IT professionals better off in SA

[w1z4rd]

SA may be a safe haven for a short time, but it will never be the best place for IT. Apart from suk salaries, the technologies are different. SA is far more small scale than the UK, utilising LINUX instead of UNIX, and Open source or OTC instead of proprietary software. If you want to be at the forefront, you just can't be here.

Dude.. you know nothing about the industry. Stop trolling.

Seriously.. SA servers are mostly linux with a splash of BSD, Solaris and such. What company would run on Unix.. a currently dead OS (unless you count solaris as dev)?

From what I have seen is the local corporate market is mostly dominated by Microsoft, with linux being most web facing servers.

Unix... lol.. sure.. lets run OS2 and apple mac servers while we are at it?

You dont really work on big networks do you? You can be honest

 

[Sackboy]

+1000
I have had lengthy and at times rather heated conversations with former indian colleagues of mine in the UK about how innovative South African's and companies in South Africa are.

I think you and Vodacom3g are now changing the topic to which location is the more innovative in the IT field. By definition, if you have less resources you HAVE to innovate to compete.

This country has been catching up with the Western world in some areas, and the transfer of skills has largely been responsible. SAP is a good example, ORACLE didn't have much of a presence in the country until recently, and I don't recall seeing much SYBASE around. Inward investment has increased demand too.

When I looked some years ago, I struggled to find any UNIX appointments. It was all small scale stuff on PC's, Microsoft VB, COBOL (outdated) and even PASCAL (!). In fact SA COBOL experts were sought after because Europe had none, it was considered LEGACY. Local salaries were missing zeros like you would miss buttons!

I know about SAP. The big internationals brought it in (UNILEVER was one). It certainly never hit these shores early.

If you recall the switch-over from 5 1/4 inch disks to 3 1/2 'stiffies'. Now that was more than a year behind the rest of the world. There has been a speed-up, I won't deny it, but SA is lagging behind still and given the choice, SA would not be No. 1 choice for an IT PRO.

If you want to sacrifice cold weather for sun and sea, then by all means. If you want to come back and be able to afford a nice house, then go overseas.

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

@Sackboy: what is your current position in IT today?

Perhaps from your perspective things our down - I do not believe that all fields in SA are experiencing happy times.

In my industry, the mobile backend (WASP), ITs booming here. We are having so much interest from international clients and they cannot believe how cost effect and efficient we can get things done. This has nothing to do with salaries. I earn more than a Indian developer (and if I where a senior one, I would earn more than a US senior developer).

FYI: Amazon ECS was developed in Cape Town. Now that is one for SA.

And where in the world is Shuttleworth, well he runs an investment company (his own) and being placed in London is a strategic move but he originaly had his software company in South Africa (once again Cape Town).

 

[Sackboy]

Dude.. you know nothing about the industry. Stop trolling.

Seriously.. SA servers are mostly linux with a splash of BSD, Solaris and such. What company would run on Unix.. a currently dead OS (unless you count solaris as dev)?

From what I have seen is the local corporate market is mostly dominated by Microsoft, with linux being most web facing servers.

Unix... lol.. sure.. lets run OS2 and apple mac servers while we are at it?

You dont really work on big networks do you? You can be honest

Thanks for backing my point. When you've been involved in projects worth R96,000,000 in one of the worlds largest companies of it's type, then come back and debate data-centre-man. Tell us more about your work in the Eastern Cape data centre.

 

[Sackboy]

@Sackboy: what is your current position in IT today?

Perhaps from your perspective things our down - I do not believe that all fields in SA are experiencing happy times.

In my industry, the mobile backend (WASP), ITs booming here. We are having so much interest from international clients and they cannot believe how cost effect and efficient we can get things done. This has nothing to do with salaries. I earn more than a Indian developer (and if I where a senior one, I would earn more than a US senior developer).

FYI: Amazon ECS was developed in Cape Town. Now that is one for SA.

And where in the world is Shuttleworth, well he runs an investment company (his own) and being placed in London is a strategic move but he originaly had his software company in South Africa (once again Cape Town).

Let's find out why Shuttleworth has put his business in London. I don't want to get personal about positions etc. Suffice to say I have enough background to have an opinion.

 

[w1z4rd]

Thanks for backing my point. When you've been involved in projects worth R96,000,000 in one of the worlds largest companies of it's type, then come back and debate data-centre-man. Tell us more about your work in the Eastern Cape data centre.

If you had a point to debate I would, but anyone with half a brain cell here knows the value of your working experience... or lack of it.

 

[Sackboy]

@Sackboy: what is your current position in IT today?

Perhaps from your perspective things our down - I do not believe that all fields in SA are experiencing happy times.

In my industry, the mobile backend (WASP), ITs booming here. We are having so much interest from international clients and they cannot believe how cost effect and efficient we can get things done. This has nothing to do with salaries. I earn more than a Indian developer (and if I where a senior one, I would earn more than a US senior developer).

FYI: Amazon ECS was developed in Cape Town. Now that is one for SA.

I thought everyone earned more than an Indian developer!
The market in SA is different. The middle class is just finding it's feet and there's some money in mobile technology because it's a small status symbol. You can see this with your domestic, if you have one. She's probably very proud of her cellphone and much of her disposable income goes into airtime. Of course a smaller economy is more efficient. It's a bit like the Russian programmer example. Ask yourself why the Russians are so good at it. They had such old PCs with such confined memory that they HAD to use excellent programming techniques. Now we regard them as being at the top of the game.

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

Let's find out why Shuttleworth has put his business in London. I don't want to get personal about positions etc. Suffice to say I have enough background to have an opinion.

It was a strategic move. Same as why companies delist on emerging markets stock exchange to be listed in London. This thread is about IT jobs and not investment / venture capital companies. Ironicaly he still employes a lot of South Africans in Cape Town / Stellenbosch through contracts for UBUNTU and his FREEDOM TOASTER.

And i am aware of many IT companies in SA who are located overseas. This is for tax purposes and nothing else. Yet they still keep their development teams in sunny SA.

 

[vodacom3g]

When I looked some years ago, I struggled to find any UNIX appointments. It was all small scale stuff on PC's, Microsoft VB, COBOL (outdated) and even PASCAL (!). In fact SA COBOL experts were sought after because Europe had none, it was considered LEGACY. Local salaries were missing zeros like you would miss buttons!

Strange. In a previous life I had a software company that supplied high-end Network Management Systems to the larger corporates in South Africa, including all the telcos (VC, MTN, Telkom, MWEB, etc.), the insurance (Mutual, SL, Norwich, Santam, Sanlam, etc.) and banking (the big 4) corporates. Plus a bunch of others, pretty much the Fortune X of SA.

So I got to know their IT shops quite well.

All these guys ran (and still run) large Unix implementations, mostly on Sun, HP and IBM. Some (like Nedbank) made a strategic decision to run MS, but the others all put their critical systems on Unix. Not Linux.

Recently though (last few years) Linux made big inroads, often due to IBM's drive.

 

[Sackboy]

It was a strategic move. Same as why companies delist on emerging markets stock exchange to be listed in London. This thread is about IT jobs and not investment / venture capital companies. Ironicaly he still employes a lot of South Africans in Cape Town / Stellenbosch through contracts for UBUNTU and his FREEDOM TOASTER.

And i am aware of many IT companies in SA who are located overseas. This is for tax purposes and nothing else. Yet they still keep their development teams in sunny SA.

Shuttleworth is an IT professional, not so? So he has picked the best place for his company and it wasn't SA. We can try and deduce why or just accept that a BILLIONAIRE made the best choice. He was also regarded as a local hero for his exploits and space venture etc, so he's not going to ignore his home country is he. If he employs people in Cape Town, then good for him. No doubt this was "strategic" as well. Incidentally, I wouldn't regard the FREEDOM TOASTER thing to be well run either. They're always broken or not updated. But that's a small point.

 

[w1z4rd]

Im feeling skeptikal.

 

[Sackboy]

Strange. In a previous life I had a software company that supplied high-end Network Management Systems to the larger corporates in South Africa, including all the telcos (VC, MTN, Telkom, MWEB, etc.), the insurance (Mutual, SL, Norwich, Santam, Sanlam, etc.) and banking (the big 4) corporates. Plus a bunch of others, pretty much the Fortune X of SA.

So I got to know their IT shops quite well.

All these guys ran (and still run) large Unix implementations, mostly on Sun, HP and IBM. Some (like Nedbank) made a strategic decision to run MS, but the others all put their critical systems on Unix. Not Linux.

Recently though (last few years) Linux made big inroads, often due to IBM's drive.

I'd be interested to know when those UNIX systems were installed, but you're arguing against W1z4rd who claims Linux is dominant. Also, what you call the Fortune X of SA is small beer in comparison to the rest of the developed world. Where a blue chip in London would scoop up a few HP-UX servers at R640,000 each (?) for use on ONE APPLICATION + with another few thrown in for good measure (testing, disaster recovery etc) they would probably be the PRIMARY system in SA. I also know the risks of using MS for critical systems. Not advisable!

 

[vodacom3g]

I'd be interested to know when those UNIX systems were installed, but you're arguing against W1z4rd who claims Linux is dominant. Also, what you call the Fortune X of SA is small beer in comparison to the rest of the developed world. Where a blue chip in London would scoop up a few HP-UX servers at R640,000 each (?) for use on ONE APPLICATION + with another few thrown in for good measure (testing, disaster recovery etc) they would probably be the PRIMARY system in SA. I also know the risks of using MS for critical systems. Not advisable!

Why are you trying to pass your statements off to wiz to defend? Surely you can back your own statements or at least answer questions put to you. Like how come ~90% of the world's super computers run on a 'poor man's (your words) OS.

In any case, I think you seriously underestimate SA corporates. R600K for a server is not exactly a big system. If you deem a company that spends X times 640K on a server as big, you really should meet the local corporates. They're positively HUGE by your definition.

The last few projects I've been involved in all counted the hardware components at a few bar, typically around R6M to R8M. For a single application. And on Unix, nogal. In South Africa, no less.

Which SA corporates have you worked for BTW, in what capacity?

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

Shuttleworth is an IT professional, not so? So he has picked the best place for his company and it wasn't SA. We can try and deduce why or just accept that a BILLIONAIRE made the best choice. He was also regarded as a local hero for his exploits and space venture etc, so he's not going to ignore his home country is he. If he employs people in Cape Town, then good for him. No doubt this was "strategic" as well. Incidentally, I wouldn't regard the FREEDOM TOASTER thing to be well run either. They're always broken or not updated. But that's a small point.

Shuttleworth is a Venture Capitalist - he is not longer a developer. Before his success he was the Debian Apache maintainer.

The FREEDOM TOASTER II is being developed in Stellenbosch and has revolutionary features - know the company and their a client of ours. The current version was not developed by them.

But then again I work in a field of IT that is booming and the best place in the world to be is currently in Cape Town for it. Your field of expertise might be in the dumps and one of those "I lost my job to India".

 

[noxibox]

Also, what you call the Fortune X of SA is small beer in comparison to the rest of the developed world.

Hence the innovation. Being advanced is not about throwing money at the problem.

Where a blue chip in London would scoop up a few HP-UX servers at R640,000 each (?) for use on ONE APPLICATION + with another few thrown in for good measure (testing, disaster recovery etc) they would probably be the PRIMARY system in SA.

You do sound like you have no clue what you are talking about.

 

[kefrens]

plz stop it with the ad hominem, youll drain the discussion of its value.

 

[kefrens]

.

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

Where can I do graphics coding here, for decent pay? Im not aware of any local companies developing special effects software.

Well you wont get it at EA either - their retrenching.

 

[Sackboy]

Hence the innovation. Being advanced is not about throwing money at the problem.


You do sound like you have no clue what you are talking about.

Let's explore why you think so and put you straight. Without knowing where we disagree, I can't debate with you (and the ad hominaria ).

 

[Sackboy]

Why are you trying to pass your statements off to wiz to defend? Surely you can back your own statements or at least answer questions put to you. Like how come ~90% of the world's super computers run on a 'poor man's (your words) OS.

In any case, I think you seriously underestimate SA corporates. R600K for a server is not exactly a big system. If you deem a company that spends X times 640K on a server as big, you really should meet the local corporates. They're positively HUGE by your definition.

The last few projects I've been involved in all counted the hardware components at a few bar, typically around R6M to R8M. For a single application. And on Unix, nogal. In South Africa, no less.

Which SA corporates have you worked for BTW, in what capacity?

I was trying to bring him into a reasonable debate and you two disagree on a fundamental. He's run away now so that's academic. I've already stated my position on Linux and we appear to agree.
No you didn't understand my point. They view buying a R600K system for ONE APP in the same light as replacing a few desktop PC's. Of course, the checks and balances are different. As you see, the scale is different. I handled the biggest, fastest computer installation in the whole of Europe at one time. Admittedly I wasn't root though. I don't like to boast, but given I appear to be arguing with children (not you), it seems to be called for.