Is computing course a waste of time?

[stephstellar 10]

I'm halfway through an MSc Computing conversion course, but am starting to worry that it may be an expensive waste of time. When I see IT jobs advertised they all seem to want expertise in things we've only touched on in University.

Has anyone taken one of these courses? What are the employment prospects like, realistically?

[RPG 10]

Dont give it up if you are halfway through!

 

Just think, two CV's one is yours with an MSc t'other is someone Without that but with the same knowledge and skill... whos Gonna get the job

[Phanerothyme 12]

Absolutely - I think in IT it's more about how well and fast you learn than what you actually know to begin with.

 

It seems that it is getting more important to specialise earlier than ever now.

[Tony Ruscoe 10]

What degree did you do first? That has a lot to do with it...

 

In my experience, experience is always more important than qualifications...

[Tony Ruscoe 10]

Originally posted by RPG

Just think, two CV's one is yours with an MSc t'other is someone Without that but with the same knowledge and skill... whos Gonna get the job

 

The one with the best personality... surely

[robh 10]

The public sector needs a lot of IT skills. The government keeps getting screwed by subcontracting projects and ending up with enormous cost overruns and unworkable systems. The remedy?

Reduce salaries in the IT sector.

 

Many of the best IT staff had gone freelance and were charging what were regarded as high rates (but not compared with other professionals).

 

Many of the contractors were working for the same company for years on end so the government changed the tax rules. IR35 made it that if you work freelance for the same employer for more than 6 months (I think) then from a tax perspective you are regarded as an employee - so you get the tax hit but none of the benefits of being an employee. This means all your income is taxed immediately, you cannot hold some of the money in a your company so you can keep paying yourself when the contract runs out, you cannot claim back the tax on the cost of professional training courses (vital for an IT developer and the best ones can cost £400 a day plus subsistence), you can't offset the cost of employing someone to help you work on the development project that will free you of the need to work as a contractor, you can't offset travel and subsistence against income even if the job is at the other end of the country.

 

Then the Government implemented a fast-track visa scheme so we can import IT staff from lower-wage economies "to address a shortage of IT skills".

 

It is difficult to get a paper qualification that is truly indicative of IT developer skills. Government has leapt on this as an opportunity - generate some meaningless qualifications and mickey mouse courses, send the unemployed to do the course and get the meaningless qualification and bingo! You are seen to be retraining the unemployed in the high-tech industries of the future.

 

Guess what, you can now find jobs being advertised at rates you could better at MacDonalds. I saw one IT job advertised by a London local authority at £14k p.a. looking for formal qualifications and several years experience in highly technical products. And apparently the public sector no longer has a recruitment problem, supply outstrips demand and salaries have plummeted. If IT is what you know and the only jobs are £10 an hour, many people who were getting £50 an hour will take £10 rather than being unemployed - that's what the guy at a recruitment agency told me on the phone yesterday in a cold call to try to get me to take someone off his books.

 

Formerly having had a job where I recruited IT staff, when reading a CV I wanted to know what someone had achieved in practical terms, looking for the right kind of brain and attitude. Paper qualifications might help the choice between candidates with and without. A lot of people in the industry started out as obsessive teenagers with a BBC or Sinclair computer, in the process of hacking the security on games they learnt an awful lot about software and that stood them in good stead, they may have had no paper qualifications but it didn't matter.

 

But don't despair, much of the recruiting is done by managers who are just "professional managers" they don't have a clue what IT is about and they have to place greater reliance on paper qualifications.

 

If you are any good, get any job you can in IT regardless of the crap salary but make the most of it, use the training they offer, become indispensable and use your achievements and experience to go out looking for a better job (unless the current employer decides to reward you properly). One of my guys quit a weeks after we gave him a 25% pay rise because we'd left it too long, he'd already lined up another job at even more.

 

Stick with the course but don't rely on the degree itself to get the job. Use the university resources to develop an innovative application, to develop management and people skills so you can present yourself as not too much of a stereotypical "computer geek".

 

The future - well if IT skills are so poorly rewarded, those with the requisite mental capability will look to work in other sectors. The trend toward outsourcing in the far-east will increase.

Look at HSBC, probably the largest employer of IT staff in Sheffield, they now have IT "factories" in India and China (paying well above normal local salaries but well below UK rates) and have recently announced 1400 (mostly IT) redundancies in UK.

 

I would not advise anyone to start on an IT degree course now, you'll emerge with a large student loan and poor earning potential.

[upholder 10]

I considered going into IT a few years back during the dot com boom. Glad i didn't.

My work is hard but relatively well paid.

There are so few of us now (tradesmen).Some can charge the earth for their services.

In my opinon there are too many school leavers going to college instead of learning a trade that is in demand.

All that study at uni and the debt at the end of it doesn't make any sense to me, what the hell are you suppossed to do with 14k a year.

An old guy said to me a few years back "When everyone's sat pressing buttons who's going to do all the work."

 

Having said that there are times when I wish for a desk job.

The grass is greener and all that.

 

Thats my two penneth.

[alchresearch 214]

I think the trouble with some computing courses is that they are too general and will only briefly cover all the main topics of computing.

 

Something like that is just going to get you a reputation in the pub as 'someone who knows a bit'.

 

No clued up employer is going to take it seriously, whether it's an Msc or not. You really need to take a look at which field of computing you want to be in, hardware, software, programming or networking and then spend three years on that subject alone.

 

Looking at the way computing is going, the two areas which are going to be screaming out for graduates is in Linux and networking / internet communications. I've been in computing since the early 80's and have had to adapt my skills every few years to keep in there.

[John 11]

Robh quoted

 

The future - well if IT skills are so poorly rewarded, those with the requisite mental capability will look to work in other sectors. The trend toward outsourcing in the far-east will increase.

 

Funny how I have to pick up the pieces of shoddy work produced by these cheaper workers.

 

I know a large UK company (in top 100) pulled out after experiencing poor quality and realized that you get what you pay for.

[robh 10]

Originally posted by John

Funny how I have to pick up the pieces of shoddy work produced by these cheaper workers.

 

I know a large UK company (in top 100) pulled out after experiencing poor quality and realized that you get what you pay for.

I know a UK company in the top 2 which had the same initial experience but stuck with it and runs its development shop such that much of the donkey work is done overseas and the tricky bits (and maybe some remedial work) done here. When you can get enthusiastic hard-working graduates earning above the local norm but the cost is 10% of the UK equivalent it's going to be worth making the effort to make the arrangement work. They don't want to produce shoddy work and the reason they do is because it's inadequately specified - you can get away with that when the whole team is sitting together, just talk to the systems analyst to get clarification but when he's a continent and a few time zones away it's harder. Writing the specs more carefully adds to costs but on balance you can come out on top.

[steve round 10]

Originally posted by stephstellar

I'm halfway through an MSc Computing conversion course, but am starting to worry that it may be an expensive waste of time. When I see IT jobs advertised they all seem to want expertise in things we've only touched on in University.

Has anyone taken one of these courses? What are the employment prospects like, realistically?

 

 

It depends on you do you like computing, can you continue to learn more with interest still strong? Is the idea of doing such work your cup of tea, the thing about computers is that it is a multifacetted entity you can specialise or surf - within the physical limits of bowing before a box it gives you some choice.

[Stripey1 10]

I'm halfway through an MSc Computing conversion course, but am starting to worry that it may be an expensive waste of time. When I see IT jobs advertised they all seem to want expertise in things we've only touched on in University.

Has anyone taken one of these courses? What are the employment prospects like, realistically?

 

stephstellar I did an humble BTEC in Software Engineering in the 90's and found work almost immediately afterwards. An MSc course is a totally different prospect altogether. The things you learned in university are more than likely enough to secure you a job, it depends on what field of IT you want to specialise in. I think you will find that it will be worth it in the end, don't give up.