The Weekly Round-Up: 13.06.08

The Round-Up would like to assure you that this week's column is an iPhone-free zone. It realises that just about every news organisation in the world has been dedicating an unfeasible amount of column inches - or pixels if you like your news online - to the 3G iPhone launch this week.

iPhone this, iPhone that, the iPhone will rid the world of all known diseases and turn you into a lithe, sexual athlete. iPhone schmi-phone. Enough of the iPhone. Admittedly, with an iPhone-to-other-word ratio of roughly 1:10 just in these opening two paragraphs it's hardly an auspicious start but that's your lot. The Round-Up will not mention it again, no matter how much it wants to (OK, apart from here).

On to loftier matters.

Instead, let's take a moment to take stock of the state the technology sector is in. No, come on, it'll be fun.

And the picture is - happy, happy, joy, joy all the way. "Where's your evidence?" you may ask. It’s a good question, your honour, the defence presents exhibit one.

Exhibit one: The young tech manager

If you're a young tech manager, then chances are you're well-balanced, hard-working, loyal and above all have a strong ethical nature. Fact.

This is a far cry from reports in recent years that you're actually self-absorbed, disloyal and impatient - well, maybe the project managers. That may be the perception but quite frankly such tittle-tattle is beneath you.

Research by the Chartered Management Institute, which quizzed 826 'Generation Y' managers aged under 35 found many appear to be driven by ethics and a sense of purpose. Jaw-jutting heroes of the server room is a phrase they didn't use but should have.

Almost two-thirds of those questioned said they had been in their positions for more than three years. Admittedly, a weasely seven per cent claimed there was little reason to be "excessively loyal" to a company but don't let that small misrepresentative sample deceive you. By and large you are wonderful.

Fourteen per cent of young managers said they wouldn't quit their posts even if they won the lottery. The Round-Up assumes this was a reference to the jackpot and not a £10 windfall.

More than 85 per cent said they wanted to work for a company that does something they believe in, while 62 per cent said it was essential that their organisations had "strong values".

Yes, this inspiring yet humble generation of supermen and women need money to pay the mortgage and buy food, clothes and 3G-converged communications devices from fruit-themed companies based just south of San Francisco but it's just not important. Only a quarter said money is what motivated them.

Meanwhile, a strong-limbed, barrel-chested 85 per cent said that the challenge of work was enough for them, just honest people doing an honest day's toil.

It brings a tear to your eye and a lump to your throat, doesn't it? You can read more inspiring statistics here, if you want the Round-Up's advice, maybe put some Elgar on when you do so, just to set the mood.

However, as serendipity would have it, these legions of selfless souls are getting repaid in a material sense as well as on a spiritual level...

Exhibit two: Money

Salaries in the IT sector are rising faster than at any time during the past three years. Still got the Elgar playing? Good.

According to the Celre Computer Staff Salary Survey, basic IT pay has risen by 4.8 per cent in the year to May 2008.

Ha! The IT worker laughs in the face of the rate of bespectacled, jowly face inflation. (The Round-Up had no good reason to anthropomorphise a fiscal rate other than to make it seem scary and its former bespectacled, jowly history teacher was the scariest thing ever.)

Meanwhile, the average bonuses for IT managers stand at 15.3 per cent of salary, not that they need it, given their moral calibre and ethical steadfastness. Still every little helps if you happen to be considering storage capacity and expensive talk plans for shiny touchscreen phones.

Celre surveyed 66,843 IT and computer staff at 572 workplaces. All of them fine, morally upstanding citizens. On a related note....

Exhibit three: Rehabilitation of the criminal fraternity

Once upon a time your average criminal would rather nick your server than patch it. These days, the industry is on the verge of a massive rehabilitation programme with the UK's prison service.

Who would have thought technology would be the answer to prison overcrowding? Not the Round-Up but it's been wrong before and it'll be wrong many, many times again.

Now, incarcerated ne'er-do-wells are being drawn to the moral beacons toiling in IT like moths to a naked flame, or for a more accurate simile, like shellsuited chavs to an expensive car stereo.

Inmates at London's largest prison, HMP Wandsworth, are getting the chance to train for a career in IT.

To address the skills shortfall, roughly 61,000 properly qualified employees in the UK alone, the jails are being emptied and newly qualified staff will soon be flooding into server rooms everywhere.

You've got no problem with these people getting access to your server room or expensive laptops have you? Course not? If you're a young tech manager your strong ethical nature will rub off on them and make them a fitter, happier more-rounded person. Damn it.

The company behind the scheme estimates demand for data and network cabling installers outstrips supply by at least 20 per cent and there is a shortfall of qualified workers.

The prison already offers various training options to prisoners, including industrial cleaning, bricklaying, carpentry, tailoring, electrical, painting and decorating and plumbing - along with educational services such as creative writing, drama, English, IT, maths, social and life skills and yoga.

Yes, yoga. Stop sniggering.

So soon new unwritten rules of prison life will be added to 'Don’t grass no one', such as 'You can cheat on your networking certification exams but you're only cheating yourself'.

Anyway, on the subject of daylight robbery, you may be responsible for costing UK plc a tidy sum of money simply by reading this Round-Up during working hours.

Yes, you...

Exhibit four: Our workplace mores

The UK economy is losing billions through workers surfing the web when they're supposed to be working. About £10bn to be exact.

At first this may seem like a lot of money. Don't worry, it isn't.

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has found UK workers spend an average of 90 minutes per week online on non-work-related tasks. Around 60 per cent of employers think workers access the internet for personal use outside their lunchtime and formal breaks.

Employers estimate 4.4 per cent of working time is lost this way - the equivalent to 10 days lost per year at a cost of £939 per employee.

Someone with a calculator at the CBI added this up to get the nationwide figure then looked at the result and passed out. About £10bn it transpires.

But actually, all things considered, it's OK. The CBI also suggested that while some companies have disciplined staff and others have draconian policies in place, as long as the work gets done, why worry about a few moments here and there spent on Facebook or the BBC. Personal web use can boost productivity and morale and that, dear reader, can only be a good thing...

So to summarise.

The next generation of young tech managers are the kind of people your parents would be delighted for you to marry. They're honest, hard-working souls with more honour than a skip load of samurai warriors. What's more they're loaded.

They laugh in the face of global recession and everyone wants them around, even if they just want to play with their snazzy new smart phones. In addition to shoring up the knowledge economy they're also rehabilitating former criminals and so what if they spend a few minutes on social networking sites, they have thousands of entries in their friends lists.

Everything is fine, just fine.

So what else happened this week? OK, Apple launched the 3G iPhone. Sorry. And here are some pictures and a caption competition and some stroky-beard thinking and even more information on what it means if you want to give it to your employees and some terrible risks associated with the super sexy phone.

In other news. Well, there wasn’t any. It was Elgar and iPhone all the way.