Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> Plan B: Try the local paper...

Well, that worked a little better. Of the 27 jobs returned from my 
search, 7 of them were actually what I asked for (rather than some 
superficially similar-sounding job), and I was able to apply to 2 of them.

OTOH, it's the local paper. They get two or three computer jobs *per 
month*. o_O And that's for web design, data entry, technical support and 
every other computer-related category put together, not just the one 
specific area I'm looking at.

Oh dears.

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>>   Maybe it means "Unix operating systems in general, but especially Linux
>> and Solaris, and from all Linux distros especially Red Hat".
> 
> In my experience, no, it just means the person putting together the list 
> doesn't know what they're talking about, literally. They have a pile of 
> paper with a list of skills different people told them they were looking 
> for, so they wrote them all down.

This seems to be my experience too.

I briefly mentioned on one CV that one of the programs I wrote deleted 
various temp files, including the "web cache". And I got some recruiter 
calling me up claiming that I was ideal for a role because I "know 
cashae", which apparently is some niche programming language used in the 
healthcare system. Way to completely fail to comprehend what I wrote, man!

> Either 
> that, or they're optimizing for search engines, just plugging in what 
> everyone might search for.

That too. Lots and lots of these things start with a long list of search 
terms before the [vaguely] human-readable part starts.

Reading these adverts, one gets the impression of some underpaid nobody 
hurridly scribbling down text all day without the slightest clue what 
they're talking about, and without bothering with such niceties as 
spelling and grammar.

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>> department or something,
> 
> Err, no.  FWIW the starting salary for graduates at our place wasn't 
> much below that several years ago.

*Starting* salary?




> For someone with a degree and 5 years relevant experience

[7 years]

> I'd say 30k was easily achievable and you 
> wouldn't be expected to be in charge of anyone.

Really? I find that quite surprising.

Hell, my sister is an accountant and she doesn't earn nearly that much. 
And my dad has over 30 years experience as a parmacutical analyst 
[that's highly skilled, specialist work that's difficult to hire for] 
and he earns less than that.


>> (I hadn't realised that there are real people out there who actually 
>> earn this much money.
> 
> I don't think I've ever had a boss that earned less than 50K.  I think 
> you have a totally skewed view of salaries because you are paid so 
> little in your current job.

Hmm, thinking about it... I vaguely "know" our CEO. He must surely be on 
a bit more than 50K. I "know" our Director of IT [who no longer works 
here as of Friday], and he probably earns a tad more than 50K too.

I guess most managers just don't make a habit of telling everybody how 
much more money they earn than you do...

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> *Starting* salary?

Yes!  I just did a search on monster for "graduate software" and nearly 
every result had a salary range somewhere between 20 and 30K as a *starting* 
salary.  The same is true of "graduate engineer".  Heck, two of my best 
friends from University (both did computer science) got a job with this 
company writing software for internet routers and their starting salary was 
30K.  My starting salary was closer to 20K than 30K, but that was 7 years 
ago, I know now they are offering new graduates closer to 30K.




According to prospects.ac.uk the average graduate starting salary ranges 
from 20 to 25k depending on who you ask.  I would imagine that having a 
computer science degree would put you above the average.

>> For someone with a degree and 5 years relevant experience
>
> [7 years]
>
>> I'd say 30k was easily achievable and you wouldn't be expected to be in 
>> charge of anyone.
>
> Really? I find that quite surprising.

How come? Even if you started on 20K, a 50% pay increase over 7 years is not 
surprising.

> Hell, my sister is an accountant and she doesn't earn nearly that much.

If she is working for a reputable accountancy firm, has done the 
qualifications and has more than 7 years experience (IIRC she is older than 
you?) then that seems pretty poor pay to me.

> Hmm, thinking about it... I vaguely "know" our CEO. He must surely be on a 
> bit more than 50K.

Probably a big "bit" more.

> I "know" our Director of IT [who no longer works here as of Friday], and 
> he probably earns a tad more than 50K too.

You'd think so.

> I guess most managers just don't make a habit of telling everybody how 
> much more money they earn than you do...

You can easily estimate it though, by looking at similar jobs at other 
companies, how your internal pay structure works etc.  For example I know 
that my manager must be earning more than a "lead engineer", which must be 
earning more than I do.  I know roughly what % increase you get for 
promotion, so my manager must be on about 60-70K.  I can also then guess 
that the director of my department is on about 80-90K, and the MD probably 
110-130K.  This ties in well with job adverts I've seen for similar 
positions in other companies, and from talking with other people.

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>> *Starting* salary?
> 
> Yes!  I just did a search on monster for "graduate software" and nearly 
> every result had a salary range somewhere between 20 and 30K as a 
> *starting* salary.  The same is true of "graduate engineer".  Heck, two 
> of my best friends from University (both did computer science) got a job 
> with this company writing software for internet routers and their 
> starting salary was 30K.  My starting salary was closer to 20K than 30K, 
> but that was 7 years ago, I know now they are offering new graduates 
> closer to 30K.

Writing software for Internet routers sounds like pretty specialist 
stuff. (It's basically writing security-critical software for an 
embedded platform.) I'd be surprised if somebody with no qualifications 
other than a degree could actually get a job like that. Especially if it 
was just an average degree, not a spectacular one.

> According to prospects.ac.uk the average graduate starting salary ranges 
> from 20 to 25k depending on who you ask.  I would imagine that having a 
> computer science degree would put you above the average.

Hmm. This is completely at variance with my experience, so something's 
wrong somewhere. Not sure where exactly...

>>> I'd say 30k was easily achievable and you wouldn't be expected to be 
>>> in charge of anyone.
>>
>> Really? I find that quite surprising.
> 
> How come? Even if you started on 20K, a 50% pay increase over 7 years is 
> not surprising.

Er... OK, I may have got my maths wrong here, but if we assume that you 
get pay increases as large as 0.5% every single year, that still works 
out to only about 3.55% over 7 years. Which is nowhere even close to 50%.

>> Hell, my sister is an accountant and she doesn't earn nearly that much.
> 
> If she is working for a reputable accountancy firm, has done the 
> qualifications and has more than 7 years experience (IIRC she is older 
> than you?) then that seems pretty poor pay to me.

She's younger. She hasn't been in accounting for 7 years, and doesn't 
have her qualification *yet*. (She gets her final exam results this 
month IIRC.)

>> Hmm, thinking about it... I vaguely "know" our CEO. He must surely be 
>> on a bit more than 50K.
> 
> Probably a big "bit" more.

Yes, that was a typically British understatement. I realise that might 
not come across in NNTP. ;-)

>> I guess most managers just don't make a habit of telling everybody how 
>> much more money they earn than you do...
> 
> You can easily estimate it though, by looking at similar jobs at other 
> companies, how your internal pay structure works etc.  For example I 
> know that my manager must be earning more than a "lead engineer", which 
> must be earning more than I do.  I know roughly what % increase you get 
> for promotion, so my manager must be on about 60-70K.  I can also then 
> guess that the director of my department is on about 80-90K, and the MD 
> probably 110-130K.  This ties in well with job adverts I've seen for 
> similar positions in other companies, and from talking with other people.

Damn, you really have your finger on the pulse, don't you? :-)

I guess as you say, the problem is that I only know people with quite 
low incomes. It seems incongruous to me that somebody without a PhD in 
astrophysics [or simply an enterprising genius] could actually earn 
decent money.

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> "Key skills and experiences required for this role are:
> 
> Unix, Windows, Linux, Red Hat, Solaris, OS environments. [...]"
> 
> Newsflash: Linux *is* Unix. Red Hat *is* Linux. And ALL of the above 
> *are* "OS environments". Learn basic English! :-P

They might have meant OS/2 variants. According to wikipedia
OS/2 is in use in various cash machines and ticket machines.

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Tim Attwood wrote:

>> Unix, Windows, Linux, Red Hat, Solaris, OS environments. [...]"
> 
> They might have meant OS/2 variants.

OK. But they didn't *say* that, did they? Which would still qualify this 
as badly written. ;-)

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> Writing software for Internet routers sounds like pretty specialist stuff. 
> (It's basically writing security-critical software for an embedded 
> platform.) I'd be surprised if somebody with no qualifications other than 
> a degree could actually get a job like that.

They were only taking graduates, so obviously they were going to give 
training, they weren't expecting you to walk in on Monday and start 
programming routers.  The same way as my employer wasn't expecting me to 
walk in on my first day and design an LCD.  Hint, if it has "graduate" in 
the job title it probably means they aren't assuming anything more than a 
typical university course.

>> How come? Even if you started on 20K, a 50% pay increase over 7 years is 
>> not surprising.
>
> Er... OK, I may have got my maths wrong here, but if we assume that you 
> get pay increases as large as 0.5% every single year,

I assumed you'd get about about a 4% raise per year and maybe a single 
10-20% raise for a promotion during those 7 years.

If you're only getting 0.5% per year (last year or two can be excepted for 
obvious reasons) then that is really bad, inflation is usually 2-3% so 
you're actually getting a pay *cut* each year.  Never heard of that unless 
your company is in big trouble or doesn't want you any more.

> She's younger. She hasn't been in accounting for 7 years, and doesn't have 
> her qualification *yet*. (She gets her final exam results this month 
> IIRC.)

By the time she's passed her qualifications and got 7 years experience I 
would expect her to be over 30K.  Then you'll know someone :-)

> I guess as you say, the problem is that I only know people with quite low 
> incomes. It seems incongruous to me that somebody without a PhD in 
> astrophysics [or simply an enterprising genius] could actually earn decent 
> money.

I don't think you need to have a PhD in anything to earn decent money, or be 
amazingly clever.

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>> Writing software for Internet routers sounds like pretty specialist 
>> stuff. (It's basically writing security-critical software for an 
>> embedded platform.) I'd be surprised if somebody with no 
>> qualifications other than a degree could actually get a job like that.
> 
> They were only taking graduates, so obviously they were going to give 
> training, they weren't expecting you to walk in on Monday and start 
> programming routers.  The same way as my employer wasn't expecting me to 
> walk in on my first day and design an LCD.  Hint, if it has "graduate" 
> in the job title it probably means they aren't assuming anything more 
> than a typical university course.

Hmm, I hadn't tried doing any searches for graduate positions recently. 
Maybe I should try that, if only for completeness. Dr Pepper.

I'd bet even a graduate position would require a strong understanding of 
C though (and probably lab experience of writing firmware and flashing 
it onto microcontroller boards or similar). And at any rate, I don't 
suppose there are too many people hiring for this sort of thing. (In 
other words, they can pick the best of the best of the best, and if that 
isn't you, you needn't even apply.)

>>> How come? Even if you started on 20K, a 50% pay increase over 7 years 
>>> is not surprising.
>>
>> Er... OK, I may have got my maths wrong here, but if we assume that 
>> you get pay increases as large as 0.5% every single year,
> 
> I assumed you'd get about about a 4% raise per year and maybe a single 
> 10-20% raise for a promotion during those 7 years.

20% seems like a really rather large riase. (Unless you, like, 
single-handedly revolutionised an entire department or something.) Then 
again, having never received or met anybody who received a promotion, I 
guess I wouldn't know.

> If you're only getting 0.5% per year (last year or two can be excepted 
> for obvious reasons) then that is really bad, inflation is usually 2-3% 
> so you're actually getting a pay *cut* each year.  Never heard of that 
> unless your company is in big trouble or doesn't want you any more.

I don't think there's ever been a raise here of an entire percent. Most 
years there's no raise at all, but sometimes we get 0.25% or something. 
And when we do, everybody complains [which always seemed odd to me]. 
They say what you said "this is a pay cut". Personally, I would have 
thought *not* getting a raise would be worse... but what do I know?

Currently my employer loses around four million USD per year. You may 
remember there was recently some talk of the company globally handing 
out a 4% pay cut "temporarily". There used to be a time when the UK 
division was the only profitable site, but AFAIK now all sites are 
running at a loss of some size or other.

But hey, we've hardly had a single order on our books (i.e., the UK) for 
about a year and a half now. It costs money to pay people to stand 
around doing nothing. Seems like there's more activity happening in the 
lab recently though. I don't know if this is a trend or a fluctuation.

My plan, of course, is to not stick around to find out. ;-)

>> She's younger. She hasn't been in accounting for 7 years, and doesn't 
>> have her qualification *yet*. (She gets her final exam results this 
>> month IIRC.)
> 
> By the time she's passed her qualifications and got 7 years experience I 
> would expect her to be over 30K.  Then you'll know someone :-)

Heh, well, I guess we'll see.

Of course, she lives in Guildford, where the cost of living is 
apparently very much higher, so she'll probably still be fairly "poor".

>> I guess as you say, the problem is that I only know people with quite 
>> low incomes. It seems incongruous to me that somebody without a PhD in 
>> astrophysics [or simply an enterprising genius] could actually earn 
>> decent money.
> 
> I don't think you need to have a PhD in anything to earn decent money, 
> or be amazingly clever.

Right. Well then I guess it's just that everybody I've met happens to be 
fairly poor then.

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Plan C:

http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/jobs/uk/
http://www.nokia.com/A41199604
http://www-05.ibm.com/employment/uk/
http://h10055.www1.hp.com/jobsathp/content/home/home.asp?area=GB&Lang=ENen
...

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