News...
11. April 2005. MIS Australia Magazine: Patrick Gray
The workers are migrating...
Popular hype screams we're losing our best and brightest but what about the influx of talented recruits arriving each year? Patrick Gray debunks the myth of the brain drain.
He's skilled, experienced, young and hard working. If you're the CIO of a large organisation, you want him on your team. The cream of the crop, he holds two degrees and has four years' experience in the field of security programming. But you can't hire him.
Twenty-five-year-old Nathan Macrides is one of the thousands of skilled Australians working overseas for top dollar. Based in London, the young Macrides is earning as much as the CIO of a mid-size company in Australia. While MIS can't disclose the figure, we assure you it's enough to make this journalist weep, sob and bang his fists on a table in despair.
Ask anyone about the phenomenon that's been dubbed the 'brain drain' and they'll tell you: skilled Aussies are flocking to the UK and US by the planeload. They're paid in stronger currency, taxed less aggressively and their career prospects are brighter. We're losing our top talent, and there's nothing we can do about it. It's an exodus that Australian CIOs are powerless to counter.
However, recent research has cast a shadow over Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data that shows increases in the number of skilled Australians leaving. If anything, says Monash University's Dr Bob Birrell, Australia is experiencing a brain gain.
Birrell is the director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Melbourne's Monash University. In a report released late last year, Birrell and his team describe a flaw in the way the ABS collected its information.
Information underload
Anyone who's travelled overseas from Australia has filled in a departure slip. The green piece of card asks what a traveller does for a living, why they're leaving and for how long. By using this information, the ABS extrapolates theories on the movement of our skilled workers.
But Birrell says there's a flaw in the ABS's method: A large number of people who indicate they are leaving Australia permanently actually return. In the case of professionals, the return rate is around 18 per cent.
Even then, most agree it's hard to know if the Australians departing permanently are our top talent. They don't attach their CV to the green slip when they leave Australia.
Birrell's dissection of ABS data proves one thing: gathering statistics on the brain drain, or gain for that matter, is an intensely difficult task.
For this reason, the Australian government established a Senate committee to study the brain drain. Its findings, handed down on 8 March, reveal that according to current estimates, at least three-quarters of a million Australians are living overseas permanently or long-term.
"Many of these expatriate Australians are young, well-educated, highly skilled, and keen to see the world and to make the most of the opportunities presented to them," the Senate committee report says. But the committee's report is adamant that Australia is in fact a beneficiary of migration patterns. Smart people are flocking to the land of milk and honey. "The committee learnt during its inquiry that Australia actually experiences a net 'brain gain' of skilled workers."
The report, chaired by Senator Nick Bolkus, found the reasons people travel vary from better employment opportunities abroad, lifestyle changes and even a post-divorce change of scene. It also found the net inflow of skilled workers in 2002-03 was 36,260 people. The overall balance of movement of skilled persons, the report concluded, remains in Australia's favour.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics is non-committal. "A comparison of the overall numbers of immigrants and emigrants does not take into account differences in labour force participation, field of qualifications, specialisation, talent and experience," a 2001 ABS report says.
But, according to the ABS, the debate isn't that important due to the make-up of Australia's professional workforce. "The broad occupational composition of the Australian workforce is likely to be barely altered as a result.
Immigrating and emigrating managers and administrators, and professionals during 1999-2000 both represented around 1 per cent of the 2.2 million people employed in these occupations in Australia in August 1999."
In the eye of the beholder
Attracted to the Australian lifestyle, or maybe just the weather, skilled migrants are moving to Australian cities in search of a better life and brighter prospects. One such migrant is Neal Wise, a successful IT security consultant, formerly employed by Dimension Data, who is setting up his own security practice.
He's a few years older than Macrides, but his expertise runs along similar lines. Both men say the same thing: opportunities in their current places of residence are far better.
For Macrides, that means London, and for Wise, an American, that means Melbourne. "I get to do things here that I would never get to do in the US," says Wise.
"There are more opportunities here, especially in London," says Macrides.
Career prospects, it seems, are in the eye of the beholder.
Macrides argues the reasons behind his move to London have more to do with Australian business culture than the size of the market. Applying for a project manager's position - his job in London - would be met with laughter in Australia. "You're too young to be a manager," Australian CIOs would say.
But in London, global financial institutions pay the Melbournite top-dollar to oversee mission-critical security projects. "Those roles come up when you're a bit older in Australia," Macrides says.
The road to a plum management job in the UK is a lot smoother, he says, and executive recruitment specialists agree. Adam Bate, of executive search and recruitment company TITAN, says Australian managers and executives are appealing hires for companies in the United States.
"People are promoted out of roles in Australia to fill head or regional office roles in the US, Asia and Europe," Bate says. "If there is a cost to Australia it's through losing our top talent through promotion offshore."
Because most technology companies in Australia are owned by offshore companies, many Australian managers are familiar with US "style, work ethic and culture," as well as technical knowledge such as the American tax reporting regime. Bate says managers migrate to Sydney from other Australian capital cities, and then travel on to the US, Asia and Europe.
Another body shopper, Beth Jackson, partner at McLean Fearnett Jackson, agrees with Bate. "Australians are well regarded for their ability to work in with differing cultures without too much fuss, especially in technology and project management," she says. "That said, many top talents remain overseas in other companies when they are promoted to a certain level, and are unable to return to Australia in an equivalent role.
A nice surprise
Neal Wise, who first came to Australia in 1998 chasing a girl he later married, says Australia's smaller market is a pro, not a con. "Australia is a much smaller market, and there are things that I get to do here that I would never get to do in the US," he says. "There would be a lot more competition, a lot more people wanting to do this sort of work."
Wise is a true geek. The old Apple Computer logo - the rainbow-coloured apple - is tattooed on his right bicep. He had it etched into his skin to celebrate the release of the company's system 7 operating system software. But he's also a very capable geek with good communications skills, a combination that has seen him excel in Australia's smaller market.
He's originally from Arkansas, not that you can tell from hearing him speak. ("I worked out pretty young that if you have a southern accent people think you're stupid," Wise says.) He'd already been forced to move, within the US, in search of work. Eventually, he says, he would have wound up in California because that's where the work is.
His career path would have consisted of the steady progression of a system administrator's career. Instead, he is at the cutting edge in Australia, working with financial institutions that trust his expertise. He, and his fellow expatriates, also love the Aussie way of life. "I know heaps of Americans here," he says. "They've joined the football and cricket clubs. They're trying to 'ozify' themselves."
If you listen to the Australian Senate, there's a brain gain; Birrel agrees, and the ABS says it doesn't matter. If you listen to Wise, Australia is a career dreamland, but Macrides says it is not.
Reassuringly, the wheels haven't fallen off the Australian economy, and technology projects are rolling on; some more successfully than others. While definitive figures are elusive, it's reassuring to know there is no exodus of skilled labour from Australia.
