231–234 of 234 posts
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Why did you turn down the offer? You are in a MUCH stronger position to ask for a raise with another offer in hand.
Well they requested a quick response and it was a bad time for me to negotiate with my employer. They made it pretty clear that I could contact them if I ever needed a job.
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That's a good attitude you have! But honestly, you are still working for peanuts, if you are any good as a programmer. How long have you been programming professionally?
Professionally, only about 4 years, also a year as a sysadmin and a few in the Air Force a while back. That's why the peanuts. I'm not the most amazing programmer ever, but I am pretty good. I also have business sense and the ability to talk convincingly to non-technical people. These things ultimately mean much more to a company, at least my company, than years at firm. I'm also constantly pushing myself to build mo…
> I'm not the most amazing programmer ever, but I am pretty good. I also have business sense and the ability to talk convincingly to non-technical people.
If you can deliver at all, you are probably better than most programmers out there. Talking to non-technical people is an awesome skill in its own right.
Yes, my asking about how many years you've been working was just as a rough proxy.
If you want, you can shoot me an email (see profile) for some more in-depth chats. I'm interested to see how typical my trajectory is. I don't think I did anything extraordinary, but most people I talk to seem to be getting inferior results.
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There are very few unnecessary jobs in today's economically-rationalised world. Fire the cleaning staff, and see how long your other staff hang around with piling-up garbage and a lack of toilet cleaning/stocking. Fire the receptionists and watch as a ton of work moves elsewhere because you're too hard to get hold of.
A debatable subject, but still, have a look at: http://libcom.org/library/phenomenon-bullshit-jobs-david-gra...
Still, I think it's ironic that in one paragraph, dog-washers and pizza deliverers get caned for being bullshit jobs, and two paragraphs later the author bemoans the loss of workers that move things (pizza...) and maintain things (dogs...) :)
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Sounds nice, but I would make a big difference between being a contractor and an employee. Where I live, hiring contractors is much less risky (because of employment laws etc), therefore for contractors it is quite natural to pay more. I'm an employer myself.
Hourly payment is good for employees, and bad for consultants. I'm now consulting again, and I avoid selling hours, because hours do not scale. Instead I sell solutions, because a solution to a problem likely has a much higher value than the hours summed up. Also, if you switch from consulting to being employed you can ask for much better terms, then anyone who had been unemployed before. Always add the term to your…
Sheesh that's cheap. I can't think of anywhere in the UK where I could get either for that price.