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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?

#41

Post by kentrado »

dustedcodes wrote: post #28
kentrado wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is what I've been doing since 2018. Day rates vary between 650-750. I guess I could go higher if I was putting more effort into looking but I normally pick organisations to contract for which are fun. I like working for small startups to medium sized businesses which are tech companies, and not companies with a tech department. Big companies often come with Outlook, MS Teams, JIRA, Azure, a lot of Scrum or simil…

From those rates I assume you live in the USA.

The huge salaries in the US, make me think that the situation is different in the UK, in terms of the challenges to accomplish this.

I would like to know more about how to get started with this in the UK.

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

#42

Post by twic »

plebbers wrote: post #24

I would reach out to some recruiters, with your experience they'll easily place you in a better paid and likely more satisfying job than what you're currently doing. It's good to switch jobs every few years or so anyway, helps stave off the accumulated boredom. Good luck! Though I'm sure you won't need luck, sounds to me like you have a world of opportunity ahead of you.

Agreed about using a recruiter. If you don't have a lot of time and energy to search, and don't have a particularly strong idea about who you want to work for, they can do the leg work for you.

Trouble is, there are a some good recruiters, and a lot of terrible recruiters. I had a good experience with Oxford Knight, and have warm feelings towards RecWorks, because the people seem nice.

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

#43

Post by twic »

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.

They vary immensely. By location, sector, and honestly, quality of employee. Mediocre programmer in the IT department of a low-margin old-economy business in Leeds? 60k could be good money. Good programmer in a growing startup in London? Double it.

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

#44

Post by xyzzyz »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #40
xyzzyz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, typical US professional job, and especially Software Engineering jobs, also include the perks you listed. The “free education” doesn’t include higher educations, but all the other benefits you listed do very much exist and are commonplace in US. We might compare levels of coverage, and i would be interested to do that just out of my curiosity, but, overall, professional Americans mostly enjoy very similar welfa…

> overall, professional Americans mostly enjoy very similar welfare benefits as Europeans From having experience with both, that’s simply untrue. First, education here is free - technically university is a couple euros if you are rich enough but free-adjacent - at all level. Medical coverage is not tied to your job and covers everything properly including chronic disease, heavy procedure and potential long-term inabi…

Yeah, unemployment benefits are here typically capped at 6 months, and you won’t be getting full salary (not even close if you are a professional). Higher education is indeed not free, and if you’re a professional, your kids will probably be paying a sticker price too (poorer Americans typically only pay much smaller fraction of the quoted price, especially at higher rated schools). Medical coverage here is rather extensive, and I doubt that Europeans are better off here, especially if you consider that medical insurance is paid on top of the quoted salaries, not deducted from them on percentage basis as in Europe.

In my understanding, when you consider total wages and benefits, it’s not only IT professionals that are better off than in Europe, it’s at least everyone above median income. The class of people who’d probably be better off in Europe are low skill, low wage working class people: US welfare system is much less generous towards them, especially compared to people who don’t actually work at all.

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

#45

Post by onion2k »

ollysb wrote: post #30
onion2k wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

This is the reason most devs are contractors in London. You earn considerably more on a day rate than you generally do even as a CTO.

This is the reason most devs are contractors in London.

I'd be surprised if even 1% of the devs in the UK are contractors in London.

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

#46

Post by dustedcodes »

kentrado wrote: post #41
dustedcodes wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I've been doing since 2018. Day rates vary between 650-750. I guess I could go higher if I was putting more effort into looking but I normally pick organisations to contract for which are fun. I like working for small startups to medium sized businesses which are tech companies, and not companies with a tech department. Big companies often come with Outlook, MS Teams, JIRA, Azure, a lot of Scrum or simil…

From those rates I assume you live in the USA. The huge salaries in the US, make me think that the situation is different in the UK, in terms of the challenges to accomplish this. I would like to know more about how to get started with this in the UK.

No, I am European but live in London (Wimbledon). The rates are absolutely UK rates. I think in the US you'd get much more, but then you have to pay a lot more as well for things which we get for free here (e.g. NHS).

How to get started? My journey was what I think is quite common for a lot of contractors. First I started as a normal employee, worked in many different companies, large and small as a developer, junior, mid, senior, then with some management responsibilities. Eventually I became just really good at my job, not just programming, but also understanding how different sized businesses work, how the politics work, how hiring works, etc. and I just felt comfortable and confident that I could get into contracting.

Initially I got all my contracts via UK based agencies (the usual ones, Gravitas, OB, etc.) but then I figured out how to look for open roles directly, either by looking in the right places or through connections which I've built over the years. If you skip a recruitment agency then you can easily get the rates which I've listed, because that's what the agency takes when they tell you a rate of 500/550.

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

#47

Post by JonChesterfield »

ollysb wrote: post #30
onion2k wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

This is the reason most devs are contractors in London. You earn considerably more on a day rate than you generally do even as a CTO.

I get the impression IR35 killed that

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

#48

Post by kentrado »

dustedcodes wrote: post #46
kentrado wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From those rates I assume you live in the USA. The huge salaries in the US, make me think that the situation is different in the UK, in terms of the challenges to accomplish this. I would like to know more about how to get started with this in the UK.

No, I am European but live in London (Wimbledon). The rates are absolutely UK rates. I think in the US you'd get much more, but then you have to pay a lot more as well for things which we get for free here (e.g. NHS). How to get started? My journey was what I think is quite common for a lot of contractors. First I started as a normal employee, worked in many different companies, large and small as a developer, junior…

Thank you for your response. It has been helpful.
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