This week’s announcement by business intelligence vendor SAS that it plans to create 150 jobs in Ireland over the next three years by opening of a new inside sales and customer contact centre in Dublin, can be all too easily viewed as yet another sign of the country’s ability to attract technology companies.
The government, in the shape of Minister for Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation Richard Bruton portrayed it as the latest success in its efforts to attract “new software and analytics companies into Ireland”. Talent had been of “vital importance”, he added, “ensuring, through our education system and our work permit system, that these companies, Irish and multinational, can access the skilled workers they need to grow. Today’s announcement by SAS, that it is creating 150 jobs in Dublin, is a huge boost to this strategy and great news for the city.”
IDA Ireland CEO Martin Shanahan said the development of the centre in Dublin was the first of its kind “for SAS within EMEA and as such, is an important win for Ireland”. He argued the decision by SAS to locate in Ireland would “further highlight our country as a centre for Big Data and data analytics – a key emerging sector targeted by IDA Ireland”.
In an analogy so clumsy that it would trip over its own feet if it tried to get up, Tanaiste Joan Burton tried to link the company’s Big Data field to the government’s economic policy. “A key element of the work SAS does in the field of Big Data is about spotting patterns,” she stated. “The economic pattern in Ireland under this Government is one of recovery – of 1,300 jobs being added every week. SAS’s expansion will contribute another 150 positive stories to that pattern, and is another significant statement of confidence in Ireland as an excellent base for global business.”
Speaking the same language
Her comments are fascinating because of the assumptions they make about the SAS jobs, assumptions which might not be completely accurate. Closer examination of the jobs announcement by SAS reveals that they will cover a number of roles, including “multi-lingual business development and sales specialists, customer engagement specialists, data scientists and software engineers”.
Anyone else notice that word “multi-lingual”, as in more than one language? I should hasten to add that in this case it does not mean the ability to understand more than one programming language.
I asked SAS how many of those 150 jobs would be multi-lingual and was told that it would be in the region of 40-50%. Which means that as many as 75 of those jobs could require someone who knows how to speak another language in addition to English. I don’t know how many of Ireland’s STEM graduates also have a second language in their locker (although I should point out Trinity College Dublin has a computer science and language course that comes with an option of French, German or Irish components), but I’m guessing there aren’t that many.
So I guess that leaves us with an interesting question: how many of the SAS jobs will be filled by people from outside Ireland? In turn, when you consider how many technology companies set up their EMEA operations in Ireland that require many bi-lingual employees, we need to consider a couple of other questions. For example, we might ask whether there should be more computer science and language courses. Or we might even wonder whether it would make sense to encourage more of our children to study languages at university as a possible entrance into a career in technology in Ireland.
When he announced the SAS Irish jobs, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said the government would “continue to support the technology sector by investing in the right education and research programmes to ensure Ireland’s ongoing success as a technology hub in Europe”. But perhaps if he wanted to ensure as many as possible of those jobs went to people living in Ireland he should have stressed the importance of language studies too.
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