The Register has just published my piece on why IT departments in Britain employ so many staff from outside Britain (and likewise in the US).
There’s a lively debate already underway in the comments, but rather than immigration, interviewees blame a combination of schools’ lack of interest in coding – now being changed by schemes like Raspberry Pi’s Code Club – and a sense that software engineering isn’t a top-draw job, unlike respectable professions such as, er, investment banking.
According to Eben Upton, co-founder of Raspberry Pi:
It does get bandied about as a theory that an engineer is the guy who comes to fix your central heating, and that nice middle-class people don’t aspire for their kids to become [computer] engineers.
Should say he adds that lack of exposure to programming is the bigger problem – hence Code Club. The full article is here.
The Register has also just published the Geek’s Guide to Britain, a compendium of its series, which includes three of my articles on Goonhilly, Marconi on the Lizard and the Spaceguard Centre. It’s a beautifully-produced book, available here.
Update: Computer Weekly has just published a further article by me, based on document released by Privacy International from its tribunal case against the security and intelligence agencies, on what bulk personal datasets MI5 and MI6 use.