If you had teenage children, would you advise them to choose a career in IT? I told mine to avoid it.

1. I can't remember a time when employers were not claiming there is a skills shortage. Thing is, I can't remember once reading about an employer who added 'but that's not a problem because we value our current IT staff and will simply train them up'.

2. When I started working in IT the work was innovative and rewarding. There never really was job security, but there were more jobs out there in the UK because we did not have off-shoring which undercut salaries and significantly reduced the number of IT posts in the country. The trade-off for this has been ethics, standards etc. Offshoring jobs rips the heart of of a local economy so that the few at the top get bigger bonuses or dividends while committed IT workers get the chop.

3. Recruitment can be a horrible experience. So many times I have encountered HR staff who simply do not understand the post they are supposed to be filling. For example, on one occasion when trying to recruit a senior web developer HR graded they job ridiculously low salary and decided that 'strong keyboad skills' were the most important skill required. They seemed unwilling to listen to what the IT dept told them, and unable to understand the real technical skills requied for such a role. Another classic HR mistake I see over and over is when they advertise jobs and state that it is essential for the candidate to have 4-5 years of experience with a particular technology, blissfully ignorant of the fact that the technology in question has only been around for 1-2 years. So off they go, dismissing able candidates who do not meet the impossible criteria that HR imposed for a role. (And presumably telling senior management that there is a skills shortage!)

I could go on and on. The real point is that those claiming there has been permanent skills shortage over the last few decades are largely responsible for it, with education taking the rest of the blame.