Computer Programmers Leaving the UK.

[Big Orange]

Britain seems to have had a initially slow, steady decline in R&D and a braindrain since the end of the Second World War that's been picking up pace since the 1970s, and in IT it's very recently accelerated with homegrown IT workers leaving for fairer shores, but considering the last 15+ years of harebrained outsourcing to India by short-sighted, abusive UK companies and government departments I don't blame them:

UK IT workers are leaving the UK because they are fed up

The number of overseas workers in the UK is driving local talent out. Below is an account from a UK IT professional about why he decided to leave these shores for pastures new.

The post below was in reaction to a blog about the possibility of the UK government offshoring lots of public sector IT jobs. This is a warning to IT professionals and UK plc.

By BobF

"I just got fed up with it all, after 18 years contracting (continuously) I have now taken a permanent job in the Netherlands, this after 6 months out of work and another 6 months working for very low money in the UK (sent out 1,400 CV's in the 6 months I was out of work; I usually do apps support work for SQL, Java & .NET on UNIX/Linux/Windows web apps so hardly due to an obsolete skill set).

Things have definitely changed for the worse in the last 4-5 years as the Intra Company Transfer bandwagon has run out of control in the UK, most of the companies I've worked for have had literally hundreds of Indian Intra Company Transfers staff on board (including a few major Government projects), and I've been to some places where even the network infrastructure and PC/Server support staff are Indian Intra Company Transfers (rotated on a yearly or 6 monthly basis of course).

I quite often get calls from agents for jobs in the UK, and they say they can't get experienced people with skills to which I usually laugh sarcastically, and it usually ends with them asking me about living costs and accommodation and if there is much demand for recruiters over here!

UK industry is making its own bed and will have to lie in it, when was the last time you saw anyone under 30 being brought in for a trainee role who wasn't Indian Intra Company Transfer?
Since I have been working in Europe I have met many experienced UK IT workers who have moved for the same reason as me, everyone I have spoken too has said they are very unlikely to ever move back."

Thanks for you contribution to the Inside Outsourcing BobF.

ComputerWeekly.com

[Stark]

Paranoia aside, if you let a company transfer staff that take lower wages and just keep cycling them, why wouldn't they?

[TC27]

Work in public sector IT myself...

From my ten years or so in this area I have come to realise that in far too many companies and organizations IT is controlled directly by finance managers who see outsourcing and Tuping IT departments/services as a way to save money without regard for the consequences.

[Shaun]

The Britain of the future will be nothing more than a banking centre off the coast of France.

[Starglider]

Yes, this is extremely common particularly among the big consulting firms (HP, IBM, Accenture etc). Seems a lot less common for City of London finance-related programming. If you want a 'safe' programming job in the UK, to the extent that such a thing exists, it seems that you have to work for BAE or Logica writing software for defence projects.

[TC27]

The Britain of the future will be nothing more than a banking centre off the coast of France.

Wow that kind of insight belongs on the letters page of the Daily Mail.....

[Shaun]

The Britain of the future will be nothing more than a banking centre off the coast of France.

Wow that kind of insight belongs on the letters page of the Daily Mail.....

Can you explain what is wrong with my statement then?

[UnderAGreySky]

As someone who's looking for work in the UK, though not in IT, I can attest to this. I live near a place that is flooded with Indians (hey, I'm one, I would know! ) that go in and out for IT related work. Even in the field I'm searching (Aerospace), the number of design jobs is poor, a lot of them are now Verification & Validation jobs. I wonder where the actual design is happening...

[Big Orange]

From my ten years or so in this area I have come to realise that in far too many companies and organizations IT is controlled directly by finance managers who see outsourcing and Tuping IT departments/services as a way to save money without regard for the consequences.

That sort of universal mindset in this country is why UK PLC is going down down the tubes, blundering from one disaster to another, with the promising IT industry dislocated by outsourcing, and why a company like BP was cutting the "core" company to the bone and subcontracting vital operations to other companies (Transocean and Haliburton) with their own chains of command. Big projects were perhaps likely harder to control and thus BP was inadequate to forsee and manage the Gulf of Mexico spill. Save now and pay later.

[Zaune]

Can someone please explain to me, in three hundred words or less, why British workers being squeezed out by people who'll work harder for less money is a great tragedy?

[Starglider]

Can someone please explain to me, in three hundred words or less, why British workers being squeezed out by people who'll work harder for less money is a great tragedy?

If you think the reduced costs are passed on to the consumer you are very much mistaken. The savings are banked as profits, going to generally wealthy shareholders, meanwhile there are fewer jobs that pay a decent salary to maintain the standard of living and economy in general. Local programmers can't easily compete simply by working for low wages though, because a major benefit of importing staff is control. Companies can make whatever unreasonable demands they like and the employee has to suck it up or go home. With no local support network, a non-transferable visa and the threat of shame and not being able to get another IT job at home if they quit, companies can easily get away with outright employee abuse. Meanwhile the host country's skill base is atrophying and its know-how being shipped back to the outsourcing country with each employee that gets transferred back.

The 'market' solution to this unsustainable trend is of course to devalue the pound (and dollar, euro etc) such that it is no longer financially attractive (for educated staff) to accept such deals. Which would enforce major poverty as import become massively expensive, but at least it helps exporters (though not as much as you might think due to imported components / raw materials). My personal solution is to develop better automation that puts all these lower-skilled IT and call center people out of work, indescriminately. Still working on that.

[UnderAGreySky]

Can someone please explain to me, in three hundred words or less, why British workers being squeezed out by people who'll work harder for less money is a great tragedy?

When the locals don't get employed, they'll sit back and collect unemployment/welfare. This will mean more payouts from the government. Which will have to be covered with more revenue. Higher taxes. Don't you see where this is going?

(And i say this in spite of being a non-British national looking for work in the UK)

[Zaune]

Fair points, but it's not as if the employee-protection laws in this country are so effective that you honestly need foreign nationals in order to achieve the necessary level of control; it's embarrassingly easy for British firms to game the system so that their employees can be let go for any reason at all without notice or severance pay, and our social security net might be a bit better than some places but it's not much of a lifestyle.