Ask HN: What should I do?

I guess for a fair comparison you'd need to consider taxation and major costs. In UK £45,000pa would net you £2,750/month after tax. Most likely your employer would be paying or contributing to your pension. Health care is free. Assuming you want your own place, a typical apartment in semi-central London might be £350/week rent. Local taxes depend on your properties value, but could say £100/month typical. Then for simplicity estimate major household bills (gas & electricity) at £100/month.

Net Income: £2750/month Major Expense: ~£1750/month

As someone with a mild stutter (5/10, 8 on bad days) but actually does a fair amount of public speaking for a living, I understand how difficult this can be for you. As context for those that have never experienced this before, Nathan Heller describes it very eloquently in both what it feels like physically and how it affects one psychologically and socially: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/assessment/2... It was an emotional read for me as it captures so successfully my own situation, and I'd imagine it will be too for many with a stutter.

I can only offer some anecdotal advice based on my own experiences, but I hope your situation improves soon (I agree with most of what everyone else is saying: you are being underpaid.)

- Slow down your speech. Sometimes my thoughts get ahead of my mouth, and my words don't come out eloquently. Sometimes when I do phone interviews (or presentations) I put a little card in front of me that has written in big letters "SLOW DOWN." Speech pace may not be a factor for you, but this trick can probably be applied to whatever you're personally going through—put something on a card that keeps you subtly conscious of your speech. Of course YMMV if this makes you nervous and enhances your stammer.

- Practice. I've basically found that all presentations and speaking events turn out better after practicing aloud. With interviews, you can ask a friend to help you prepare, and this may help you with "softball" non-coding questions (e.g., why you looking for a new position, describe a technical challenge, etc.)

- Speak more. This goes hand-in-hand with the point above but is really important. I speak more so I gain more confidence in my own speech, which helps me get over my stutter. Heller (the article above) makes a great point in saying that stutterers actually seem to be attracted to professions in which speaking is a critical part of the role. I somewhat feel the same way, and perhaps if you realize this, you can too. A stutter isn't something to cower away from, it's a challenge to step up to and break through.

Is there such a thing as an interview over IM?

If you have a portfolio site and testimonials from past clients, £20k isn't that great. I worked with a guy at a small(ish, <100 employees) company who started at £34k with a similar background to that.

Question: can the stammer be fixed, or at least improved? If so I'd make that priority #1. (Sorry but I know nothing about stammers beyond what I find from a cursory Google search and my memory of The King's Speech.)

People here will tell you the world's a meritocracy and that if you're good enough employers will hire you anyway. That's bullshit. I wish it were true but you know by now it isn't. People act first and rationalize later. They'll think of all sorts of reasons why they shouldn't hire you due to your stammer. "He'll be hard to communicate with." "He's a bad culture fit." Etc. They might all be wrong, and maybe it's their loss because they're passing up on a great employee, but you'll be consistently undervalued the rest of your life due to that. You shouldn't be, but you will. Don't let your perception of how the world should be prevent you from seeing how it actually is.

Perhaps you've tried to fix the stammer, or perhaps it's unfixable. Or perhaps you just haven't devoted enough effort to it. If it's the latter I'd highly recommend doing that. I know it's unfair. You're a web developer, not a public speaker, and as long as you can communicate well with your team it really shouldn't be a factor in a job interview. But the world is unfair and it is what it is. Your options are to keep trying to do something you know isn't working, or adapt to the situation.

(If it can't be fixed I'd try to find a clever way to mitigate it. Lie and tell people you're a mute for a bit and see if they are more receptive. You'll have to do some experimentation. I wouldn't do this until I'd exhausted every avenue of fixing it though.)

Regardless, don't fall back on "my code should be able to win these battles". It should but it won't, and the longer you spend beating your head against that wall the more frustrated you'll become.