stagnant IT salaries and ridiculous skill sets wanted

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kingdragonfly

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#1950995 3-Feb-2018 06:09

It's true.

My organization is having another restructure; it seems to come every two years now.

It's would be funny if not tragic: we have the same number of managerial positions, and eliminating several technical position, to become "to create a flatter organization chart"

We're a medium size organization of about 500 people, and have a huge Internet and data warehouse presence.

We were discussing the six system engineer positions.

No one's role is network engineer, security engineer, storage engineer, cloud engineer, VMware engineer, backup operator.

We're kept so busy that no one attends courses, or goes to conferences.

Everyone is expected to upskill to all skills.

Since I'm at 115% of the pay scale, I've never gotten a rise.

Others have gotten at best 5% per year.

tripp

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#1951025 3-Feb-2018 09:21

Some of the issues I find is that companies want everything when they hire people and care very little about finding someone that has some of the skills and then training the rest. They would rather say there is a "skill shortage" which then lets them bring in people from other areas of the world to full jobs who will accept a lower pay rate because the person wants to get a visa to stay in NZ long term. Once the person gets a visa to stay in NZ and move jobs then they are off to another job that has higher pay.

tripp

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#1951028 3-Feb-2018 09:38

I'm in BI work and back in the early 2000's the job ads for report writer/analyst were like "Know this product, know how to read the data, make it look nice, run select statements with joins" for $50k PA. Now you see ads where its "know how to use this product and this product we don't even use but might later, tune database, create sql stored procedure, VB in excel, system support, sql backups, ETL, dimensional modelling, know how to code in java/spark..... etc, DBA duties, have a degree, ITIL cert" and you can work for us for 65k PA, all under the title of report write/data analyst. I find it's the smaller/medium size companies that do this. The bigger companies are a little better with the rate.

I think the issue is that a lot of these duties were done by a number of people but due to "restructures" and the head count getting lower management tends to say "well you kinda know the stuff as well so you can do that guys old job now on top of your current duties". This then creates these PD/JD's that are just getting longer and longer for the same amount of money.

Technofreak

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#1951074 3-Feb-2018 11:59

mattwnz:

Theoretically wage rises and house price rises should be similar. But the last few governments have allowed house prices to get out of control, without suitable controls being put in place. I don't even think now, enough is being done. It has been fueled by cheaper and cheaper credit, and interest rates are only contining to drop.

Getting a bit off topic here with the house price V wage issue, however since it's been raised I will comment.

I don't think you can solely blame the governments for house price rises. The price of something is based on supply and demand. Prices go up when supply is less than demand. Yes the government has some control over demand by controlling immigration but they have a much more limited control over supply. Local government and other factors tend to control supply and supply is where a lot of the issues lie.

Cheaper credit has a zero sum effect in my view as credit can be used to buy existing or build new.

If it's cheaper to build new then by and large a new property will be added to the housing pool. Therefore the prices of existing houses is to a large extent determined by the cost of building a new house. The other main factor in the price of an existing house is it's location and the desirability of that location. The government has very little say on that.

If we put to one side the effect location has on house prices then the main factor setting the price of houses is the cost of building a new one. Why has the cost of building new houses risen so much?

I would suggest there are several reasons.

The inherent value of the land, in other words what can be produced with that land. If farming/horticulture is providing good returns then land values go up. Where that parcel of land is located and it's terrain etc also affects it's worth as a potential housing site. Land values have definitely risen over time.
The costs of developing that land, application of local government rules etc. Over the years the overheads of developing land have increased enormously due to RMA and new council rules.
The compliance costs involved in building. Local body rules and regulations along with HSWA rules have had a significant impact. One example, in the past you could move into a partially finished house with all the sanitary requirements satisfied and then complete it as finances allowed, now all the wall linings etc etc must be complete. This is a financial barrier for some people, they have to find more money right at the start of the build process and have to probably pay rent for a longer period.
Compliance costs have skyrocketed. The number of stage inspections have increased dramatically. In some some cases we are now paying the price of previously inept council oversight which resulted in a myriad of new rules. The old rules were quite adequate but since some councils were inept at monitoring them problems arose, ergo in the eyes of the authorities the rules were inadequate and new rules are needed. Once again the consumer pays.
While there is most certainly a need for rules and guidelines the costs of many of the rules and regulations is way out of proportion to the value the rules are supposed to deliver. For example I don't think anyone objects to paying for an inspection but the backroom overhead costs of providing that inspection can be a bit over the top. Councils are very much cost plus organisations. They don't seem to realise that over time a dollar here and there adds up to many many dollars. They are not good at controlling costs.

I guess to sum up we need to realise the government on it's own has very little to do with house prices. We as consumers have very often welcomed the new rules and regulations as we expect to get a better product. Whether or not we do is another story. There is a price for all of this "improved" regulation and we are paying for it in increased house prices

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dejadeadnz

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#1951112 3-Feb-2018 14:06

As I have commented in another thread, the problem with rubbish JDs can be a combination of ineptitude by hiring managers, HR, and/or fundamental lack of engagement/understanding of the role by those who are doing the hiring. And, as other have pointed out here, there are also costs pressures on people to just to squeeze more out of hirees. But in my experience (albeit as one who works/worked in the legal, commercial/risk, and compliance fields and not in IT), the ridiculous expectations actually almost can never be realised. Without wanting to kid anyone, as one who has a top-line LLM degree and extensive experience in my fields, I routinely see JDs from competitor companies for junior roles that I am 100% certain that neither I nor my peers (senior managers) can completely fulfill. It's a joke.

On the rare occasions where I have been forced to run with such rubbish JDs/requirements, I basically immediately binned any applications from people who purport that they can meet most/all of the requirements because I know they are lying. I have on occasions under pressure or for laughs interviewed such people and they are usually not 1/20th as good as they claim to be.

There's a fundamental crisis that is facing a lot of NZ corporates (I don't have much experience working for smaller/medium sized companies), IMO: as the structures get flatter (often with very little genuine power/influence for any manager aside from the well-connected ones and at times even GMs having little influence) and with more people being expected to do the "do-ing" at senior employee/manager levels and less and less investment in structured career/skills development, I am seeing quite a lot of people in different fields with supposedly significant levels of experience that lack core business skills like effective business writing, ability to critically analyse/engage with new materials, and understanding of general business concepts (such as how to read a balance sheet) that might not be central to the role but are nonetheless essential. People just aren't getting any serious training and are largely just left on their own to fish around to understand the business contexts and to develop the crucial skills. This will prove to be a total disaster in the future.

gbwelly

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#1951119 3-Feb-2018 14:25

Technofreak:

Getting a bit off topic here with the house price V wage issue, however since it's been raised I will comment.

I don't think you can solely blame the

Please start a new thread.

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#1951669 5-Feb-2018 00:44

gbwelly:

Technofreak: Getting a bit off topic here ...
Please start a new thread.

Done. See here: house price vs. wage issue

Please keep this GZ community vibrant by contributing in a constructive & respectful manner.

boyosof

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#1958829 15-Feb-2018 22:25

tripp:

Some of the issues I find is that companies want everything when they hire people and care very little about finding someone that has some of the skills and then training the rest. They would rather say there is a "skill shortage" which then lets them bring in people from other areas of the world to full jobs who will accept a lower pay rate because the person wants to get a visa to stay in NZ long term. Once the person gets a visa to stay in NZ and move jobs then they are off to another job that has higher pay.

you real geek .. you had concluded the real situation of the IT market in less than three lines

oakland

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#1963632 24-Feb-2018 21:20

I think the topic of the thread is valid but not the best example. There are plenty of jobs I have seen where the skill set required is a lot lot higher than this while offering 45-55K.

kingdragonfly

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#1963773 25-Feb-2018 10:59

I keep seeing ads from Halcyon Knights at this pathetic pay levels.

Halcyon seems to be a common company name in India. Based on the recruiters' names and very low salaries I'd suspect they are targeting Indians.

Jaxson

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#1963776 25-Feb-2018 11:10

tripp:
I'm in BI work and back in the early 2000's the job ads for report writer/analyst were like "Know this product, know how to read the data, make it look nice, run select statements with joins" for $50k PA. Now you see ads where its "know how to use this product and this product we don't even use but might later, tune database, create sql stored procedure, VB in excel, system support, sql backups, ETL, dimensional modelling, know how to code in java/spark..... etc, DBA duties, have a degree, ITIL cert" and you can work for us for 65k PA, all under the title of report write/data analyst. I find it's the smaller/medium size companies that do this. The bigger companies are a little better with the rate.

I think the issue is that a lot of these duties were done by a number of people but due to "restructures" and the head count getting lower management tends to say "well you kinda know the stuff as well so you can do that guys old job now on top of your current duties". This then creates these PD/JD's that are just getting longer and longer for the same amount of money.

So much this.

A lot of places are floating that line between in-house resources and external, cloud based service offerings. We are seeing an awful lot of people leaving and just not being replaced, and as you say over time this leads to the assumption that that is all just one position.

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