Job skills in high demand...

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I've been at my current place for 5 months, out of that I have spent 4 and a half weeks in total working in London and it's a purely southern attitude. It really is.

The only people that believe it, are the ones who have never worked or lived anywhere but the south, so for them, all they hear is "lower wages" and assume we all spend 2 grand a month on rent. Everyone I have met who has moved down there and isn't on 100k a year wants out because it wasn't what they had hoped.

All in all, it is a mixture of things that contribute to success and opportunities. I am sure there are more firms to work for in London, but that really IS the only benefit to being down there. If you can get onto a national or international firm anywhere else and participate in national operations, you are sorted.

This argument has a lot in common with the whole degree debate, in that both are relics of a time gone by. Size isn't everything, that's why seven or eight or the ten richest areas are actually North of Birmingham.

 

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Yes Its generally far cheaper to live outside of london and probably a large part of the south east also. However the 'property boom' meant house prices were pretty silly in most of the country, not sure whats happening now, but couple years back prices up north were pretty silly too...In general.....

I've been offered those 100k roles, generally they suck, as 'UK Wide' means you live in a hotel mon-fri, thats not a good job IMHO, in fact its probably worse than the purgatory of the tube each morning and the big smoke. I even got offered one where I could be covering half the globe ! These are not good jobs but employers taking advantage... I believe you work for Big Blue no ? They have a long history of using such clauses to screw people out of redundancy, they shift people every two minutes until they leave.

There are literally 1000's of £500+ per day contracts in London and the Thames Valley at any point, the same simply cannot be said of anywhere else in the country in my experience. Otherwise tell me the place and I'll move there. As for california I would go there also but the US visa system means I'd probably earn far less than in the UK as I'd be being pimped by some dodgy agency.

I spent a significant part of my career outside of London and the Thames Valley, and yes I do think it adversely affected my career, and that was in the south. This is not a 'Íts grim up north' comment, its a comment that most people will benefit considering relocating once they have a little experience if they find their career faltering in a non IT area od the country.

As for poland outsourcing doesn't just happen to India, a lot of stuff goes to poland and the czech republic these days, so its no surprise that a large corp might send you there. Considerations such as EU laws on data privacy and working daylight hours come into play.

 

What do you do out of interest? and how far in your career do you think would be the right time to move? how many years in, what sort of experience etc?

 

Theres no simple answer for everyone, what I would say is that there can be more competition in the 'large pond' so sometimes its easier to get experience in a 'small pond' where you will get a chance and some training etc.

Somepeople move out of london to get a break with a big company on the campus in the country, others move to London for their break, because there is more oppurtunity and more money. Many people work in London for a few years then burn out and move someplace else.

Generally I'd say spend upto say early twenties learning stuff and getting experience where you think is best. If you want to get more money maybe work mid twenties to thirties in London, place can be fun for few years while people are young. Not many people want to raise a family in London so tend to move out and comute in or just take a pay cut. Its easily possile to feel poor in London even on 100k pa if you want a nice pad and a nice life.

 

Not worked for a while and left UK in Feb, on my third passport, been approx 45 counties, prob 8 in last year, still travelling the world so goodluck !

 

I want that many stamps too!!! I'd love a job like Clooney in up in the air, where he spends his life at a different place every week.

 

Touché

 

Windows is in demand as always

I mean what would the work be without Windows

CRM and Sharepoint is in demand too, same as cloud computing.

Cisco is right up there too.

VB is not so famous now.


But anything that has to do with Windows is in demand and will be for the rest of our lifes.

MS FTW.

lol

 

Fanboi much?

lol... only joking...

 

yeah, i luv ms who doesnt.

 

TBH out of the 30+ or so software systems we use at work, maybe half are microsoft based, apart from the desktop PC evironment everything from smartphone OS's, firewalls, web hosting, web filtering, anti virus, Virtualisation, basically the list goes on, Microsoft is rarely at the top of the field.

If you are an enterprise admin go for all the MS certs you can get, but theres more to computing than MS, and indeed Cisco as HP are big players also, so having all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea.

Id say make the tech side of things a priority, but go for the business and functional side of things such as ITIL, prince etc as these skills (while they may be updated) will stand you in good stead throughout your career.

 

Very sound advice. kev!

 

I know that there are other vendor stuff in it too. But ms is the best I luv it so much

 

Are you sure you have been in IT for three years?

 

y u ask that bro just cause i love ms is that a problem?

 

The skills I've seen in demand are networks, linux, .NET (various languages) and SQL.

 

Well I generally work with MS systems, so appreciate what they can do, but you should never pidgeon hole yourself, in any walk of life