Swinx43

I came here simply to echo this statement! Design a reporting solution that is responsible for ingesting data from these micro services' persistence layers. Analysts should only ever be querying this reporting solution and should not be allowed to connect directly to any micro service persistence layer or API.

We have a whole industry around Analytics and Data and the tools and processes to build this reporting layer is well established and proven.

Nothing will give you as many nightmares as letting your analysts loose on your micro service persistence layers!

Sorry to be that guy that points out spelling mistakes. I believe you wanted to say “commercial” instead of the “commertial” that you have.

Or House of Lies. That show was way closer to the truth about consulting than most would care to admit.

Now that is an interesting thought. They could incriminate party members and government officials to sow distrust in the ranks.

Having seen though how certain groups of the population have been dealt with in China does make me wonder if they would not just round everyone up and send them for “re-education”.

I honestly see it going the other way. Deepfakes being used to create fake material that falsely incriminates someone. So if they have the biometrics of an account on file already, they would match a fake video circulating the service to that account and presto you are on a watch list.

That has nothing to do with their perception of risk regarding surveillance.

The supporters of the AfD view the current establishment as their main enemy and it has everything to do with their views on migration.

If the AfD was openly campaigning to introduce surveillance laws those same areas would not be in favour of them.

(At least that is what I have come to understand about them as a foreigner living in Germany)

Yes that is all well and good, until that "content" and its message also starts being dictated by whomever is in charge of the government.

All of these things always sound like a great idea when you have good people in government. However almost everyone seem to forget that bad people do get into government too.

Having governments dictate or force quotas and determining content always ends up biting the people in the long run.

In the UK that is what is known as Contracting. It definitely sounds right for the OP.

You typically get your contracts through recruiters and they typically last 3 to 6 months (sometimes longer). No sales and hustling, just doing your tech work and keeping up to date in your field.

I completely agree. It is high time people realise that a business that does not bring in profit is not a real business.

You cannot hedge your city’s job security on startups of whom the vast majority can’t survive without venture capital. It is as if people in tech have forgotten about the 2000 crash.

For a city like Berlin there will be a whole load of hurt when funding dries up. It simply is not in the city’s best interest, in my opinion, to put all its hope in having startups create all their jobs.

+1 As someone that moved to Germany 8 months ago the biggest shock is the sort of culture being cultivated in the work place.

German culture in the work place is hierarchical and extremely "old school" in my experience. Yes I know you hear about all the "cool" startups in Berlin but they are the exception and need to conform at some point if they want to do business with larger organizations that actually have money.

There is a wealth of talent here but this talent simply does not fit the "desired" culture. I would go as far as saying that hacker culture is the complete opposite of what the average German company wants to deal with.

You are in for a shock when you start dealing with the government departments here. They make the private companies look like bastions of liberalism. I could write a book about my experiences dealing with different government departments and agencies.

If Germany wants to attract talent (or start making use of home grown talent) they need to start accepting that these people do not want to fit the mould.

Hi I have been working in this field (and some of the previous incarnations of it) for quite a while. I would be happy to have a discussion to give some pointers and relay some experience if you want.

My email and keybase.io is in my profile so feel free to get in touch.

This, a million times this!!! I see people doing consulting promoting the most over engineered solutions I have ever seen. Doing it for data that is a few hundred GB or maybe at best a TB.

It makes me want to cry, knowing we handled that with a single server and a relational database 10 years ago.

Lets also not forget that everyone today forgets that the majority of data actually has some sort of structure. There is no point in pretending that every piece of data is a BLOB or a JSON document.

I have given up on our industry ever becoming sane, I now fully expect each hype cycle to be pushed to the absolute maximum. Only to be replaced by the next buzzword cycle when the current starts failing to deliver on promises.

This is fantastic! Love the poetry and optimism.

I highly doubt that all employees are going to be paid that highly.

The majority of tech jobs in Berlin does not pay even close to €90k per year. That is the problem with averages. You have a few people earning loads and the rest on much lower income. It would be much better to look at the Median income in Berlin.

Out of interest, where in Berlin were the rents so cheap? I recently moved to the Berlin area and found rents to be on par with London for a 3 bedroom place.

I have been visiting Berlin for the better part of 8 years and I am astounded at the increase I have seen in living costs. Food and entertainment has also gone WAY up.

In my opinion Berlin is by no means the "cheap" city that it once was. When you combine that with the average salary in Berlin being lower than in other big German cities (and a lot lower than London) then it has become a real issue as of late for most people.

Exactly. It seems that everyone forgets that it is never a problem until unsavory people get into power. At that point it is too late.

Unfortunately too few people building these systems seem to know history well enough to realise the apparatus they are building can also be taken over by entities they are today completely opposed to. We are still exactly the same species that have given birth to the Stasi and other oppressive forces.

It would be good if people built their solutions with this in mind. Build defensively and with your users' privacy in mind from the start.

I find it very hard to understand why they have not done this yet. I am even willing to sacrifice on the upgradability, since this is a sacrifice we have been making by default in recent years. But not being able to select a 32GB RAM option is just terrible.

At the price of a Macbook Pro one can hardly argue that it is a office productivity tool since it is clearly aimed at the "Pro" market. If the situation does not change then it is going to force pro users to look at alternatives.

It is not your inner-millenial, there are many people that feel this way. Christmas parties in general give me the creeps. I would also prefer a Christmas bonus instead of needing to talk to colleagues that slowly (sometimes not so slowly) get inebriated and make some form of fools of themselves.

Christmas parties feel forced to me. A legacy of time gone by that people cling to for some reason.

I definitely agree with you and this particular dark road is best left untraveled.

It would be really great to get more data behind what is mostly anecdotal evidence. Also getting data from across the US and other countries would be very useful in understanding this better. Without the data it is too easy to go down the dark path.

> I don't think it's ageism if one person is selected based on being willing to work more for less money. That's just a labor market.

Agreed, however very few ever come out and says that so directly. In a lot of cases the reasons are given as not having the right "cultural fit", or being "over qualified" or some other excuse because the person hiring cannot stomach it to simply say "we want cheap resources that we can work to the bone".

No one should feel like they need to perform the equivalent of slave labour in order to get a job. 20-somethings should not have to work 80 hour weeks. Allowing them the free time to pursue their interests will make them better employees.

This mythology leads directly to horribly created software that will either ensure many terrible security breaches in the future or the continued proliferation of "magic" throughout a product.

One of the issues is using the word "engineer" for any of the brogrammer types. an engineer in any other proper engineering discipline does not become worthless with age, their experience actually counts for something.

Somehow we have confused people who stitch together software from pieces of "magic" that they do not understand with engineers.

The work I did in my 20s cannot even begin to compare with what I am doing today in my 30s. Those years of experience really makes a massive difference.

It is time people are honest about ageism and simply states the real reason they prefer fresh grad or 20-something brogrammers. It normally boils down to those people being willing to work longer hours for less money. At least in most of the cases of ageism that I have seen.

This is definitely a very legitimate fear and one which I share. I believe that given the changes made in the UK public sector for the 2016/2017 tax year this threat is ever increasing.

You are absolutely correct in laying the blame at successive governments that refuse to make the law clear. Companies such as Uber and Deliveroo do not help the case as they are seen as the examples of how the term freelancer can be abused. Unfortunately I doubt that those in government care to make the distinction between this abuse of the system and genuine IT contractors.

I have had a similar experience once with UPS. To cut a long story short they really messed up, relabelling someone else's package with my address and this package was payment on delivery, which I paid. Trying to get them to come and pick up the package they relabelled in error and refund me for the payment was an absolute nightmare.

Many calls to the call centre and 2 days later I had enough. No amount of asking to speak to a manager or anyone I spoke to managed to resolve the situation. I found the email address of the CEO of UPS on https://www.ceoemail.com/ and proceeded to write him an email explaining the issue, the effort I have made to try to resolve it as well as the incompetence and inability of the staff to resolve the problem. Note this email was very professional and stuck to the facts, the only emotional bit maybe being me highlighting that I honestly expected better from a company such as UPS.

I did not expect anything to happen honestly. However 15 minutes later I received a reply from him saying it will get taken care of. 20 minutes later the manager of the distribution centre that caused the problem gave me a phone call apologising. 2 hours later a driver came to pick up the parcel and refund me the money I paid in error. I received 2 more calls from the distribution manager and that person provided their personal contact number in case I ever have any issues again.

I personally do not like going the social media route by default. I would only consider it if I have exhausted all other options and am honestly left with no other choice which seems to be the situation you were in and that is completely understandable. Maybe give the CEO email option a try next time as I believe your success was due to someone high up being forced to recognise your issue. If that then fails I would hit the social media option for sure.

You are most welcome. You are correct, I did not include them in the personal income you receive as I have created the example in the way you would do your tax return calculation. So the expenses are deducted from your company profit before tax as it is your company that is incurring the expenses.

You do get reimbursed for those expenses if you make them via your own credit or debit card, otherwise if you use a company card for them you will never have that money touch your own bank account. I do agree that you benefit from being able to use "before tax" money to pay for some of your expenses.

The tricky thing about expenses is that not everything is allowed to be deducted as an expense. If for example you take your client out for a meal and a few drinks and you account for that as Business Entertaining, that amount is not eligible for tax relief and thus you cannot deduct that from your profits to reduce your company's taxable income. It will then get taxed at the company level.

What I am trying to show is that the argument that Freelancers in the UK "avoid" paying tax compared to permanent employees is not true anymore. Yes we do have the ability to plan our tax better. However there seems to be this idea from permanent employees that freelancers are paying only 10% income tax when that really is not the case. There is a slight benefit, and from the above example a little more than £1000. Obviously there are other options and scenarios with spouses being made directors of the company etc. But it is hardly reducing your tax to the 7% achieved by Apple.

One also takes a lot bigger risk since personal injury, illness and non-paying clients do have the ability to derail your earnings in a really big way. If you get the flu and are out for a week that hurts. Or heaven forbid you have an accident and are unable to work for a few months while recovering.

Most of the freelancers I know do it because of the freedom and flexibility they get out of it, not because there are substantial tax advantages.

I would be very interested to hear your thoughts after you have run the numbers yourself.

You are correct on both of the points you raise.

The example was simplistic by taking all of the dividends out to make it a straightforward comparison with a salaried employee who also has to take all of their and thus do not get to defer their tax.

Being able to choose when you pay tax is one of the biggest advantages of working through a UK Ltd company. But by choosing when you pay you hardly avoid paying tax. The bill will be due sooner or later.

As for legal ways to reduce the corporation tax you pay, I would love to hear more as the options I know of would be to setup pension contributions or doing a voluntary liquidation. (which is only an option for the day you decide to stop contracting as you are not allowed to be a director of a UK limited company for 2 years after completing the liquidation)

Every contractor accountant I have spoken with has given the same advice. So if what you are doing is legal I would be interested to hear who your accountant is.

Always remember that your accountant won't be the one that HMRC comes after if you followed dodgy advice.

But have you done the calculation on option 2 to see what you will end up paying in tax (Both corporate as well as personal income tax) when you do pay out those dividends?

You will realise that you have not "avoided" any tax really compared to a normal salaried employee due to not being able to reduce your corporation tax in the way other big organisations do.

Accountants make it sound really good but when you get down to the actual tax being paid you are not saving much, if any given the new rules implemented in the last couple of years.

Have a look at the example that I have shown as a reply to your parent comment. I would be very interested to hear your take on this.

Accountants keep on recommending this method for some reason but honestly if you do the tax calculations yourself you realise that you are not much better off.

It used to be the case that you were better off but the last 5 years the options for UK limited Company contractors have been reduced to a point where the running costs of the company combined with the taxes bring you to effectively the same amount of tax paid as a permanent employee.

That is a common misconception due to tax law changes in recent years. It used to be the case that a UK contractor paying themselves through this structure was significantly better off due to the large amount of dividend tax credits that were available.

So let me outline how this works these days as I run up against this argument a lot.

1) Any income that comes into the UK Ltd company is taxed at the corporate tax rate which as of this year is 19%. 1.1) This tax is paid on profit so if you pay yourself a normal salary out of this you will deduct this from the profits. Take note that dividends are NOT deductible from company profits before tax and as such is not a way for you to reduce your tax liability as a UK company. Dividends are only payable from after taxed money in your UK Ltd company. 1.2) Any expenses your company has in providing its services are deducted from profits. There is a misconception that you can write off A LOT of expenses but in actual fact that is not true. There are strict guide lines. Most of these expenses are also only valid if you are truly outside of IR35. Once you fall inside of it your allowed expenses decrease even more.

The above leaves you with your taxable company profit on which you pay your 19% corporation tax. (This is the tax that are being circumvented in the article by big companies.)

So now you as a UK Freelancer you now get the opportunity to pay yourself money from your UK Ltd company. You are then subjected to the following personal income tax: 1) Your tax free allowance as an individual is applied so you pay no tax on the first £11500 of income. 2) The first £5000 of dividends are also tax free. (remember this money has already been taxed at 19% in your corporation tax so is hardly free) 3) All other dividends that you then pay out to yourself are taxed as per the different tax brackets set out for personal income tax on dividends. (Again remember that 19% tax has already been paid on the this money before you can distribute it to yourself.)

So lets look at an example: - Lets say that as a contractor you work for 10 months (42 weeks) out of the year at £500 per day. We also assume you have no problem in getting your clients to pay (a real risk in certain industries). That leaves you with 210 days that you bill at £500 per day. 210 * 500 = £105000 which is your income coming into the company before deducting allowed expenses. - Lets now say you are not inside IR35 and you can claim travel and subsistence against this amount. That normally works out at around £500 per month of expenses you can deduct. (We assume you have already bought your equipment that you use on site etc.) - You also need to pay your accountant, which does not work for free, the going rate in London is around £130 per month - You now pay yourself a small salary up to the allowed personal allowance for the year of £11500

Your total corporate taxable income is now as follows: 105,000 -1,560 (Accountancy fees £130 x 12 months) -5,000 (£500 expenses for the 10 months of billable work) -11,500 (salary of around £958 per month for the 12 months of the financial year) =86,940 (This is the amount you pay corporation tax on) -16,518.60 (The amount of corporation tax you pay at 19% on the above £86940) =70,421.40 (This is the amount you can now distribute to yourself in dividends)

So now your personal income tax looks as follows: 11,500 (Salary received up to tax free allowance and tax of 0%) 5,000 (Dividends with 0% tax allowance) 65,421.40 (Remaining dividends that you are taxed) -14,136 (Tax levied on the 65,421.40 dividends that are taxable, combination of the different tax bracket rates on HMRC website.) =67,785.40 (Income you receive after tax)

So on £105,000.00 of earned income as a freelancer you end up paying £30,654.60 of income taxation (Corporation and Personal tax).

If you were a normal salaried employee you would pay £31,696.40 on £105,000 salary. (www.listentotaxman.com)

So I would argue it is hardly tax avoidance and if I take into account the risk I take as a freelancer then I am hardly working through a UK Ltd company to avoid tax. Most people still believe that the same rules of the 90's apply to UK ltd companies and freelancing but it is simply not the case.

Please do check the above with your accountant to confirm as this is not financial advise and I am not an accountant. However there are really not many options for avoiding paying tax as a UK freelancer. Keep in mind that the £5k dividend tax free allowance is also being reduced to only £2k from 2018 onward.

It is honestly a really tough point to argue with people. It becomes even worse when the person you are arguing with is in the fortunate position of having a good income and no current true worries. I used to be one of those people that believed that tax is theft until I have seen how quickly your situation can change due to unforeseen circumstance. A close family member got a terminal medical diagnosis and was the main source of income for the family. The person lived an exceptionally healthy life and got diagnosed with a condition for which they exhibited none of the normal risk factors.

At that point where your survivor biased gets challenged by real hard hitting life events your illusions are shattered. I never wish anyone to experience the same, but I do wish more people can be made to realise that paying tax to look after those services that look after us all when life goes horribly wrong is actually worth it! (And that includes the corporations that benefit from having a fit and healthy workforce and consumer base)

While I appreciate the sentiment it is time to start taking a more global look at these antics of companies.

I run my own company in the UK and I know for a fact that apple makes a massive amount of money selling in this country.

Now as a small business owner I am taxed at 20% on corporate profit. (19% going forward now due to a tax cut in corporate rates introduced during the last financial year). You then also get taxed on any dividends you pay out to yourself as the owner of that company according to normal income tax rates, (Sure you get a £5000 dividend tax free allowance but after that you are on normal income tax bracket rates).

There is simply NO way for me to change this. I pay my taxes each year diligently, otherwise I end up in jail.

However massive companies that make billion in revenue from countries get to play the tax game and effective pay percentage wise a LOT less than small businesses in the UK while benefiting from the infrastructure provided and paid for by public funds that they contribute very little to. That infrastructure includes the Healthcare and Education system. Both which are under constant stress due to under funding.

I am not for high taxation but I surely am for everyone paying their fare share. The employees working for these companies pay many times more tax on their salaries compared to what the corporation pays on its profits. At some point this vampire squid behaviour of extracting out of a country without helping fund the infrastructure that helped make it be a successful market cannot continue. This behaviour also gives me VERY little hope that AI and Automation will ever lead to the benefit of but a select few. /<rant>