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

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.

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!

“yes i will take the raise thanks”

2 weeks later

“can I book 2 weeks unpaid leave…”

:-)

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

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.

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.

- 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

£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.

£15m turnover, not profit.

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.

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..."

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.

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 than that you're looking at 'architect' title, or maybe some sort of leadership or CTO role.

To be honest, the wages are quite low compared to other tech centres. As someone in the UK I'd definitely like them to be higher.

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.

I get the impression IR35 killed that

I live in Belgium and when I started working as a developer (granted, without a higher education degree or prior experience) I got a bit over 1/3rd that amount.

Belgium has a lot of tax advantages though so just comparing the numbers like that doesn't make sense. Most people in IT get a leasing car for example, sometimes they don't even have to pay for gas.

Salaries between countries are hard to compare. You have to take into account that he and his kids have access to the NHS for exemple.

I’m a manager at a consulting company in France. My total comp is a bit shy of €70k which looks ridiculous next to an American but you have to factor in that I have a full medical coverage, access to free education for my family, unemployment insurance and retirement benefits plus a wide array of perks on top of that.

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 welfare benefits as Europeans, while making more money, especially if you consider taxes (taxation is much more progressive in US than in Europe, and the wealthy bear the most weight of taxation, unlike in Europe, where it is middle class that pays most taxes).

> 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 inability to work. Unemployment last two years and fully covers your salary for the first six months.

You will win a lot more in the US if you work in IT because the salaries are incredibly high in the US but for anything else I would stay in Europe. Well, I would even stay in Europe for IT personally because I hate the US culture but that’s another story.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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).

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.

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.

Thank you for your response. It has been helpful.

I do the same thing, but through agencies, so the roles tend to be larger companies and rates more like 500-600.

Where do you look for open roles directly? I haven’t managed to figure this out.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

> - 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'.

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.

> 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.

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.

I would definitely try to get something new before quitting. But that might be easier said than done if you’re already burning out.

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.

Have you considered starting a competitor to this company?

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

Look for a new job:

https://keyboardjobs.com

New job.

Difficult to see a path forward here.