CW: The interpersonal key to survival in Australian IT

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

A steady stream of IT work being outsourced to offshore developers may be a rising concern for some professionals, but according to SAP executive John Lombard, the Australian workforce has nothing to fear.

With about 40,000 staff employed in more than 50 countries worldwide, Australia seems but a drop in the ocean for business software vendor SAP. Predictably, most of SAP's development work is done in Germany, India and China. However, Australian culture and a penchant for research and development could contribute to an ongoing demand for what Lombard views as "more interesting" IT jobs to remain in-country.

"At the end of the day, some technical development work can be offshored, but we'll always have a need for human-to-human contact in Australia," said Lombard, the company's Director of Consulting in Australia and New Zealand.

"When I came out of university, I spent 5 years code cutting. Now, we're seeing graduates coming into more contact with business processes, and getting a broader perspective of business, early on in their careers," he said. "The sort of work we're seeing in Australia at the moment is all the juicy work, like business transformation."

"It's a great market from an IT perspective," Lombard said. "This is the industry to be in, and it's growing."

Current job openings at SAP certainly highlight a rise of more business-oriented positions. The company is currently on the hunt for 15 consultants in Australia, and a recent advertisement in the Australian Financial Review marks the first time it has advertised vacancies for consulting positions in Australia.

In fact, Lombard said, the company simply does not have any more of a need for the old stereotype of socially-inept technical specialists. Australian IT professionals should be equipped with a range of soft skills in order to thrive in today's job market, he said.

"I'm sure some companies view the pure technical aspect as a critical skill, but for a company like us, it's not just about the tech anymore," he said. "I don't have a job for anyone like that [with purely technical skills]."

"We want smart people who get good grades, but we also want people with good EQ [Emotional intelligence Quotient]," he said. "The most important part of our business is how we communicate with the customer."

Mandy Harris, senior Human Resources consultant of Sydney-based IT consultancy GLiNTECH, disagrees. Citing a nationwide shortage of skilled IT professionals, Harris expects a demand for technically adept staff to remain strong, especially in large, multi-departmental companies.

"There will always be a place for solid technical skills, and the skills crisis we are facing right now will ensure that this continues into the future," she said. "Large corporate companies will typically have layers between the business and the IT team, and this frees them up to focus on the technical skills over the soft skills."

Similarly, recruiter John McVicker, Managing Director of Best International Group, expects there to be no shortage of jobs for Australian IT professionals in the current market. However, noting that interpersonal ability is most vital in some IT roles, such as Business Analyst, Helpdesk Consultant or Project Manager, and less relevant in others, McVicker said that there has been a growing requirement for interpersonal skills in every IT Australian employee.

"There will always be the few handful of technically astute, though less socially inclined individuals, who by the nature of their work will always be essential," he said. "[However,] in my view, these types of people are becoming less employable in a modern business environment."

"While highly intelligent, genius-type individuals will always be in high demand, it's becoming clear that those who lack the social and communication skills, which are fast becoming a necessity in the industry, are being overlooked in favour of their offshore counterparts," he said.

While SAP's Lombard lamented a shortage of IT graduates entering the Australian industry, McVicker and Harris both criticized what could be an increasingly irrelevant tertiary education system.

"Tertiary education should, to a certain extent, prepare graduates for the actual requirements of working in the IT industry," McVicker said. "In my opinion, there has always been a 'disconnect' between what is taught in tertiary education and what is actually required in the workplace, especially in an industry that moves as quickly as IT."

"Regarding soft skills, there is nowhere near enough time, in my opinion, spent developing these basic life skills or even acknowledging their importance in tertiary education," he said.

A lack of simple life skills such as bank account management, a basic understanding of taxation, business communication, and presentation skills tops Harris' list of gripes with new graduates entering the workforce. These shortcomings are so common in recent graduates that employers have been forced to invest in graduate training programs that bridge the education-workforce divide, she said.

more

CW: Talk your way to better pay

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

IT salaries have been on a steady incline during the past year. While analysts and industry groups tout a nationwide shortage of suitably skilled candidates, a resource boom and widespread uptake of technology is driving the job market up and up.

A winter 2007 Market Trends and Salaries Report by recruitment agency Ambition Technology boasts that salaries have grown ten per cent from May 2006. But women in IT still could be losing out on the monetary perks of a candidate-short market, according to the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA).

"Women employees across the Australian economy earn just 83 cents for every dollar their male counterpart earns," explained AIIA's Chief Executive Officer, Sheryle Moon, "so clearly, women can benefit from enhanced skills to enable them to negotiate salary packages and working conditions."

To address what it views as an issue that could be restricting women's job opportunities in IT, the AIIA has launched the "Set Up for Success" workshop series, designed to enable women to overcome barriers to negotiating suitable work arrangements in a male-dominated working environment.

Presenting at the AIIA workshop is Candy Tymson, business coach and author of the book "Gender Games: Doing Business with the Opposite Sex". Tymson attributed a bulk of women's workplace disadvantages to an overly modest "feminine" approach to business.

"Women ask me often, 'I am just as good as the men, I work just as hard as they do; why do they get promoted when I don't?'," Tymson said.

"One of the things that have come out of my research is that first of all, a majority of women frankly don't know how to promote themselves. Whereas men have typically been encouraged to boast more, stand up for themselves and tell people what they're capable of, women in the past have been told not to do that, or they'll look bossy."

Citing her own research, as well as scientific studies by the Myers-Briggs Foundation and psychologist Helena Cornelius, Tymson said that women have a genetic and cultural predisposition to build rapport in business.

The focus on interpersonal relationships could also mean that women are more wary of appearing like they are boasting, or looking bossy, Tymson said, so the challenge for women is to effectively promote themselves in a way that they are comfortable with, and that still comes across as feminine.

"Brain research is clearly showing major differences in the way male and female brains work," she said. "Typically, women focus on the relationship, and men focus on the information."

"Women are in a bit of a dilemma really, as to how to behave. What I find really works - and men have told me this too - is if the women treat the males as their peers, but don't try and prove that they're better than them," she said.

Unnecessary modesty could be detrimental to women's careers and remuneration, Tymson said. Instead of running themselves down with typically feminine phrases like "what do you think", Tymson suggests women take a more active role in negotiating their workplace agreements.

"The key with salaries, whether you're male or female, is that you need to demonstrate your value. Women often fail in promoting their value to the organisation, and let the organisation know what they're achieving," she said.

"If you don't ask, you don't get. I think a lot of it [negotiation] is making sure you know what your rights are, and standing up for yourself and asking for them."

One woman who has found negotiation invaluable in her career is Valerie Henson, a freelance Linux consultant who has previously held positions at IBM, and Intel's Open Source Technology Center.

In a LinuxChix presentation at linux.conf.au this year, Henson outlined salary surveys that found that on average, women in Western countries make 70 per cent of what men do. She attributed what she called the "gender pay gap" to a failure to negotiate.

While some women choose not to negotiate their salary packages for fear of losing an amazing job, invalid assumptions of industry standards, a low estimate of self-worth, and fear of ruining relationships in the workplace, Henson said, the difference between accepting an offer of $25,000 a year and negotiating up to $30,000 a year has been calculated to result in a lifetime difference in earnings of over $300,000.

Henson recalls her first experience with negotiation, which she said was both successful and unsuccessful. After receiving an offer letter with a salary which she found "just barely avoided being insultingly low", Henson mentioned a higher salary to the hiring manager. While her negotiations did cause the hiring manager to raise the offer, Henson said that an over-eager tone of voice could have prevented her from negotiating an even better deal.

"I ended up signing an offer letter for $US10,000 more than the original offer, but $US10,000 less than what I could have gotten if I were a better negotiator," she said. "The best part is that it was my dream job and a 50% raise, and I would have taken the job for less than they offered."

Tone of voice and background research are paramount to negotiating a better salary, Henson advises. But the first, most vital step to a better salary could be simply the confidence to ask for it.

"Typically we do find male candidates, particularly at the senior end of the market, tend to be a little more aggressive in their negotiations and in asking for what they want," said Andrew Cross, Managing Director of Ambition Technology, noting that while he "has no doubt" there remain salary differences between men and women in IT, gender differences were not a focus of Ambition's salary survey.

With significant development projects occurring in the Banking and Finance sectors driving a strong demand for skills such as Java, JSP and .NET, employers desperate for additional headcount are becoming increasingly aware of the cost of re-recruitment and re-hire, and as a result are better equipped to manage counter-offers and salary increases to retain staff, he said.

more

CW: UTS tags podcasting as future teaching tool

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

In response to student demand for more flexible learning options, the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) is investigating the use of online technologies to supplement, or replace, lectures of the future.

The issue was discussed at a UTS Student Forum this week where podcasting took centre stage for its potentials in self-paced learning and remote education. Other potentially useful technologies have been said to include Second Life and social networking tools.

"There have been so many requests from students to introduce podcasting," said Shirley Alexander, the university's Vice Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President of Teaching, Learning and Equity.

The start-up costs of podcasting are estimated at hundreds of thousands of dollars, not to mention ongoing maintenance costs, and potential costs and disruptions to students already entrenched in existing teaching methods.

However, this could be a small price to pay for the University of Technology to live up to its name.

Darren Loasby, President of the UTS Students' Association, debated that the university's lack of standardized online teaching methods could be putting it behind its more technologically-enabled peers. The Queensland University of Technology and the University of Sydney were named as institutions with online education systems already in place.

"Podcasting of academic material is being implemented all around Australia and all around the globe," he said. "Students are frustrated that going to the University of Technology, Sydney doesn't give them access to similar systems."

"In 2007, it's harder than ever to be a student," he said, citing an unavailability of income support, a shortage of time, and rocketing education costs as likely causes of difficulty. "Basically, students are paying so much for education; I believe they should have some flexibility in how material is accessed."

Podcasting could alleviate scheduling difficulties for some students as podcasts are easily accessed online and can be made available on-demand. Furthermore, Loasby said, podcasts would allow students to learn at their own pace and in their own time, so students could potentially be listening to course material while at the gym or in transit.

For lecturers, Loasby expects podcasts to allow the university to track student study behaviour, and identify any systemic problems. Far from encouraging students to stop turning up to class, podcasts could drive lecturers to improve their in-class teaching methods, he said.

"If I can download material off the Internet, then there has to be a reason for me to come [to class]; and that should be face-to-face interaction with my teacher," he said.

An ongoing study conducted by Dr Maree Gosper of Macquarie University, in conjunction with Murdoch University, Newcastle University, Flinders University and the Carrick institute, has found that a majority of students report having had positive experiences with "Web-based Leaning Technologies" (WBLT), such as podcasting.

Results were obtained via an online survey that received 817 student responses. Almost 80 per cent of respondents found that WBLT made it easier for them to learn course material, and 66.7 per cent believed that it helped them achieve better results.

More than two-thirds of the survey respondents claimed they could learn from WBLT as well as they could from face-to-face lectures. Worryingly, a quarter of the students admitted to not attending face-to-face lectures, most of whom blamed their regular absences on scheduling difficulties.

However, more than half of the students using WBLT still claim to be attending lectures frequently. Gosper highlighted a motivational atmosphere, and interactions with other students and lecturers, as students' reasons for attending.

Dr Sue Hood, a lecturer in the Faculty of Education at UTS, specialises in language and literacy teacher education. From her research on the role of gesture in creating meaning in face-to-face learning, Hood warned against using podcasting as what she believes will be an incomplete substitute for existing teaching methods.

"We mean through language, we learn through language, we construct knowledge through language," she explained. "What we also know is that language changes as modes of learning change, so if we change a mode [such as moving from face-to-face lectures to podcasting], we are not only changing the mode but also the meaning and knowledge."

"If we are extracting sound from lectures and presenting it in a different context, we are impoverishing the meaning potential," she said.

While Loasby agreed that some subjects may not lend themselves to being podcasted, he said that podcasting should not be used as a simple replacement for face-to-face classes, and should, instead, be used to supplement other existing material.

"Depending on individual lecture styles, not all material is suited to being podcasted," he said. "But I think what students want is a broader range of educational options."

"I don't think that podcasts should ever replace meaningful face-to-face interaction between teachers and students," he said. "While podcasts should be supplementary to other academic material, they can become a very significant part."

Hood said that the use of podcasting as a follow-up supplement to lectures "seems a more attractive proposition". However, she raised the question of if podcasts would then be viewed as a replacement for reading material, which could then present problems in how lecture supplements would be designed.

Meanwhile, Alexander encouraged the university's staff and students to explore other, new uses of technology, rather than considering them mere replacements for existing methods.

"My concern about the way in which we have embraced technology is that we have often used it just because we can; we tend to use it as an automated replacement for existing technologies," she said.

"Let's not just automate what we are doing already; let's look at the root of the problem, which is that students are time poor."

The university has formed three working groups with the aim of formulating a future education strategy within the next 12 months. The groups have been charged with the responsibilities of researching the current and future design of curricula, investigating necessary infrastructure changes, and designing learning spaces of the future.

more

CW: Web host turns to Gmail in Microsoft boycott

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

In a move that could alienate it from a lion's share of free e-mail account holders, Canadian Web host GaltGroup Internet Services has turned its back on Windows Live Hotmail - as well as all the products, services and partners of Hotmail's parent company, Microsoft.

The boycott was said to have been sparked by e-mail delivery problems between GaltGroup and some of its customers who were also Hotmail users. Despite having sent legitimate, authenticated messages, GaltGroup found that Hotmail's spam filters had been directing its e-mails past users' inboxes, spam and trash folders, to be destroyed without any notice to either the sender or intended recipient.

"It is analogous to the letter-carrier just deciding to throw away your letters, and not even telling you or the person who sent it," said Laura Brownlee, GaltGroup's chief marketing officer.

"I don't believe they [Hotmail] specifically target us, but rather we fall into some category of 'things their filters dislike'," she said. "As we are unable to reliably deliver email to Hotmail and reliable email delivery is vital for billing, we simply cannot afford to take the risk to customer satisfaction that Hotmail presents."

GaltGroup no longer accepts registrants using Hotmail or MSN email address. Instead, it directs potential customers to sign up for Google's free e-mail service, Gmail.

According to Ashley Friedlein, chief executive officer and co-founder of U.K. e-commerce research group E-consultancy, deliverability problems extend beyond Hotmail to other large Web mail providers also.

Friedlein explained that some country domains, like Russia, are typically treated more harshly by spam filters, because of the volumes of spam known to originate from servers in those countries. Other servers are tagged as likely spammers by spam filters because of the number of e-mails they send within a certain time period.

"Deliverability is a real headache. It's not just Hotmail, but the other large webmail companies too - Yahoo!, AOL, Google, etc," he said. "If you send above a certain threshold you immediately get them all junked as 'spam'."

Meanwhile, a Hotmail spokesperson claimed there to be no evidence that its spam filters unfairly targets specific domains.

"We seldom get Australian customers raise issues due to the spam filters in Hotmail," said Kate Beddoe, head of Windows Live Services at ninemsn. "Our customers have told us that ensuring their email is spam-free is of top importance to them. Given this, we have worked to deliver increased security and safety measures for Hotmail."

"While we are aware of some instances where some legitimate emails in Australia have been blocked by the spam filtering technology in Hotmail, we have not received any complaints from ISPs," she said.

Beddoe said that Hotmail users are able to access spam-filtered e-mail by selecting the message in their junk e-mail folder and adding the sender to a "safe" list. This would cause emails from the "safe" email domain to no longer be classified as spam.

But from her experience with Hotmail users, as well as correspondence with other Web hosts, GaltGroup's Brownlee disagrees.

"Hotmail dumps the mail with no notification, and Hotmail Support reply emails give great indication that they don't even read the complaint emails that get sent to them," she said.

To sidestep issues with e-mail delivery, E-consultancy's Friedlein said that service providers have been known to throttle send speeds for different Web mail clients. Other methods may also include using multiple IP addresses from which e-mail is sent, so that if one address gets blocked, the service provider can simply switch to another address.

"Essentially, all of us legitimate e-mailers are having to copy what the spammers do," he said.

Brownlee outlined other methods mentioned in Hotmail help documents that involve either using a paid, third-party service that Hotmail uses to access a white-list, or installing proprietary Sender-ID software from Microsoft. Even with those methods in place, Hotmail makes no guarantees for the deliverability of e-mails.

Noting that GaltGroup currently is not listed on any online black-lists, Brownlee said the company would not pay for third-party services that make no guarantees for the service being employed.

Citing an opposition to closed software and enforced proprietary standards, she said GaltGroup would not submit to Microsoft's proprietary Sender-ID software.

"The already-established open standards should be sufficient to at least get us into the 'Junk' folder," she said. "I'm not willing to jeopardize our ability to transmit to email addresses outside of Hotmail or risk the security of our servers by using proprietary closed software."

"My only course of action is to stop using Microsoft products, and wherever possible refuse to lend support to those who jump on the Microsoft boat for the fringe benefits," she said.

more

CW: Check Point introduces next top security certification

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

In response to what it views as an increasing demand for security in the market, Check Point has introduced its newest top-level certification program for network architects.

The new Check Point Master Architect (CCMA) has been designed to build on the material encompassed by Check Point's three lower-level certifications: Check Point Certified Security Administrator (CCSA); Check Point Certified Security Expert (CCSE); and Check Point Certified Security Expert Plus (CCSE Plus).

Scott McKinnel, Check Point's Australia and New Zealand Country Manager, attributed the introduction of CCMA to a rising awareness of security in the market. Besides providing employers with a higher benchmark for the assessment of new hires, McKinnel expects the certification to offer career benefits to IT professionals.

"We were looking to add a an additional certification which allows IT professionals to validate their real-world security expertise and advance their careers, to ensure they keep up with a market which has a growing demand for skill specialisation along with breadth and currency of knowledge," he said.

"Customers will continue to demand higher levels of expertise from their technology partners," he said. "Although it is difficult to pinpoint an exact financial return that certified experts can expect, as this is really driven through market-forces, this certification will provide individuals with a highly desired skill set and could add a premium to their remuneration."

Although the CCMA program is vendor-specific, McKinnel said it also takes into context the industry demands, and hence requires broad security knowledge.

Besides having already obtained Check Point's lower-level certifications, candidates are required also to have five to eight years experience working within complex infrastructure and security environments, and at least five years of experience with Check Point products.

The certification consists of a two-hour, computer-based qualification examination, as well as a corresponding hands-on laboratory exercise. The qualification examination is currently offered through Pearson VUE testing centres in English, with extra time given to foreign language speakers. The laboratory examination is not yet available in Australia; however, Check Point is currently in dialogue with training partners to provide this service by the end of the year.

more

CW: Scientists cash in on fixing spreadsheet errors

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

Spreadsheets are a tool commonly used by businesses to track everything from payroll to accounts receivable. However, experts claim, there could be erroneous code, programming or formulae in spreadsheets that is costing businesses billions of dollars.

A newly-founded company in the U.S. has developed technology to reduce mistakes in spreadsheets, and potentially rake in some profits in the process. Dubbed "Goal-directed Debugging of Spreadsheets" -- "GoalDebug" for short - the technology aims to provide non-specialist programmers with the means to detect and correct programming mistakes simply by selecting from a shortlist of change suggestions.

In the U.S. alone, it has been estimated that about 100 million spreadsheets are created annually, which in turn might be managed by up to 60 million users. As most of these end-users tend to be non-technical staff with limited computer software programming knowledge, spreadsheets are notoriously prone to errors, warned Martin Erwig, an associate professor of computer science at Oregon State University in the U.S., and one of the creators of GoalDebug.

"Most users of spreadsheets are overconfident, they believe that the data is correct," he said. "But it has been observed that up to 90 percent of the spreadsheets being used have non-trivial errors in them. In fact, one auditor has said he never inspected a single spreadsheet during his entire career that was completely accurate."

"Spreadsheet debugging problems are huge; we believe there will be a significant demand for these products -- a large market," Erwig said. "We can't provide a dollar figure at this time, but our company is quite optimistic about this product."

The impact of spreadsheet errors could range from a few dollars misplaced in a personal travel budget, to delayed paychecks, to significant financial misrepresentations of budgets and stocks, which could affect many people, Erwig said.

For GoalDebug to correct a spreadsheet, it requires the user to first identify a suspicious-looking result, and plug in a more accurate figure. By identifying common errors made by humans, the program then suggests several programming mistakes that might have created the error, and what the correct approach might be.

Citing a recent study that found that software engineers spend up to 80 percent of their time testing and debugging programs, Erwig expects GoalDebug to appeal to non-technical spreadsheet users as it allows them to identify and repair errors by looking at a short list of possible problems instead of combing through hundreds or thousands of cells.

GoalDebug will be taken to market through a spin-off company called i5Logic, which was founded by Erwig and two colleagues last year. The current research prototype has been designed to work with Microsoft Excel; however, Erwig expects the program's underlying analysis techniques to apply to other spreadsheet systems as well.

more