Too many office managers, too few computer scientists: Freelancer’s Matt Barrie pinpoints our start-ups’ problems
February 1, 2014 Leave a comment
Michael Bailey Deputy editor
Too many office managers, too few computer scientists: Freelancer’s Matt Barrie pinpoints our start-ups’ problems
Published 28 January 2014 10:34, Updated 29 January 2014 09:29
Matt Barrie: searching hard for computer science graduates Louis Douvis
Australia’s relatively low number of graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, as well as its habit of shunning failed entrepreneurs, are two factors harming our start-up ecosystem according to Freelancer.com founder Matt Barrie.
“We are trying to hire computer science graduates by the metric tonne [but] when we place a job ad, we get perhaps one or two applicants per day,” Barrie said in a case study accompanying a World Economic Forum survey in which Australia’s start-up environment rated poorly.
“By contrast, I posted a job for an office manager and got 350 applicants in two days.”
Barrie blames the lack of “robust” technology education in primary and secondary schools.
“We need significantly more people entering the industry otherwise companies like us will be forced to set up offices offshore to find talent,” he warns.
Barrie says he may have struggled to attract talented people to Freelancer in its early stages had he not been an Adjunct Associate Professor in Engineering & IT at the University of Sydney.
Meanwhile, Australia remains a long way from the Silicon Valley attitude of celebrating failure.
“Although it is changing, Australia still doesn’t embrace failure in entrepreneurs,” Barrie says.
“Early on, the negativity surrounding me leaving my last company – which ironically is still going, but wasn’t a knock-the-lights-out success and had a lot of internal conflict – made it a real challenge to raise the first round of capital to get going.”
About bambooinnovator
Bamboo Innovator 