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

54 points by waskip 3 years ago | 56 comments

I'm tired of working at my current company as an employee mainly due to how the company is being managed for the last ~5 years and considering moving to contracting or another company with more flexibility (4 days week?) and maybe a better career path. I was a contractor when I moved to the UK to work for the current company.

Might be too specific to my case, but maybe someone out there has gone through something similar in the past/recently?

About me: from EU, early 40s, 2 kids and wife, over 15 years experience as full stack dev, based in the UK working for the same company for 7+ years in a stable full stack role remotely since the pandemic as the company sole dev/sysadmin, earning £60k+ ($66k) per year.

About the company: small/medium(?) size company (13 employees + 1 owner/director, ~£15m ($16m) turnover per year), 12+ years trading, I report to the director.

I feel stuck and bored as there is no progress to be made due to it being a private owned business with one director. A lot of decisions taken benefit the director personally instead of the company as a whole.

I want more time to get back in education, but working 9-5/Mon-Fri is really draining and when I finish work I just want to get some rest. I have 3 months emergency fund that could pay for the house expenses if I decide to leave.

There are no benefits except what's required by law (28 holidays, including bank holidays, 3% pension match), no education budget, no perks.

Perhaps I need to look for a bigger company with a better career path? Maybe get back to contracting?

Thanks

orzig 3 years 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 3 years 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 3 years ago | |

“yes i will take the raise thanks”

2 weeks later

“can I book 2 weeks unpaid leave…”

:-)

exikyut 3 years 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://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29336234 - hiring a good EA/PA; a guidance counselor needs to be similarly supportive so maybe is relevant

WastingMyTime89 3 years 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 3 years 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.

jstx1 3 years 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 3 years 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.

cehrlich 3 years 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.

mkl 3 years ago | | |

£15m turnover, not profit.

mrweasel 3 years ago | |

If it was just benefits, hours or something like that, I'd recommend talking to management and let them know that unless something could be worked out I'd be leaving. When you're bored however, and the company isn't that big, that's is almost impossible to fix. Even if management tries, the moment someone loses focus, then you're right back where you started.

I'm not knowledgeable enough about the UK job market, but across the North Sea, in Denmark, you can still more or less pick and choose, there are tons of companies lacking developers and operations people. Not as many as last year, but still more than enough that you don't have to fear unemployment.

throwaway6734 3 years 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 3 years 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 3 years ago | |

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

dustedcodes 3 years 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.

mgbmtl 3 years 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).

indoorskier 3 years 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.

nkrisc 3 years ago | |

Those statements aren’t necessarily contradictory at all. Doing boring work for 8 hours can be incredibly draining.

ManlyBread 3 years 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.

plebbers 3 years 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 3 years 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.

giantg2 3 years 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.

bradwood 3 years 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 3 years ago | |

Bigger companies might provide more structure though and transparency around levels and measures.

saalweachter 3 years 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.

smarri 3 years ago |

I wouldn't overthink it, I'd start interviewing and see what you like the look of once some offers come in.

_trackno5 3 years 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.

tonfreed 3 years 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.

29athrowaway 3 years 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

WastingMyTime89 3 years 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.

dominotw 3 years 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 3 years 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.

kidgorgeous 3 years 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.

barefeg 3 years 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.

6stringmerc 3 years 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.

tinktank 3 years ago |

Have you considered starting a competitor to this company?

asdfzalsd 3 years ago |

check out spacedleets.com if you are trying to interview prep and need leetcode practice (its free) (am the founder of it)

dustedcodes 3 years ago |

Look for a new job:

https://keyboardjobs.com

JackFr 3 years ago |

New job.

Difficult to see a path forward here.