Topping up the perl skills pool

Hi all,

This is a recurring subject that some of us on london.pm and use.perl
have been covering - Perl employers in the UK and especially London
seem to have followed the trend of not investing in the skills they
need, leading to a glut of 'senior perl' roles and them complain about
it being hard to recruit decent Perl people.

Of course this is a general thing accross the industry - employers
have always complained that they don't have a glut of highly skilled
young fresh graduates with years of commercial experience in the
newest technologies, and that something needs to be done (by somebody
else).

I think we all know that the IT industry is notorious for not thinking
long term, and especially  wanting something for nothing when it comes
to recruiting the people they need - rather than train a junior, go to
universities and select bright graduates, or take on undergraduate
placements, most expect people to pay their way through uni, share a
grotty house with half a dozen other equally broke graduates while
they work for a less than you'd get as a supervisor in starbucks in a
rare junior role, while teaching themselves what they need to know for
a few years before they're considered worthy of a job.

Anyway... after some repeated discussion and coming to the conclusion
that employers won't be contributing to the skills pool any time
soon.. a couple of us started bouncing around more constructive ideas
and JFDI :
http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm/Week-of-Mon-20070212/006512.html

Cheers,

A.

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