31–40 of 96 posts
What kind of jobs are applying to? Your xp sounds like “rando IT guy” so it might not be translating well.
Heck, I've literally built out three 42U racks and written thousands of lines of code for my dad just for fun over some weekends to help him with his business over the past five years.
B) Get on LinkedIn and scope out some recruiters, reach out to the ones you like the look of with a brief of the sort of role your looking for. Get on the phone with them and get their advice - they will get you interviews.
Don't stop B if A works. Ultimately you should leave your current employer - they are not going to "get it" overnight so it will happen again in some form.
With your skills I'd expect to see you earning at least 80-90K depending on location. Aim for more full stack or DevOps roles. Consider management or team lead tracks - you clearly have strong organisational skills.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it might very well be worth having that sit-down with your employer where you lay out exactly what will happen to their infrastructure when you leave. I don't think threatening your current employer about how in-disposable you are and how they'll have production outages if you leave shows you're a very good teammate/employee/team player.
I can't tell if you're joking or not, but just in case If you ever find yourself as a single point of failure at a company, and you feel you're underpaid, screw being a "good team player" Adopt a "fuck you, pay me" attitude and get what you're worth or get out. "Good team player" is how companies manipulate you into getting more value out of you than they are paying you for.
Edit: this will not always work. And you might burn bridges. Be warned.
Edit2: Also dont actually say fuck you, that's internal monologue. Stay professional!
Step one: believe them as they demonstrate how little they value you. Step two: Do your job, as described in the job offer, and stop doing extra. They place no value on that extra work. But in the long term, don’t stay, even if they do give you a raise or exceed another offer. After all, they didn’t value you before; imagine how little they will value you when you’re a bigger cost to them.
And start studying how do to Infrastructure as Code or go get some certificate if needed: CKA, AWS, Azure or GCP related.
Are you doing anything beyond just sending out CVs? That's a pretty poor way to find a job, TBH. A CV is required for a job search, but best delivered after you've had a discussion with a hiring manager (at best) or someone at the company (at least) about the position.
In my experience, the best way is to find someone who used to work with you and see if they need help or know anyone who does. You have far more credibility and they'll have more info about you.
The second best way is to meet someone at a technical event, connect with them, and (after a sufficient period of time, don't do it on the first email) see if they know anyone looking.
The third best way is to target local companies who you'd want to work for, and who you know someone at (use LinkedIn or Xing). Meet them for coffee, learn about the company. If it is a fit, ask if it is okay for you to send a CV over.
All of these take some time to implement, which is why it is good that you are currently employed. (Always easier to find a job if you have a job.)
Start now.
It sounds like you're asking two (or more) different questions. Your title implies maybe getting back at your employer. I think many of us have gone through similar feelings, but ultimately you should do what's best for yourself and not necessarily what'll make you feel good in the short term (checkmating / petty revenge). In my experience, typical advice is to not take a counteroffer from your current employer. Will you really be satisfied at work if they give you that raise? Will you go through the same issue in another several years?
As for the resume development and lack of responses - maybe try applying to worse-paying jobs, and see if you get hits. Take the recruiter calls and find out what it was about your resume that they liked. You could even go so far as to say you were hoping to get a better-titled position etc and see why they say you're not qualified. You can use all this to better edit your resume, or go develop the needed skills at your current work.
I've also been contacted by headhunters in the past, and with just a little bit of prodding, they're very happy to critique and edit your resume because it's in their best incentives to do so.
Its shocking to me how poorly people are compensated in the UK. There's no way a competitive market could exist there. Move to America if you dare... you can actually make something of your life.
what are you making of yours?
On the systems administration side of things going from one system to a rack isn’t nothing, it’s an achievement, but a lot of employers paying £100k may have applicants coming with more breadth of experience or significant scale - either 1000’s of systems, 10000’s of endpoints, maybe they’re looking for specialist knowledge implementing endpoint protection using Crowdstrike?
In the developer dimension for £100k they’re likely looking for a PHP developer who has ‘full time’ written software in a professional setting for a number of years, worked on teams of developers and contributed to big projects and big codebase (~20k LOC across ~20 repositories is ‘hobby’ scale, plenty of places in industry are >=2 orders of magnitude larger), and perhaps they also seek prior experience with the frameworks they may use?
I’m not sure you should be aggrieved, £60k is nothing to sniff at for a smaller-scale IT role with a “Does It All” blend of duties.
Also beware almost everyone is far more replaceable than they might themselves believe. I doubt a SMB would have much trouble finding applicants for a £60k role involving figuring out your stuff. Maybe they’d just hire two people on £40k to have more arms around the problem domain and more resilience against a repeat? Definitely don’t underestimate that trying for “Checkmate” may/will result in an adverse reaction from your employer. Generally employers dislike being strong armed and even if they pay you today they may well begin working on their Plan B.
If you want to take your career in a different direction and focus on something like PHP development you may have to accept this involves taking one step backwards before you can take two steps forward. Maybe that’s a PHP Developer role which focuses just on that, and not 36 other things, but maybe it’s a bit more entry-level because you don’t have the experience today to join as a “Team Lead” of a 10-person team doing XYZ.
Lastly, by far the easiest way to find your next big thing is within your network, not shotgunning your CV into lots of places who have publicly advertised an opening. Look in your local community for topical microconferences or user groups and get involved. Look for more national user groups or communities around e.g. Kubernetes (if that’s your jam) and get involved. Many of those will have Slacks with #jobs channels where hiring managers will post opportunities. Being a participant in the community, particularly if you’re a respected value-adding member, is a foot in the door.
It sounds like your unambitious employer treats your work as a cost centre, and achieving a grudging pay bump isn't going to change that.