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Computer Science graduates have the highest unemployment rate in the UK?

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Original post by A Dev
Re highest unemployment rate of IT graduates..it is cheaper to hire offshore workers than train up graduates.


True. But those who do are either in it for a quick buck, or really struggling because they have lost control of their core business asset. I managed a team of offshore devs once. Absolute nightmare - never again.
I think the reasons why we have such a high unemployment is because we lack skills sets also some IT graduates are the most unsociable people on planet earth.

There's 1000's of jobs out there. We just need the right skills to fill them. Like my lecturer said you have to have the correct balance with skills and attributes
Original post by ByEeek
True. But those who do are either in it for a quick buck, or really struggling because they have lost control of their core business asset. I managed a team of offshore devs once. Absolute nightmare - never again.


Kindly adjust and do the needful for the same.
Original post by urbanlocations
I think the reasons why we have such a high unemployment is because we lack skills sets also some IT graduates are the most unsociable people on planet earth.

There's 1000's of jobs out there. We just need the right skills to fill them. Like my lecturer said you have to have the correct balance with skills and attributes


Entirely this.
Original post by Mad Vlad
Kindly adjust and do the needful for the same.


Surely.
Original post by Mad Vlad
I was referring to my basic pay, which is £60k, but that doesn't include my bonus (17% base + 8% performance, cash + spot share awards) + RSUs (worth about £12k a year at the current market rate) . And no, you're misunderstanding me. I could quite happily sit and just do my job and still maintain my position and my performance-related elements as a senior analyst. What I'm doing is feathering the nest for a principal level promotion, hopefully in the next 6-18 months, which would see me heading up towards £90k basic + bonus and bens.


False. The majority of my friends at my level of seniority in industry have zero budget/people management responsibility. In terms of "building stakeholder buy in", I really wouldn't call being your director's technical wingman in conversations with the grown-ups, a management responsibility.

Also, I note from your lack of response to my question, that you don't work in Security. Hmm.



I can't speak for the rest of industry, but I'll cover off my experience:

Year 1: Junior analyst - £27k (typically £25k)
Year 2: Analyst - £31k
Year 3: Senior Analyst - £40k
Year 4: Senior Analyst (for a much better company) £~87k (forecast) for this year.


I went to an assessment centre yesterday, originally I applied for just general software engineering but it seems they want lots of people for cyber security, so if i get it looks like i'd be going down that route. To me both routes are interesting to me so financially would you say it is more rewarding?
Better than a film degree LOL.

Always a silver lining.
Original post by jacktrex
I went to an assessment centre yesterday, originally I applied for just general software engineering but it seems they want lots of people for cyber security, so if i get it looks like i'd be going down that route. To me both routes are interesting to me so financially would you say it is more rewarding?


I cannot comment as I have not worked in software engineering.
Original post by jacktrex
I went to an assessment centre yesterday, originally I applied for just general software engineering but it seems they want lots of people for cyber security, so if i get it looks like i'd be going down that route. To me both routes are interesting to me so financially would you say it is more rewarding?


There are lots of well paying niche areas in IT tech/consultancy and the like. Generally though regardless of the estimations in here the top end is around 60k with a 20% Annual/performance based bonus for PAYE salaries, unless you get to director level. If you want to make the good money get into contracting, whilst the average senior consultant salary maybe around 65k~ in London. The average contractor salary (depending on market) is usually around £500 a day, literally the market average.

Also you pay much less than the 40% tax rate (which also applies to your bonuses!) on a compliant contract. It can easily add up to 3000 pounds more a month than PAYE, not to mention you can claim back expenses on lots of things and pay your own pension free of tax etc... If you do this you'll want to get an accountant at first but it's by far the best way other than taking huge risks to make money in this industry.
Original post by ron_trns
There are lots of well paying niche areas in IT tech/consultancy and the like. Generally though regardless of the estimations in here the top end is around 60k with a 20% Annual/performance based bonus for PAYE salaries, unless you get to director level. If you want to make the good money get into contracting, whilst the average senior consultant salary maybe around 65k~ in London. The average contractor salary (depending on market) is usually around £500 a day, literally the market average.

Also you pay much less than the 40% tax rate (which also applies to your bonuses!) on a compliant contract. It can easily add up to 3000 pounds more a month than PAYE, not to mention you can claim back expenses on lots of things and pay your own pension free of tax etc... If you do this you'll want to get an accountant at first but it's by far the best way other than taking huge risks to make money in this industry.


The law is being changed so that a lot of the benefits of working as a contractor (eg. Technically running your own company, and paying yourself dividends rather than a salary) is being clamped down on.

Also, depends what you're doing, but top end is definitely higher than 60k. I've seen base salaries doing what I do (granted, for more experienced people) all the way up to 75k, just for a developer, not a manager. I've seen occasional data science roles in the 100-120k range.
Original post by Potally_Tissed
The law is being changed so that a lot of the benefits of working as a contractor (eg. Technically running your own company, and paying yourself dividends rather than a salary) is being clamped down on.

Also, depends what you're doing, but top end is definitely higher than 60k. I've seen base salaries doing what I do (granted, for more experienced people) all the way up to 75k, just for a developer, not a manager. I've seen occasional data science roles in the 100-120k range.


Sorry, I was talking about generally. Better wording may have been "average top end", not literal top end. It's not impossible to see an architect on 80k+in London but most people are never going to see it.

As far as I'm aware they have been trying to screw contractors for a while but it's still pretty easy to get an outside IR-35 contract written in terms that makes them hard to make a case against you. Especially if you're buying your own equipment, WFH sometimes and other such things that pretty much mean you are running your own company. Either way it's worth the risk IMO I was pulling in 3200~ more a month than I would have been on an equivalent permie salary.

I'm not actually contracting now as my current company allows me to work from home and I'm only on site 2 days of the month - I'm situated far outside London. Which suits me better because finding the salary I'm on now outside of London is not gonna happen but if I were to go back to London, it'd be as a contractor only. If we are talking about literal top end, yeah you can find 100k positions but then again I know a few people who have the same required experience who made 1 grand a day on contracts.

I'm specifically just going with market averages in the few branches of tech I have experience in.
(edited 8 years ago)
You won't be expected to know all that, you can get up to speed on all that in about a month of working, although every Computer Science graduate should be able to do basic SQL queries and be strong in at least 1 programming language. Testing and stuff would help but honestly i went into my current job not knowing how to unit test properly, use version control properly, use spring etc and picked it up pretty quickly it's not that hard.
(edited 8 years ago)
Why would you teach students certain frameworks/libraries/APIs that some companies may use and others may not (at all). Wouldn't you prefer your new grads to know all about data structures and algorithms? A good understanding of the foundations of security? Operating systems? Networks?
Or do you think they should be taught bootstrap for 9k a year?
I think there's a lot of myths in this thread. Computer Science graduate is highly likely to end up on a salary of 24-28k in their first year than anyone else.

The issue is experience, I'm at Uni of Leeds and they're practically forcing us to attend employability lectures and career fairs and I'm just a first year :|. My dad was a programmer, he hasn't really touched on it for more than 10 years since becoming a maths teacher. Yet he has been scouted from various countries, especially China due to the experience he has.

A lot of fellow students on my course are technically doing applied computer science due to having insufficient entry requirements. To be honest I think there's only about 10-15 people doing actual CompSci out of 120.

The best thing to do is build your own website and create a portfolio and do keep your programs you've created as assignments. And lol to the person saying we have "basic understanding" with the for loops... We are way way way past that!
One of THE biggest misconceptions on this site that keeps getting regurgitated by 17 year old league table worshippers.


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I agree!!!! It annoys me how people make blanket statements about job prospects, even on a micro level between different degrees but fail to specify which job/industry. Or to even acknowledge that it comes down to much more than a degree in X from Y university.

Yep, most graduates/students are clueless about how to actually tailor CVs to specific jobs. It's a failure on the inaccurate careers advice (both at secondary school and at uni) that they've been spoonfed.
Original post by CharlieGEM
If you like facts then according to some studies it is a fact computer science has one the worst employment rates of any degree. Why that is, universities or employers have little interest in finding out.


I would say some interesting points have been made in this thread, is Computer Science a worthless degree? No, and anyone who thinks that it is I would say are quite ignorant.

At the top universities, the average starting salary of a Computer Scientist is much higher than the rest (~38k at Imperial, ~35k Oxrbidge, ~36k UCL, ~30k KCL, Warwick)

Compared to, say Maths? (~30k at Imperial, Oxbridge; ~27k Warwick UCL etc)

Spoiler



Its is because at this level the graduates tend to have more experience and more things to show for during their degree (via Github etc) and are more employable by big companies

Furthermore, there's no rule stating that CS grads need to go into a dev jobs, in fact ~45-50% of Imperial CS grads apparently go into finance, this may be why the average starting salary is quite high. CS degrees involve high level of problem solving and Mathematics, thus gaining transferable skills to be able to work in other sectors like Finance.

On the flip side, Comp Sci teaching in the UK isn't as good as it should be, far better in America (apparently), and it is true that any highly quantitative degree like Maths, Physics, Eng etc. can get you a job such as Software Eng (obviously if you have the experience). But this doesn't mean that a CS degree is worthless lmao.

As we all know the Tech industry is one of the biggest growing industries in the world, with new technologies being created/updated every day, a CS degree gives you the foundation to be able to adapt to these changes. The outdated in 20 years thing is very vague and even though it's true, almost everything will be outdated by that time. But people will adapt, as they always do.

In my honest opinion, and this may sound a bit harsh, but I wouldn't pay £27k to study CS and a lower half university. At the lower half universities it starts looking more and more like an IT degree. This is the problem we face in the UK. At a majority of our universities, the CS that is taught is not good enough. It's only good 'enough' as you go higher up to universities like Oxbridge, IC, UCL, Warwick, Edinburgh etc.
And I agree that this isn't fair.

Just having that piece of paper wont help. And in my opinion this is what a majority of the unemployed CS grads fail to understand. Go out and commit yourself to some projects, both group and personal. Get involved in events and network. Employers only want people who can prove that they're good.

Very good points have been made though, and apart from some of the exaggeration when it comes to the worth of CS degrees, everyone has valid points
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by Princepieman
I agree!!!! It annoys me how people make blanket statements about job prospects, even on a micro level between different degrees but fail to specify which job/industry. Or to even acknowledge that it comes down to much more than a degree in X from Y university.

Yep, most graduates/students are clueless about how to actually tailor CVs to specific jobs. It's a failure on the inaccurate careers advice (both at secondary school and at uni) that they've been spoonfed.


A recruiter actually gave me a tiny amount of CV feedback and I transformed it all and since then i've always gotten past the CV stage for any job I applied for.
I saw some catastrophically bad CV's while at uni. For one most people have no "&%%"# remote idea of how to professionally format them. I've gone through years of small iterations with mine. The level of indifference you get with the careers service at the various universities will likely also play a big part in this. I was told by the careers service to make a separate skills section in mine. When I a couple of weeks later got cv feedback from a woman from pwc, she told me to integrate it back with the main sections. Compressed the whole thing to one page last spring and see no point of making it two pages any time soon. Using half a page to state all your university marks is just a waste of space.
Original post by ahpadt
I saw some catastrophically bad CV's while at uni. For one most people have no "&%%"# remote idea of how to professionally format them. I've gone through years of small iterations with mine. The level of indifference you get with the careers service at the various universities will likely also play a big part in this. I was told by the careers service to make a separate skills section in mine. When I a couple of weeks later got cv feedback from a woman from pwc, she told me to integrate it back with the main sections. Compressed the whole thing to one page last spring and see no point of making it two pages any time soon. Using half a page to state all your university marks is just a waste of space.


Any cv advice then? Could you show us an example CV of what PwC would want to see?

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