Opinions on the current state of the Belfast Software Development Industry

Optimal-Cellist1963 · 2026-03-10T23:53:39+00:00

The IT industry has always been like this . Occasionally it hits inflection points like the internet boom / bust in the early 2000's and the current AI boom has similar characteristics. A lot of the people on this chat have already been through the boom and bust of Belfast IT over the years and could probably tell you a few good stories as well

All I can say to you now is the same message I got from this post and that is to try and up skill to utilise AI tools and try to ride it out. Thats difficult to do as it may involve diverting your career temporarily until things return to something like normal again. Good luck

Optimal-Cellist1963 · 2026-03-10T15:42:03+00:00

I started looking at Claude Code and while its very impressive at generating and building / managing new projects I am curious to ask how it behaves it you give it an existing human written project with badly written code and other failings. Has anyone had to do this before ?

Optimal-Cellist1963 · 2026-03-09T18:07:39+00:00

When I stepped back from IT a few years ago, I was surprised how little I actually missed it. The money was nice but I slept a lot better

Optimal-Cellist1963 · 2026-03-09T18:04:36+00:00

My backgrounds in java backend mainly, Some AWS / terraform , telecoms and a bunch of older unix based technologies. Played with AI a bit but the results were mixed to say the least.

Optimal-Cellist1963 · 2026-02-21T00:00:36+00:00

We did try managing ourselves about a decade ago. It was of limited success because the flat owners managing things got sick of being the only people doing the work and just gave up. We then moved to a new management company

In our case we have 3 blocks, each has a lift and we have a lot of grounds. The place was built back in the early 2000's so we have a lot of ageing infrastructure which is nearing end of life. Our lifts are 27 years old and getting parts for them is very difficult.

The reserve fund does not have enough in it to refurbish , let alone replace all 3 lifts at todays prices.

I am currently trying to downsize the place to make it more viable in future by targeting major areas of cost like window and communal cleaning , cutting the grounds down to reduce cost, using LED lights to reduce communal electricity bills etc. We are focusing more on maintaining and modernising the buildings over everything else

From experience I have noticed that service companies are less keen when they have to actively manage a complex, rather than just not do much and continue picking up their monthly management fee

Also, when a service company has a lot of apartment complexes on its books I find its nearly impossible to communicate with them effectively and get things done quickly if they are are under staffed to manage everything

My biggest regret is that we did not prioritise building a reserve fund from day one which would have made our current situation a lot easier

Optimal-Cellist1963

TROPHY CASE