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

• giantg2 4y ago
  I was going to say just keep the job because the next one will be boring too. But it sounds like you should look for a new job if management is that bad. Generally, a big company should be better for stability and benefits.
• jstx1 4y ago
  - 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
  • onion2k 4y ago
    £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.
    • mkl 4y ago
      £15m turnover, not profit.
      • onion2k 4y ago
        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.
        • quickthrower2 4y ago
          If they are in low margin retail, or the "turnover" is really the turnover of their customers whose money they are handling - like for example an Amazon marketplace kind of thing, then 15m might be just a million of gross profit which is about about 70k per person. "Profit is sanity..."
    • cehrlich 4y ago
      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.
• throwaway6734 4y ago
  I was in a similar position and went half time and got my masters . The main benefit being that it allows me to get back into the student pipeline via internships and get an opportunity at a company that otherwise wouldn't have looked at my resume. Once I was in the door, I blew most of the other interns out of the water because I had significantly more development experience and was offered a job.
• newone2three 4y ago
  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.
  • kentrado 4y ago
    Is this is what you are doing? Please tell me more about it.
    • mgbmtl 4y ago
      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).
    • dustedcodes 4y ago
      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 similar BS and lots of hierarchy, meetings and politics which makes it really hard to have an impact or fun doing work. They can pay slightly more (maybe 800-1000/day) but personally I find smaller companies more satisfying. Smaller businesses don't have time for BS, so they optimise for success, use software and tools which really drive productivity. That often means MacBooks instead of Windows, AWS/GCP over Azure, Slack over Teams, Something super lightweight or just good team communication over JIRA and most importantly, development teams often get to really make an impact, drive decisions, get responsibility and own the entire software development lifecycle from planning to deploying to monitoring in true DevOps style (as opposed to sending emails to a "DevOps" team which is common in bigger companies). I enjoy myself more in these environments and for that I'm happy to sacrifice a bit of pay. Anyhow, I am just coming back from a 5 month break and it's normal for me to take a few months off every year inbetween contracts. I never take a contract longer than 6 months, otherwise I can't take 1-2 months off at a time. Doesn't mean I never extend a contract after 6 months, but before I extend I communicate clearly that I would like to take some time off and then basically line up the continuation at the same place for when I come back.
• barefeg 4y ago
  I would definitely try to get something new before quitting. But that might be easier said than done if you’re already burning out.
• orzig 4y ago
  Getting a new job might be the right answer, but don’t leave without trying to drive a hard bargain with your current employer. You might be surprised at how flexible they can be, I was able to go down to less than 5 days a week almost instantly after asking for it, for example (though at a more interchangeable role at a larger employer). Give yourself two hours to study sales and negotiation techniques, it is a worthwhile investment for such an important conversation (and would probably be useful if you went and found something else anyway). The most important thing is to understand what feels important, and what feels impossible, on their side. I remember being shocked that a former employer was willing to discuss a $10,000 raise, but not a single additional vacation day – that’s just how the HR software worked.
  • rongopo 4y ago
    I agree on the negotiation skill point! I always read a few lines of a book about how to negotiate before every meeting with my boss. That way I am seldom caught off guard!
  • quickthrower2 4y ago
    “yes i will take the raise thanks” 2 weeks later “can I book 2 weeks unpaid leave…” :-)
• indoorskier 4y ago
  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 contradictory imo. Figure out whether you want to stay in your comfort zone, or take a step in another direction.
  • ManlyBread 4y ago
    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.
  • nkrisc 4y ago
    Those statements aren’t necessarily contradictory at all. Doing boring work for 8 hours can be incredibly draining.
• smarri 4y ago
  I wouldn't overthink it, I'd start interviewing and see what you like the look of once some offers come in.
• JackFr 4y ago
  New job. Difficult to see a path forward here.
• saalweachter 4y ago
  If you want more time for more education, but have too many responsibilities to spend a couple of years unemployed, consider focusing your job search on the education -- and in particular, university -- sector. Most universities allow for cheap or free study for employees, and will be culturally flexible to let you take advantage of it.
• 6stringmerc 4y ago
  First, don’t quit until your plan is at least validated by yourself and your household. If you are sincere about your reasons then you will get encouragement to make the change with stability as job 1. I know people who take the exit before having the landing and while it works for them it is hard on the people that love them who favor stability. It’s all very reasonable I’m the big picture. Another option is to start some mental health counseling and get some tools to disconnect emotionally from work, then begin to renegotiate work conditions. Having a note from a professional helps to make your case you are doing your job but can obtain more flexibility for work-life-balance and overall health. This sets a good baseline for the next 20 years of your working career! Personally I love a fresh start. I occasionally re arrange my furniture just for change. It also is a chance to go into a negotiation with a good list of real priorities that may have been different 10 years ago. Mine sure were. In the US in my field, the tone has changed and they want happy healthy vaccinated employees, and are willing to change their structure (more remote, 40 hours ‘whenever it works and gets it done and the team is good’) and the only way to get it is hit the market as a free agent. The last place I did a gig willingly underpaid me $10k in salary I have realized, and I’m angry at them for it but aiming for $20k more now and will likely get it.
• plebbers 4y ago
  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.
  • twic 4y ago
    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.
• dustedcodes 4y ago
  Look for a new job: https://keyboardjobs.com https://keyboardjobs.com
• kidgorgeous 4y ago
  Jesus, you're getting paid peanuts. I'm a 12 year full stack and I'm frequently turning down low six figure offers. My advice, go on indeed.com and type in "[your favorite language] remote". Take 1 hour daily and apply for jobs over $100k you think you would be a good fit for. You'll find out very quickly how in demand your skills are. Good luck to you brotha.
• exikyut 4y ago
  Yeah no ~$66k/yr is just taking-advantage money, your "quiet when being paid enough" beeper should be going off so loudly right now the people in the buildings next door are wondering if there's a fire drill or not lol. That being said, if you want to retain the stability of your current environment, one way to mitigate the precedent/reputation hit of going "hi, pay me more plz" might be to shift the responsibility of the suggestion to a skills guidance counselor, life coach, therapist or similar position (I'm sure I've heard of more technically-oriented roles supporting this sort of thing, I just can't remember them right now). If *that* person were to hear out your situation, go back and forth on various sundry details and then happen to hear about the pay bracket bit and flat-out tell you you weren't being paid nearly enough... well, you were just going to see them because you were a bit depressed (the circumstances you describe line up perfectly for mild depression), and oh no, this happened. Woops. For your consideration: https://www.levels.fyi/ https://www.levels.fyi/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29336234 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29336234 - hiring a good EA/PA; a guidance counselor needs to be similarly supportive so maybe is relevant
  • WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    They are not paid $66k. They are paid £60k which depending where they live in the UK is an average software engineer salary. It’s low for finance in London but unsurprising for an industrial company in the north. You can’t extrapolate the US market to the rest of the world.
    • twic 4y ago
      It still seems low for that amount of experience. In a non-finance company in London, someone good with 15 years experience should be on >= 100k. I know people with less experience working at such a company making 140k; my impression is that this is on the high side for that context, but it definitely exists. Maybe it's less outside the south-east. But OP works remote, so why not work remotely for a company that pays decent money? I know a guy who lives in some godforsaken fishing village in Scotland and has a remote London job.
• 29athrowaway 4y ago
  You can look for a new job, but be aware that: - there's a recession going on - many companies stopped hiring, they're demanding more productivity from their existing employees, and are laying off people - there is a deluge of experienced, highly skilled people looking for jobs right now (all the people that fell victim to 10% layoffs) - inflation is high, people are asking for higher salaries - many companies can't pay higher salaries
  • dominotw 4y ago
    > - there is a deluge of experienced, highly skilled people looking for jobs right now (all the people that fell victim to 10% layoffs) How do you know this. I still see lots of recruiters pestering me for a 'casual call'.
    • snovv_crash 4y ago
      Me too, if anything the past 2 months has been busier than the 6 months before. I think it is a soft recession, and employers aren't looking to cut employees, they are looking to replace them with more cost effective employees.
  • WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    > there's a recession going on Unemployment is historically low accros Europe and the USA. You don’t have to keep listing to big tech companies which had brain dead hiring policies for the past three years and are now scrambling to protect the value of their shares. The employment market is doing fine right now for most of us. Most companies certainly didn’t stop hiring. Most are actually short handed.
• _trackno5 4y ago
  I would look at larger companies. Tbh you are severely underpaid. If you are down to do some work and prep for interviews, you can certainly double that income with a remote job. Like others said, first get an offer. Your runway is too short for someone with 2 kids and wife.
• tinktank 4y ago
  Have you considered starting a competitor to this company?
• asdfzalsd 4y ago
  check out spacedleets.com if you are trying to interview prep and need leetcode practice (its free) (am the founder of it)
• bradwood 4y ago
  You should be able to find time to learn more outside of your 9-5. Do a few courses or get a side hussle/project going. > Perhaps I need to look for a bigger company with a better career path? Maybe get back to contracting? Career paths are not the accountability of your company to provide. They are your own responsibility.
  • quickthrower2 4y ago
    Bigger companies might provide more structure though and transparency around levels and measures.
• tonfreed 4y ago
  I'd play hardball. You have to remember anyone they get to replace you will take 6 months to ramp up (at least). You've got a huge amount of leverage there, and the company would know it.