<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class=""><div class="">IT practitioners are critical to the Australian economy, and, commensurate with their ongoing training requirements and their contribution to business and industry, ought to be remunerated as high income earners at a level comparable to GPs or accountants; yet so many in this industry settle for “average” wages or below without even realizing it.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">It angers me to think about how many skilled IT people I’ve known over the years who’ve exited the industry because they get better pay, conditions, advancement opportunities, and satisfaction from painting houses than they did in their old jobs. So much lost experience; so much unnecessarily retarded progress; so few lessons learned.</div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div>On May 13, 2016, at 1:22 PM, Skeeve Stevens <<a href="mailto:skeeve+ausnog@eintellegonetworks.com" class="">skeeve+ausnog@eintellegonetworks.com</a>> wrote:<div class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class="">You've mis-read. I didn't say I wanted anything. That wasn't a job advert. That was a list of areas in the industry that people are struggling with at the moment, not an all encompassing list of skills I was expecting in one job role.<br class=""></blockquote><div><br class=""></div>You nominated a list of skills with a price tag next to it. I responded to what you wrote.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>If you want a different response, maybe try writing different things.</div><div><br class=""></div><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="">You've made sweeping statements about 'average' which mean nothing. <a href="https://www.livingin-australia.com/salaries-australia/" class="">Industries</a> vary extremely and there are many many variables which including skills, experience, certification (if important), age (sometimes), </div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div>It’s illegal for age to be important in hiring decisions, so you probably don’t want to admit to that in public: Someone you've declined to offer a job to in years past might now have evidence to take you to Fair Work Australia in an age discrimination case. Sounds expensive.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Industries may vary, but engineering skills are pretty widely applicable. If the Australian telco industry doesn’t pay well for engineering talent (and my observation is that it absolutely doesn’t) there are plenty of other industries which will and do.</div><div><br class=""></div><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="">With Work Visas, </div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>How do you get a visa for someone to do a job that can be done by Australians? Are you abusing the 457 visa system?</div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="">cloudification of human skills, off-shoring, locals better have a damn good reason for charging higher than your 'average' or what people are prepared to pay. Because the sad (to locals) fact is that 80% of IT job functions can be done from anywhere in the planet. You better make sure that the 20% that needs to be done locally is relevant and outstanding. There are a lot of immigrants in the country at the moment with master degrees, CCNP/IE level certs filling the cubicals of Telstra, NBN, Optus and every other large carrier out there... and who are way way more hungrier than your typical Australian.</div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>Alright, let’s go with Masters graduates, since you brought them up.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Some data for you to argue with:</div><div><br class=""></div>Median starting salary in Australia for a postgraduate diploma Engineering graduate in 2014 was $102,000 (N=369). That’s with zero experience, fresh out of campus.</div><div>(table 11 on page 25, <a href="http://www.graduatecareers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Graduate_Salaries_Report_2014_FINAL.PDF" class="">http://www.graduatecareers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Graduate_Salaries_Report_2014_FINAL.PDF</a>)</div><div>Australian wage growth has been 3% p.a., so I’d expect the 2016 figure to be in the region of $108,000.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>This is a MEDIAN, which means 50% of graduates earned more than that in 2014.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>A Masters Coursework graduate was yielding $95,000 (N=606) in 2014 (Ibid.), which extrapolates to about $101,000 in 2016 @ 3% p.a. wage growth. Again, median: half of them earn more.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>They’re both above the $100k price tag you affixed to a desirable list of skills and experience which an Engineering postgraduate would only accumulate after several years of industry experience.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Why would someone with enough industry experience to gain expertise in those skills even <i class="">talk</i> to you, if they knew that the result of a successful conversation would be below their entry-level salary? <i class="">Having a successful discussion with you would actually drive their career backwards.</i></div><div><br class=""></div><div>I’m sure you can hire people by underpaying, but they’ll be the desperate hungry ones, not the good ones. You say “locals better have a damn good reason for charging higher than `average’”, but your words and numbers indicate that you’re interested in the candidates who <i class="">don’t</i> have a damn good reason, who will settle for a below-market-rates salary because they can’t get work anywhere else.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>As a worker in the industry, I am not competing for salaries with those graduates. You can have them with my blessing, I’ll just work elsewhere.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>If I come out of Uni with an Engineering postgraduate diploma, I don’t have the skills and experience you want and I’m already priced out of your range. I don’t need a damn good reason for anything at all, I just need a job with someone who isn’t you.</div><div><br class=""></div><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="">You'r view is skewed into getting as much as you can for the skills you have - and I agree. But I also understand employers only being able to afford so much so they can competing.</div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>If you can’t afford to compete, you won’t get what you want. <i class="">That’s what competition means. </i>You don’t get to change the game by dropping the price.</div></div><div><br class=""></div><div>There are plenty of big-dumb-Enterprise shops paying more than what you’re proposing (for example: Government departments; Virtually every bank). Your attitude basically says that in a competition for talent, you’ll let the good ones exit your section of the industry, and you'll suck up the slops afterwards.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>If that’s your business model, that’s fine. But please don’t try to portray your personal behavior as something that’s indicative of how the rest of the market works.</div><div><br class=""></div><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="">The normal IT industry is not competing with Google, Amazon, etc. They will always take the cream top 1-2%. </div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Atlassian have engineering offices in Sydney, and compete for talent with (to pick one example) you.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>A significant portion of their employee intake each year comes from university graduates — i.e., people who have not yet been able to demonstrate that they are “the cream top 1-2%” because their careers have barely started. Their employers offer them opportunities, career development, and remuneration packages that make your proposals look like an absolute joke.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Those four companies combined currently employ well over 1000 engineers in Sydney, and virtually all of them have skills in the areas you listed. There are many other companies in the Enterprise space who offer better-than-telco-industry salary packages.</div><div><br class=""></div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="">that still leaves a lot of amazing talent available out there - the ones who haven't been stolen by the US that is.</div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div><div class="">“Stolen”? If you mean, “Offered a career path in a country that doesn’t treat the internet like garbage,” then sure, the US is an option too. Virtually any first-world country except Australia, really.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">They’re not “stealing” them, they’re buying them. That’s the opposite of stealing. That’s what you’re competing with, too.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> - mark</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div></body></html>