Is this a Typo?

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Im sorry guys, but you have an unrealistic view of this industry. It must be nice sitting in those lofty offices, but nowadays theres very little way to get into IT without doing low paid, low level jobs to get experience.

 

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What IT experience do they want, Mac?

 

Thats not true, people get various quals to try to skip the bottom. I got a degree, reccomended grad salary was £15k when I started, so I tried to get £15k, ended up taking £12k with a review after 3 months and increase to £15k. Point is I joined the market at roughly the going rate, not at 50% the going rate.

Theres the question of how low the bottom is, its possible for unscrupulous employers and gullible people to allow the bottom to be lowered.

Yes, you don't have to stay there but nethier do people have to give you a step up, in a market with a lot of skilled cheap labour you could stay there for forever potentially.

Stepping stone is the word, the modern employment market is a minefield, make sure you don't get caught on the wrong stone at the wrong time...

 

Skipping the bottom is extremely unrealistic. Quals won't do it. Certifications won't do it. At least, not in the US. Perhaps things are different across the pond, though Fergal seems to agree with me.

 

People have skipped the bottom for centuries, look at officers in the army, look at management positions, look at teachers, doctors etc. Yeah they may be at the bottom in one sense given their career path, but they are not at the bottom literally. A surgeon does start as a nurse, a computer programmer doesn't start as a data entry clerk, an officer doesn't dig the latrine.

What about people that take a purely academic route ? Do they begin at the bottom ? Is a professor at the bottom ? When they switch career do they go back to the bottom ?

Don't get me wrong the best people often work their way up through the ranks, but alot of people don't.

Why would people pay thousands of dollars to go to Ivy League colleges if it didn't give them an advantage ? Is there a correlation between people in power and what college they went too ? Why bother going to Harvard or Yale if we are all the same starting at the bottom ?

Do we live in a meritocracy ? How do people get their positions in life ? Where does power come from and how do you get it ?

These questions do not have the simple answers you suggest...

 

Okay, D... you obviously know a lot more about moving up in IT than I do.

 

Some simple maths: £7 per hour, is £13,650pa for 37.5hrs. This is through an agency, so the employer is paying out a good percentage more. But take away your costs and you'll probably see little more than min wage which is £10,750 - and you'll probably get a damn sight less if you set aside all you should.

There are plenty of permanent entry level jobs at £13 -14,000. Not contract jobs, permanent jobs.

They may be hard to get; and if you don't fancy the struggle and want to apply for this cruddy contract one, don't be afraid of standing on my toes in the queue - I won't be there.

I'm not knocking anyone starting at the bottom - this is my third career, and each time I've started that way. That doesn't mean I have to enjoy getting ripped off.

 

Well you have a point, most people will have to earn their spurs, but not neccessarily all.

Market conditions have a big effect and can change rapidly, there have been many periods where IT did indeed pay really well, these periods are when demand vastly outstripped supply of talent, at these points you could make really good money as long as you were talented, it was about what you could do not how many years you'd had your feet under the desk.

The microcomputer revolution, and home computer games are one good example. I also suspect that the tales about cisco network engineers were probably true, at one point they couldn't hold onto hires, people with a few months of training were commanding large salaries. Career advancement that now may take years could happen much faster for some people.

 

They could be well aware that no one would stay on that wage for long, that's why its a contract position, much easier for either party to terminate, and they dont have to spend a fortune on benefits and other perm employee perks

that said, whilst I consider the rate criminal (my first job was £18ph over ten years ago) I don't think its far fetched anywhere outside of London (I may of missed it, but cant see where the location was mentioned)
13k is at a 37.5h week, most people in permanent employment do a fair bit more than that (often over 40)
that brings it up to over 14 - 15k
although you have none of the benefits of permy employees (holiday, company sick pay, pension, health insurance etc) neither will you likely get any decent training

For a permy role its an acceptable wage these days IMHO
for a contractor? I would advice not doing a contract for your first job to be frank

 

Maybe its different elsewhere, but here in Aberdeen with two Uni's and a college churning out IT Graduates like theres no tomorrow, getting an entry level job is nigh impossible. Particularly (like me) if you have no commercial experience, and no qualifications.

I started with my first IT company about 2 years ago. Standard policy from them is to hire through an agency. You are contracted for long enough for them to determine if you are suitable, after which you can be made staff (if they require another perm). 3 months after I started I was made perm and my salary dropped from the contracting rate (a little over 12k) down to 12K. less than 6 months later I was promoted to another position earning 15K and now, 2 years after starting, I've moved onto another job elsewhere, doing software development, earning over 20K.

Were my first company notorious for not paying market rates? yes. Did most of our staff get their 1 years experience and move onto another one of the many (Read: almost all) employers who wont even look at your CV without at least a years commercial IT experience? absolutley. But the fact of the matter is that, in order to get your IT experience (and this goes for the Graduates too - no less than 4 people I can think of off-hand had IT Degrees), you have to take whats available to you. That its contract is sh*tty, sure, but its an IT role that goes on your CV. Sure its only contract and could end at any moment, but until you get the experience to get better jobs, its the best you can get.

Now maybe its different where you guys live, or maybe the entry level industry's changed since you guys were stepping onto the ladder, but the point is: we tell people to get any experience they can, hell we even tell them to volunteer, and now you tell people not to take a perfectly good IT role that would get their foot in the door and allow them to begin moving up. Any IT experience someone can accumulate is good - particularly if they are working towards another cert whilst working there.

You guys can turn your noses up at a position like this if you want. The view is always better from higher up the ladder, but for Joe Schmo on the ground, its a good starting position. Even more so if you arent working anyway. Sure its likely more customer focused than technical (ours certainly was), but that doesnt mean you cant learn a lot from it. And at the end of the day, its Contract work, which means that even if they let you go, its not going to look bad on your CV.

 

Like I said, I've worked for free at times to get into where I wanted to be, so I'm not knocking anyone for having to start at the bottom. I'm even doing some occasional work pro bono for two local charities at the moment to get experience in areas I wouldn't otherwise have.

But people should know what they are getting into. If you go over to the forums for contractors, they have a pretty good rule of thumb for calculating what a contract rate really means, taking into account ALL the real expenses involved, averaged over a two year period. Take your perm annual rate and divide it by 100. That gives you the daily rate for contracting you need to break even with the perm salary and its benefits. So, £12,000 pa is equivalent to a contracting rate of £120 a day - that's £16 an hour. £7 an hour is equivalent in real terms to a perm rate of £5,250pa, not the £13,000 it might appear. Contracting is VERY different to permanent work. If you think that calculation is wrong, go argue with the accountants over there that do this for a living.

Yes it's often the only way in; yes, if they like you they may put you on a perm contract (and yes, this will usually be on less money - but not likely less than £5,250)- and there again, they may just give you the push with zip notice because they have decided to outsource it instead. However much people have to do it, it STINKS, and as IT professionals we should be standing up for our colleagues and saying so.

 

Agree totally mate
I don't think my point was to discourage anyone from applying for such a position, it was more to be aware of what it offers and what it doesn't offer
know what your looking for in a job (its often not just experience in all fairness, especially as you may be there longer than a year depending on market situations)

More customer focused than technical? that's a GOOD thing if you ask me, not a bad thing! Although I have met a ton of techs who have a certain arrogance about end users (I used to be one myself) due to there elitist nature sitting on the top of all the root passwords

Things always look better from higher up the ladder? that's most certainly true but I don't think that discounts the opinions of those who were at some point exactly where everyone else is, times have changed that's for sure, and areas even 100 miles apart can be greatly different experiences when it comes to finding employment, but everyone has something to add to the debate, however different that opinion may be to everyone else's

I don't pretend to know everything about the entry level market these days, although I do my fair share of interviewing and keep in touch with a number of colleagues further down the 'ladder', I don't know many people that would willingly accept that position unless there was absolutely nothing else, sometimes however, there really isn't anything else!

 

I fully agree that its a shocking wage (and yes, they did get a few muppets in because of that), but unfortunately its the price of getting experience.

I also fully agree that someone should be fully aware of the exact details of contracting. If you dont know what you are getting into, you are heading into a world of trouble. Yes they can sack you with zero experience, but on the same line, you can do exactly the same to them.

Unfortunately being further up the ladder does dissociate yourself from the ground. To use an example given previously of Doctors: At some point in their early career, all Doctors have to intern in various posts (It could be the JHO position, or sometime before they Graduate, I cant remember when my mate did it). The bigwigs high up in the organisation set the guidelines for how many shifts they have to put in. Unfortunately, they base this largely on when THEY were students. What this means is that Doctors end up having to work long day shifts followed immediately by long Night shifts. Now when they were students, the Nights were relatively quiet, so they could spend a chunk of it sleeping. Nowadays thats impossible. It ends up wiping the new doctors out, or worse, causing mistakes to be made.

I think this applies to IT too. People further up the chain base their opinions of Entry level on how it was then THEY were there. Unfortunately things have moved on, and for the worse. Having a Degree doesnt, in most cases, allow you to circumvent the bottom rung of the ladder. Most companies these days take the view that a degree/cert is all very nice, but it isnt a replacement for actual experience doing the job. This is something we all know.

Cost of living affects the baseline salary for all jobs in the area, and the simple fact is that most companies who are willing to make the leap of hiring staff with little to no experience for their entry level jobs, tend to hire through agencies initially, since this makes it easier for them to get rid of those who arent up to spec. They are taking a risk in hiring these people, and contracting gives them an extra level of ease in dealing with the muppets they inevitably end up hiring. The fact is also that they will rarely give you more than the standard wage, even if you are a contractor.

Its worth noting that the perception of the bottom rung works both ways. The people doing the employing also use their experiences when they were at the bottom.

On the subject of it not even being close to what the rate should be for a contractor, I'd like to see exactly what these 'costs' are that you have to factor in! I certainly cant see any. bus fares? fuel? its the same as a permy and they earn the 12K same as you as a contractor. tax? NI? again, permys have the same factors. I simply cannot see what extra 'costs' a contractor would have that a permy wouldnt. Sure, contractors as a general rule of thumb tend to get paid a fair bit more than permys because they are contractors and could easily end up in positions where they spend months with no work. So they get paid more than the norm to counter this. Thats not an extra cost.

 

It's a crappy Temporary Role - bears no relation to "contracting"...it's a misuse of the word in my opinion!

 

My mechanic charges £40 per hour, my guitar teacher £35, my dentist £100, a cabbie £80, a driving instructor £25.

The minimum wage is just that, a 'MINIMUM' wage created by the government to stop unskilled workers from being exploited.

You should not allow compaines to use workarounds like contracting to circumvent this, infact the government has recently passed two bits
of legislation to address just this issue.

If you you wanna sell yourself short be my guest...

I also know people on the way up, and no I'm not in an ivory tower, my first job was in a hardware store earning £1.75 an hour...

 

But it IS an extra cost.

Remember, I said averaged over a two year period. As a contract worker you have to cover employer as well as employee NI costs, pay your own tax, pay an accountant to look over your end year returns, and have provision for pension, holidays, sick pay. And the costs of looking for new work and paying the rent while you're not employed. On average accountants recommend allowing for 2 months between contracts.

These are all costs that an employee on a full time basis will not have to find. But you will. Like any business you have to charge enough to cover the lean times as will as the fat years - or how would seasonal businesses survive past the first end of season?

This is the reality of professional life: but this job isn't about contracting really is it? It's about abusing the term to offer short term work where they can easily fire you if you don't work out. And getting work done on the cheap.

I'd be interested to see how the job would get by an IR35 challenge.

 

Then I havent been contracting, as I didnt have to cover any of that. My NI and Tax were all handled by the agency. So granted, as a contractor in that regard, yes the rate should be higher, but I seriously doubt that this job is actually contracting in that regard. Im willing to bet good money that your NI and tax will all be handled for you.