[AusNOG] Off Topic - Brisbane recruitment recommendations

[Skeeve Stevens]

Mark,

If you think 100k is peanuts, you've been earning way too much for way too
long and are far out of touch with reality.

Those who are employees are always going to talk up their wages as much as
possible.

The issue is not that it is too little for too much. The issue - and why I
posted in the first place - is that the skill sets for a lot of the roles
are just not there in desired combinations.

I'm not looking for anyone at the moment. I know better and I prefer to
grow the experience internally.

The issue at the moment is like the start of the web development in 95-97
where people were earning stupid money because there was little available
talent, minimal opportunity for experience and not many automated tools.  I
remember when Sausage Software came out with one of the first apps to do a
lot of it easily, wages dropped by 30% in a few months. Once the skills
were disseminated through the community with even more experience and
tools, wages dropped by up to 50% and the 100k people could be had for 50k.

In about 2-3 years when there are experienced and self-taught people and
Unis produce people with a bit of a clue and the baseline expectation is:
Cisco + Juniper + Linux + Devops awareness/scripting skills, and cloud
skills - those people will be worth about $60k-$75 on the low-end, and
$100k for 2-3 years experience and maybe some certs.  Now that range is
$75k-$130k with some experience and $120k-$150k with a lot of experience
and skill - but those people are extremely rare - today. But will not be in
9-12 months.

You can disagree with those approximate figures - but few employers (who
actually have to pay the money) will disagree.

I realise that people will and should try to earn as much as they can as
fast as they can during a new technology upswing. It is a great opportunity
for those who make the move, effort and invest in themselves.

Look at the Graphic Design world and the cloud resource revolution. Wages
have dropped by 50-60% in 2 years and the opportunities are 40% of what
there was.

I'm not trying to talk anyones worth down. I'm simply balancing the reality
of what the situation is at different points in the technology
upswing/adoption vs the artificial barriers that lack of skill and high
wages demand actually slows down some areas of adoption.

Yes, it is a simple supply and demand situation - except that situation
works for opportunistic contractors and not for people with career minded
perspective. Those who piss off employers who feel that they have no choice
and will pay what they need to at the time, but the minute they don't have
to, they won't.


...Skeeve

*Skeeve Stevens - Founder & The Architect* - eintellego Networks Pty Ltd
Email: skeeve at eintellegonetworks.com ; Web: eintellegonetworks.com

Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; Skype: skeeve ; LinkedIn: /in/skeeve
<http://linkedin.com/in/skeeve> ; Expert360: Profile
<https://expert360.com/profile/d54a9> ; Keybase: https://keybase.io/skeeve

On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 11:41 AM, Mark Newton <newton at atdot.dotat.org>
wrote:

> On May 12, 2016, at 8:37 AM, Skeeve Stevens <
> skeeve+ausnog at eintellegonetworks.com> wrote:
>
> Most people are having trouble at the moment.
> It is an interesting time that I've spoken about at Commsday events,
> talking about the void of skills in certain areas:
>
> - Cloud specialisation and experience (AWS, Azure, Google Compute)
> - DevOps skills - Ansible, Puppet, Chef - with deployment experience
> - Network (Cisco/Juniper/etc) + Linux + NetDevOps experience
> - Anyone with actual experience on SDN
> - IoT infrastructure experience - even using the AWS/Azure tools
> - Languages like Golang
>
>
> A void of skills in certain areas which happen to correspond to a very
> large part of the skillset of a modern network engineer.
>
> I wonder about the degree to which the network engineering profession in
> Australia has kept up with the modern world. If you know how to type “conf
> t” and can explain the finer internal details of OSPF, that used to qualify
> you for a much larger chunk of network engineering employment opportunities
> than it does now.
>
>
> Right now I've seen jobs posted, and literally zero applications for 100k
> jobs.
>
>
> That surely means they’re not actually $100k jobs, and you need to pay
> more.
>
> I know plenty of people with the skills you’ve listed. Every single one of
> them is earning significantly more than what you’re offering. Often by a
> factor of more than 2x.
>
> Pay peanuts, get monkeys. Or just nobody.
>
>
> Those who re/up skill now will be the most valuable in the market...
> especially good network engineers who learn Linux and how to code... that
> is gold.
>
>
> If you have the skills Skeeve is looking for, I’m happy to take CVs for
> referrals. Less interested in product names and three-letter acronyms; more
> interested in descriptions of *what you can actually do.*
>
>  - mark
>
>
>
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