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Ask HN: Bored working for the current company, advice?

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Re: Ask HN: Bored working for the current company, advice?

#11

Post by mgbmtl »

kentrado wrote: post #8
newone2three wrote: post #4

Get a new job. You can get a contract job paying £500 a day quite easily in the UK. Do a 6 month contract, save up some runway, work on your own thing for a while, doing whatever interests you. Repeat.

Is this is what you are doing? Please tell me more about it.

There are lots of threads on consulting/freelancers on HN, and lots of great advice. Don't go freelancing lightly, do a bit of reading first, and ideally connect with others in the same jurisdiction for tax/billing advice.

I do consulting and 100/hour (EU/US/CA, not sure for the UK) is pretty average, and 5h/day is a reasonable number of billable hours in a day, assuming not too much time is wasted on sales (and sales can be a billable discovery phase instead, if the process delivers value for the client).

Re: Ask HN: Bored working for the current company, advice?

#13

Post by ManlyBread »

indoorskier wrote: post #9

With your very limited runway I'd get another offer with another employer first. That immediately strengthens your negotiation position with your current employer, even if you have zero intention of taking the offer. Basically start doing some interviews now. You'll probably have to brush up for those as well, and practice. > I feel stuck and bored > Working 9-5/Mon-Fri is really draining These two statements are con…

If OP is stuck working on problems that are both hard and boring to deal with then I don't think these two statements are contradictory.

Re: Ask HN: Bored working for the current company, advice?

#14

Post by mkl »

onion2k wrote: post #10
jstx1 wrote: post #2

- get a new job - it's easy for me to recommend this because I don't have a family to support, and I don't have to deal with the same amount of risk/uncertainty of potentially landing at a worse company - £60k is low for 15 years of experience - 13 employees = tiny company, not not even close to calling it medium-sized - find a new job first, then quit the current one

£60k is low for 15 years of experience £60k is the lower end of senior outside of London. It's not surprising at all. £60k in a company that's making more than £1m per employee though, that's definitely "Fuck this" territory.

£15m turnover, not profit.

Re: Ask HN: Bored working for the current company, advice?

#15

Post by nkrisc »

indoorskier wrote: post #9

With your very limited runway I'd get another offer with another employer first. That immediately strengthens your negotiation position with your current employer, even if you have zero intention of taking the offer. Basically start doing some interviews now. You'll probably have to brush up for those as well, and practice. > I feel stuck and bored > Working 9-5/Mon-Fri is really draining These two statements are con…

Those statements aren’t necessarily contradictory at all. Doing boring work for 8 hours can be incredibly draining.

Re: Ask HN: Bored working for the current company, advice?

#16

Post by onion2k »

mkl wrote: post #14
onion2k wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

£60k is low for 15 years of experience £60k is the lower end of senior outside of London. It's not surprising at all. £60k in a company that's making more than £1m per employee though, that's definitely "Fuck this" territory.

£15m turnover, not profit.

I know. I can read. It doesn't matter whether it's turnover or profit. No one should stay at a company that's doing that much business with so few people without being paid more than that salary. Even if the company is making a loss then being paid £60k in a company with a £15m turnover is truly terrible. £15m is either a huge amount of work, in which case £60k isn't enough, or it's a reasonable amount of very expensive work, in which case £60k isn't enough.

The profitability of the company that you work for should have absolutely no impact on your salary if it's not making a profit. Do not accept less money for the value you generate just because the company can't sell it at a good price that makes a healthy profit. Your earning potential is not dictated by someone else's ability to sell.

Re: Ask HN: Bored working for the current company, advice?

#17

Post by cehrlich »

onion2k wrote: post #10
jstx1 wrote: post #2

- get a new job - it's easy for me to recommend this because I don't have a family to support, and I don't have to deal with the same amount of risk/uncertainty of potentially landing at a worse company - £60k is low for 15 years of experience - 13 employees = tiny company, not not even close to calling it medium-sized - find a new job first, then quit the current one

£60k is low for 15 years of experience £60k is the lower end of senior outside of London. It's not surprising at all. £60k in a company that's making more than £1m per employee though, that's definitely "Fuck this" territory.

Are salaries in the UK really that low? I live in the EU, my salary is similar to the OP and I just started working as a developer _this year_, with 5 years of a fairly unrelated career prior to that.

Re: Ask HN: Bored working for the current company, advice?

#18

Post by onion2k »

cehrlich wrote: post #17
onion2k wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

£60k is low for 15 years of experience £60k is the lower end of senior outside of London. It's not surprising at all. £60k in a company that's making more than £1m per employee though, that's definitely "Fuck this" territory.

Are salaries in the UK really that low? I live in the EU, my salary is similar to the OP and I just started working as a developer _this year_, with 5 years of a fairly unrelated career prior to that.

Yes and no. The range for a senior web dev outside of London writing PHP and JS is pretty big - jobs start at about £40k for someone building Wordpress sites and a bit of JS, and go up to £90k for someone working on full stack JS apps in fintech or ecommerce. Inside of London (or remote working for a London company) it goes up to around £110k. Obviously outliers exist too at both ends of the scale. If you want more than that you're looking at 'architect' title, or maybe some sort of leadership or CTO role.

To be honest, the wages are quite low compared to other tech centres. As someone in the UK I'd definitely like them to be higher.

Re: Ask HN: Bored working for the current company, advice?

#20

Post by tmtvl »

cehrlich wrote: post #17
onion2k wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

£60k is low for 15 years of experience £60k is the lower end of senior outside of London. It's not surprising at all. £60k in a company that's making more than £1m per employee though, that's definitely "Fuck this" territory.

Are salaries in the UK really that low? I live in the EU, my salary is similar to the OP and I just started working as a developer _this year_, with 5 years of a fairly unrelated career prior to that.

I live in Belgium and when I started working as a developer (granted, without a higher education degree or prior experience) I got a bit over 1/3rd that amount.
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