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I've never understood why with IT jobs in the UK that they're all centred around London. Especially when they then offshore bits of the company to India or East
by 6c696e7578 7y ago
I've never understood why with IT jobs in the UK that they're all centred around London. Especially when they then offshore bits of the company to India or Eastern/Southern Europe requiring contracted staff to use a VPN.
It seems companies want staff onsite in London, purely for the enjoyment of making people commute there. This does no good for the environment other than help to conversion of fossil fuel into co².
If people are to be managed in things like "sprints" or other ticket monitoring/work managing systems then there's no reason why people can't work from home so long as they're happy to communicate on normal daily/weekly management calls.
Bring on telecommuting, it works for and helps everyone.
- laputan_machine 7y agoThere's a push to make less expensive northern cities (Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool) appealing for tech. London still has (and will do for the foreseeable future) the lion's share, but there plenty of good tech jobs up north.
- ck425 7y agoSame with the Scottish central belt. There are plenty of good jobs up here. Part of the reason for the London centricness is that relatively few people realise just how many good jobs there are outside of London.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoAll the jobs are a few clicks away from being found. London probably offers quite a few amenities that people want, even though they hate many aspects of it. One of the crucial amenities a big city provides is security that if you lose an income stream, you will be able to get another easily. How much are people willing to pay for that?
- ck425 7y agoIf you're a software engineer that security exists in every major city. Plus the cost of living to salary ratio is so much better that it's far easier to save an emergency fund.
- 6c696e7578 7y agoWhy though, I don't see what the appeal is with London. There's bits in the Thames Valley, but not much.
- icebraining 7y ago> Especially when they then offshore bits of the company to India or Eastern/Southern Europe requiring contracted staff to use a VPN. But that's the point, isn't it? If you're giving up on locality, you might as well hire someone cheap. The fact that they can commute into the office is one of the things keeping the salaries of UK workers higher. In other words, be careful with what you wish for, you just might get it.
- 6c696e7578 7y agoOffshore does not equal cheaper. Often what you think you save in salary, you spend in communication overheads.
- balfirevic 7y agoWhat communication overhead, if you've already said you are in favor of telecommuting?
- Wildgoose 7y agoCommunicating across differences in language, culture and just simple local knowledge - in other words, considerable overhead.
- balfirevic 7y agoTrue for offshoring to (for example) India, but almost negligible for offshoring to many parts of Europe.
- imtringued 7y agoThere is still an accountability problem. It's very common for Indian IT contractors to tell you that they assign their best employees to your project and then in reality fill the seat with some intern or trainee that hasn't even finished his first project.
- esotericn 7y agoOr it could just be that most people aren't in your sort of 'maximise house size' game. I've done remote work, and you know what? I'd rather live in a small flat in London than have a big old house in the North because everything is in London. It's _the_ city in the UK. If that ever changes (I sincerely doubt it will primarily because essentially all of the wealth is there) it'll probably take multiple generations.