapp have a similar turnover to Vodafone. Whatsapp has less 100 employees but Vodafone has over 3000. Of the two Whatsapp has a higher proportion of technical staff and look at the impact that has on their staffing needs. Why would we care if they had to pay more for developers. I’d much rather lots of Vodafone’s who are forced to rent out high street units, hire local staff, pay business rates and are a little bit accountable to the general public.
But even stepping away from what may or may not be good for the general population. The IT Skills Gap is a ridiculous term bandied about to describe an ideal situation. It is true to say that more IT jobs exist than there are suitable people to fill them. This is down to many factors including education, reinvestment and also some laziness. But why would we complain when a sector exists that pays people really well and in many ways does a lot of good in the world? Are we really bothered that those big companies who make millions of dollars a year are finding it difficult to find a few extra developers? Aside from the fact that their tax bills often act as a portal into the appalling double standards taken by government and the murky deals they invent when giving special companies a better tax deal than normal companies. Aside from the fact that the more of those profits these companies are forced to keep in the country through high wages should have a positive feed down affect to local communities. Aside from the fact that the only real loser here is said company!
Instead of trying to ruin a great sector to work in which due to the internet revolution that we seem to be in is one of the most vibrant parts of the job market we should let it be organic. If you’re interested in IT you should try to work in IT and even if you’re not that interested it is in your interest to have some knowledge and understanding of technology. But it isn’t a big deal. It also isn’t worth pushing loads of people into it who won’t be suited and won’t enjoy it. Especially when we’re only doing it to keep some big companies earning more money. And no matter how many people go into it there isn’t enough jobs in IT to replace the jobs that IT is eating up. The solution to replacing jobs that become extinct will come from new sectors of industry based on the technological advances we’re seeing and not solely creating new technological advances.
Jobs in the old/real world have seen turbulent times and will see many more to come. But it’s the same in IT. There’s very few steady technologies that remain profitable to work with for particularly long. This excuse is partly used by universities when industry moans that they’re producing completely inept graduates with no marketable skills but instead half baked understandings of technologies that were relevant 20+ years ago. This isn’t quite the case either but certainly not worth the cost of a three or four year degree. What can be taken from this is that most people in IT develop their ‘in-demand’ skills through self learning and work experience. This is where you get effective results in the form of learning skills and therefore the only practical link in the chain to improve things.
Cyber Security – it is true that there is problems here. But it isn’t just that we don’t have enough cyber security experts. I think a more accurate description is that our weak and wobbly politicians allow companies to store data in a way that they haven’t figured out how to keep safe. It simply isn’t good enough that on the rare occasion we’re actually told when a company is hacked (because this happens every day and we just don’t find out) that they come out asking us to feel sorry for them because they can’t find suitable staff to protect this data. How much money are these companies making from collecting, storing and often selling this data? I can’t say but it’s more than they did before everything went digital and therefore not a profit they are somehow entitled to without footing the bill themselves for providing the required security and certainly not something they should be allowed to do if they are simultaneously telling us that they don’t know how to keep it safe.
So yes there is a skills shortage in areas. But I don’t care and neither should you.