Computer Industry Recruitment Failures 4. Location
An odd question. Oh, odd it may be, but do bear with me. Cast light into some corners of the industry.
Is there a problem with computer professionals getting to work? In some industries, there is. The construction industry is only partially professional, but the current setup, in England, relies heavily on transport. The vast quantity of materials is not dug from the nearest quarry, nor fired in a nearby factory. Not only are the materials carried by road, but sometimes imported. The diggers and bricklayer personnel too, are carried by road. So the planning and administration levels of the industry also need to be able to move, and at least communicate, over vast distances. Supplying and hiring locally is almost never a consideration.
The facts are not fully known to me, but I suspect that computer people must travel for marketing purpose, but not for ground level work. Indeed, their industry is the root of hopes for the near‐future, when the power runs out. Computer people already do a vast amount of work online. They talk using text messages and video telephones. I understand the industry already has a high level of home working? And the raw output, computer code, is measurable. This is unlike, for example, the work of an office manager, whose emails and meetings would be near‐unquantifiable if working from home (and so unmanageable). Not only that, but computing can cross borders. Oh, yes, there are cultural issues. But a nurse… if you can patch a wound in Liverpool you can patch a wound in Ghana. And if you can write Java in Brussels, you can write in Java in Los Angeles. [later note: this discussion could have some extra angles, given the 2021 virus curfews, and subsequent changes to some work patterns R.C.]
This leads to two thoughts. First, with very few limits on physical logistics, the perception of a computing recruitment shortfall must be nationwide. Talking of nations, as wide as Great Britain—not much reason why a firm in Worcester could not take on an employee from Glasgow. Unless there are other reasons… And second, the problem as spoken is startling. England has no wild spaces left (I have no good statistics on this, but 2013 maps suggest the country has less then 5% sparse population), and the country is populated with 53 million people. It may be the world’s largest suburb, with unemployment in some places running at an official one in ten. And these computing industry agonists are claiming they can’t find a programmer.
Onwards, Next