{"id":9109,"date":"2008-07-01T09:33:00","date_gmt":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=9109"},"modified":"2008-07-01T09:33:00","modified_gmt":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","slug":"more-high-skilled-job-losses-in-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=9109","title":{"rendered":"More High Skilled Job Losses in Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"

This time last year, I said there was an economic slowdown on the way<\/a> and that it would hit the higher skilled jobs.\u00a0 Our politicos said that any downturn would only hit lower skilled work.\u00a0 We knew 100% for certain that construction would get hammered because that industry was\u00a0 a bubble ready to burst.\u00a0 Well guess what: I am one to say "I told you so".<\/p>\n

Dell announced layoffs with plans to relocate some work to Poland.\u00a0 That’s just the first trickle in that inevitable flood.\u00a0 I heard yesterday that Allianz is planning to layoff IT (and probably other) staff in some sort of relocation.\u00a0 HP have been rumoured to be relocating work.\u00a0 Today Avocent (IP KVM’s) are in the news<\/a> with plans to make people redundant in a move to Asia.\u00a0 There’s been lots of other smaller firms who’ve laid off people who didn’t hit the headlines but a quick google shows them up.<\/p>\n

Unemployment numbers are double what they were at the start of the year.\u00a0 The scary thing is that a significant percentage of those are high skilled workers.\u00a0 Most live in the commuter belt.\u00a0 It’s not just IT<\/a> being hit either.\u00a0 Traditional manufacturing, construction, finance, sciences are all in the mix.\u00a0 IT is seen as easy to move because we have the technology to manage an infrastructure from anywhere.\u00a0 And it’s easy to move that infrastructure if you have virtualised.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Speaking from my own personal experience at the start of the year here’s what I reckon the newly unemployed are seeing.\u00a0 They’re hearing stories about firms not being able to find high skilled staff.\u00a0 However, a look at the recruitment sites shows there’s only a few companies hiring (through dozens of agencies at once – it’s easy to decipher the adverts if you spend the time at it so the total number of adverts is misleading).\u00a0 You look at the salaries and they’re paying ridiculously low amounts with demands for high skill levels.\u00a0 You’d be taking a massive pay cut and unable to pay the mortgage.\u00a0 The work is often in the outskirts of the city.\u00a0 Most of what I saw in January was either in the extreme north or south of Dublin, well away from public transport.\u00a0 North for me is a no-no because I’d be on the "south" of the infamous M50.\u00a0 South is just as bad because it would be 4 hours a day in the car – for a 70 mile round trip!\u00a0 So really, I was restricted to the my side of the city outskirts (car) or city centre (train).\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I was lucky; I got a great job where I’m in a strategic position and my opinions are listened to and respected by the directors – imagine an IT firm actually listening to it’s senior IT staff!\u00a0 How revolutionary!!! ;-)ns<\/p>\n

Anyway, we’re hearing more and more about "we can’t hire enough high skilled people" and "there aren’t enough people studying technology and sciences in college or university".\u00a0 Well guess what Sherlock, people have seen since 2002 that these graduates get paid peanuts compared to other skills and are usually the first to be laid off or relocated.\u00a0 Most organisations (there are exceptions) don’t value IT as a strategic asset and fail to recognise that the internal skills they have are a valuable<\/em> asset not to be easily tossed away.\u00a0 I know of a finance firm that laid off an excellent department of 15 and had to hire in 77 consultants to replace them.\u00a0 Bean counters, eh?<\/p>\n

The last time we experienced something like this downturn was back in 2000-2002.\u00a0 IT jobs were scarce back then.\u00a0 Pay for those available jobs was low, e.g. an MCSE\/CCNA\/Oracle\/SQL\/Exchange\/AD expert for \u20ac18K\/year – I saw that advert.\u00a0 But this one is different.\u00a0 Back then it was just redundancies and companies freezing their IT spend.\u00a0 Now it’s job migration to continental Europe and Asia.<\/p>\n

What can be done?\u00a0 Support those firms who do stay local.\u00a0 Complain about support when you have that awful experience with bad phone lines and non-english speaking support engineers, e.g. HP (I had to go through 3 people in India on a crackly line to log a call about a failed EVA 8000 SAN controller – not quite the professional experience I expected for an enterprise solution).\u00a0 I remind every HP employee I meet about that phone call.\u00a0 Americans did the same and now they are seeing support moving back to the USA\/Canada.\u00a0 If you have equal competition between vendors, one Irish located and one not, then go Irish.\u00a0 Spread the word about good and bad experiences.\u00a0 The IT industry in Ireland is very like a small village – we all know someone who knows someone, e.g. 2 degrees of Kevin Bacon.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Will things pick up?\u00a0 Maybe.\u00a0 I think the good times are well and truly over.\u00a0 Corporate’s want to move internationally.\u00a0 The cost of living has gotten too high here so salary demands have had to match.\u00a0 I’ve no faith in the politicos.\u00a0 They’ve consistently lied and mismanaged and they’re trying to make us swallow Eurocrat legislation that will introduce further job market competition within the EU.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

However, the industry I’m in is busy.\u00a0 Native Irish firms are trying hard and generating new business.\u00a0 That will be what keeps this economy going.\u00a0 Just like in the 80’s, international firms will only stay until they find somewhere better.\u00a0 Native firms stick around through the good times and bad.\u00a0 They seem to be doing something so that’s at least a silver lining on the gray and gloomy clouds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This time last year, I said there was an economic slowdown on the way and that it would hit the higher skilled jobs.\u00a0 Our politicos said that any downturn would only hit lower skilled work.\u00a0 We knew 100% for certain that construction would get hammered because that industry was\u00a0 a bubble ready to burst.\u00a0 Well … Continue reading “More High Skilled Job Losses in Ireland”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t