Hello Ladies & Gentlemen,

Today I would like to discuss the reasons why Australian HPC Employers and HPC professionals need to be flexible when it comes to engaging with one another.

High Performance Computing in Australia is a niche area and a small world. Everyone either knows each other or knows of each other in one way or another and of course – everyone (or almost everyone) is already employed and working given the the rarity of HPC professionals skillsets and the high demand for us from Australian government, corporate Australia and academia.

There is an old joke about two economists walking down the street that goes something like this: One economist says to the other – look down there on the pavement. It's a $100 bill! To which the other economist remarks it couldn't be as somebody would have picked it up by now. There is a high demand for highly intelligent, highly educated and highly skilled HPC professionals and a very low supply of us in Australia. That means high wages or contract rates for our time and expertise. The supply/demand ratio favours us as HPC professionals but employers of course must get value from our time and services. Productivity and results are very important.

The biggest problem that I see in the HPC space for Australian Government departments is the relatively low salaries on offer. It simply does not make economic sense for a HPC professional to work for $87,000 a year as a leading information technology specialist (thats around my salary by the way) in a government department when the same professional can earn much more money working in private industry in Australia or abroad. You're looking at me - the human form of that $100 note on the pavement. How long will it be before I'm picked up?

Australian employers – the public sector specifically are not paying salaries high enough to engage and importantly – to retain highly intelligent, highly educated and highly skilled HPC staff who have built up enough time as system administrators or data scientists on large supercomputers in Australia. Australian government departments, corporations and academic institutions as employers of HPC professionals need to be flexible. Supercomputers are a competitively rare commodity in this country and we system administrators and HPC experts are already gainfully employed. I'm here today to ask you as employers of HPC professionals to be open minded and flexible as to the terms of engagement of your HPC contractors and full time professionals. It is to the benefit of all of us if we as HPC professionals are able to contract out our time out of hours and at weekends when we are available outside our normal business hours. I'm here today to ask you my fellow HPC professionals to be flexible as well and to consider working for companies other than your own on a short term hourly contractual basis. Stay loyal of course to your primary employer and do whatever you need to do to ensure you don't create a conflict of interest or a commercially untenable situation. I think we all know that we need to work together to create a situation where we can engage in work for HPC employers other than our own except for in cases where there are clear conflicts and clear do not compete issues or clauses. HPC employers you must know this too. Fine – you want to retain your highly qualified staff but wouldn't it be great to have access to other highly qualified HPC staff on an hourly basis to help solve those difficult system problems that you are working on? That's where I come in of course with my company INTJ – to supply HPC experts to you.

In many cases keeping our day jobs but working for other employers on the side is the only practicably viable way that we help each other. This is not an issue of loyalty – it's an issue of doing something for your country. I don't think i'm exaggerating the situation here – think about the uses of HPC and the organisations who are using HPC systems. It's mostly to benefit humanity in some way shape or form. Australia needs to build our supercomputing capacity. We need to build up in our people technical skills and hands on experience with HPC systems and collaborate with each other for the benefit of our great country and to help move humanity forward

Let me be clear on this issue - if you're not going to solve the structural pay issues (which the Australian government almost certainly wont any time soon) then you need to attack the problem from a different angle. Government HPC employers must remain flexible and be open to engaging with HPC professionals on an hourly contractual basis and also be open to non standard contractual arrangements for work outside of business hours, weekend work, work in person or via skype, telephone and email and working with HPC professionals who already have employment at other Australian government departments, academic institutions and corporations. My business INTJ aims to help solve the problem we all face by offering up members of my team on an hourly, short term, paid contractual basis. This is something I can do as a HPC leader to help solve our collective talent problem but of course this website and business opens me up to all sorts of potential personal attacks, potential problems with my employer and headaches which I would not face if I had remained in the background chugging along doing only my day job. I felt however that I had to step up and do this. Im not kidding when I say that I think there are very few others who are doing it as i'm currently from what I can see the only one in the marketplace here in Melbourne, Australia. Im sure that will change if my company becomes successful of course given the nature of competition and the marketplace.

Supercomputers are a competitively rare commodity in this country and most organisations who use them know what systems other organisations have. Part of the problem is that those of us who work as technical experts in HPC don't know each other but i'm looking to change that with my business INTJ.

To sum up – flexibiliy is key. HPC Employers – please remain open to short term hourly paid contractual arrangements. HPC professionals – remain loyal to your employer but be open to paid short term hourly gigs. We are all in this boat together. You know it and I know it. I want you all to be aware that I'm advocating freedom for my team. Im not looking to be a bad guy and lock my candidates or my employers into unconscionable contracts. Im an open and transparent person and I respect other peoples freedom and autonomy. Freedom is number 1 with me. I care about freedom and you should too. Working with me means working with a highly flexible, highly educated professional. I'm not a recruiter. I'm going to do the right thing by you. There is a commercial element to my business of course as there must be for me to be able to provide you with high quality professional high performance computing services. So please – get in contact. Work with me. Let's see what we can achieve together.

Until next time – all the best!

Clarke Towson