Swinx43

One needs to remember that there are many more factors at play. Sometimes the only place you can afford a decent size family home will be in an area with lower wages. Hence it can make economical sense to have to take a higher paying job that requires travel in order to afford to provide for your family.

There are many factors at play in such decisions. "Having a choice" is something you do not always have depending on personal circumstances.

These are points that I have found to be true as well. In many organisations where remote work is not allowed I found there to be generally worse communication, masked by meetings that achieve very little other than giving people a false sense of "work being done".

There also seems to be a lack of properly planning tasks and as such this lack of planning is papered over with the sort of serendipitous spontaneous communication that happens when you have to walk over to someone and ask them what on earth is going on.

A focused remote worker can be orders of magnitude more productive than the typical office worker who is simply doing "busy work".

Absolutely love it!

Sorry about that. I have added it. Feel free to send me an email and I will get in touch asap.

I get what you are saying. There are plenty of sub par contractors out there. Unfortunately there are just as many sub par permanent employees and consulting firms.

I have seen terrible disasters developed by every single sort of person. The issue normally comes when we as developers seem more interested in doing "clever" things at the expense of making sure we code for maintainability and support ability.

Combine the above with a large part of our community being terrible at communicating and you have a recipe for confusion and chaos.

I would be happy to give some assistance and guidance if you would like. Get in touch with me, my email is in my profile.

I agree with your assessment of being a contractor in the UK. I work as an IT contractor in the UK as well and have been a permanent employee before that.

Permanent members of staff seldom get the same money as skilled contractors and have to put up with a lot more restrictions around holiday and work life balance.

I would equate a contractor in the UK to being the equivalent experience of being a consultant without the politics and drama that comes with it. I have worked for almost a decade as a consultant in different countries and much prefer being a contractor to that.

Promotions seem to normally equate to more responsibility with a meagre if at all pay increase for permanent members of staff. People forget that there is only 1 CTO in an organisation, not everyone can ever get to that level. Most get stuck in middle management hell doing unfulfilling jobs.

This! A million times this! We seem exceptionally good at marginalising those in society that need normality the most. It boggles the mind that in the year 2017 we seem to still not be able to strike a balance between our humanity and profit.

You cannot treat someone like an outcast and sub human and expect them to recover into being fully functioning human beings again after such trauma.

Sorry but those are definitely not what counts as nice areas in London. I also doubt you would find something for £600 in some of those areas today.

Fantastic, thank you very much for replying. It is true that Berlin is much better than London at that salary range. The average London tech job really doesn't pay enough to have as nice a life in London as you can have in Berlin for the same money.

I would be very interested to hear your view on how the contracting market is in Berlin.

I am really liking contracting. It is just a different way of working compared to permanent but I prefer it. I am ex consulting so like the ability to have new projects / clients on a 3 to 6 month basis. It also allows for a lot of freedom.

One thing to remember though is that those day rates do get taxed pretty much the same as a permanent job if you pay all your earnings out to yourself. The tax laws have closed a lot of the loop holes.

I would be very happy to discuss contracting further if you were interested. Drop me an email if you want.

Same here. I would love to find those remote gigs at that price. I am contracting in London in the data space and would jump at the opportunity to work remotely for that amount.

There definitely is a very real salary ceiling in the tech world in London.

Just out of interest where do you find a decent apartment in London to rent for £600 or to buy at a mortgage repayment that low?

From my experience that is definitely not possible.

Healthcare is definitely not "free" in Germany. In fact it is quite high compared to the UK. If you are a freelancer in Germany you will have a relatively large upfront cost compared to say freelancing in the UK.

Bring on top of that the Germany tax rates and you will quickly be taking less home than in say the UK.

Rents are also not as low as it previously was. It has steadily been rising and buying a place is also out of the question now given how the property market has performed in Berlin.

Don't get me wrong, I love Germany and have personal connections to it but one needs to take everything into account when you make a move to a new city.

Yes London is definitely off the table due to exactly that reason.

That is exactly why I am asking. When I investigated Berlin I was rather surprised by how low the wages are.

Out of interest which European tech hub did you move to? Berlin? I am currently looking at making a move and would love to hear some first hand experience of the tech hubs in Europe that people have moved to.

For immigration purposes you will definitely need to do an English language test. A lot of these tests, language and otherwise, are actually done at private companies. As long as they are accredited with the government they can administer it.

It might be worth mentioning what some of those issues are, otherwise it just sounds like FUD.

While I appreciate your view of simply brushing it off I would really hope that someone would pay me the common courtesy of letting me know when people are spoofing or spamming from a domain I own.

Thank you very much for that information. I was wondering what one can do if the email address is actually spoofed and not coming from the domain it seems to.

Thank you very much for the information.

Thank you very much. I will definitely check it out.

Thank you very much for the help. This is a great help. I really like those changes you suggest and I will make those amendments.

Yes that is true, I have never known anyone that was called out on this. However I am sure if an invention becomes popular and really valuable that some organisations, espcially big ones, would not hesitate to give it a try.

That is fantastic to hear! I am also in the UK and every single contract I have signed was accompanied with clauses basically stating that the company owns anything I create while I am employed by them. This includes anything outside of work as well. I believe this is the standard terms for UK contracts. I was lucky in getting my current employer to add an addendum to my contract giving me certain exclusions to this clause, it was however a process to get it past their legal department.

No not at all. If you work as an IT contractor of his calibre you need to assume some personal responsibility for your own finances. If you cannot do that then you cannot cry foul when life throws you a curve ball.

This has nothing to do with someone that is poor or someone caught in poverty and the poverty trap.

Please provide a better argument than making things out to be so simple as poor and not poor. I grew up in the third world, was poor, got an education and built my life. Your comment truly disgusts me as it trivialises poverty and makes it out as if we have no choice in our lot in life.

While this really is a terrible situation I have the following questions:

1. You are clearly working as a contractor, this requires a lot of financial discipline, why do you not have enough runway saved up to deal with this? From personal experience working as a contractor I always ensured I had 6+ months worth of runway.

2. This title inflation is really scary. You are not the CxO of anything if you are a contractor. Unless you mean you are the CxO of your own company through which you contract. However even then the way you conflate your own position in your own company and the role you fulfilled at the client does not inspire confidence.

It is truly terrible that you are in this situation and it is honestly a very horrible thing for this company to do. Either way if it does not breach the contract they have with you then there is nothing illegal about it.

At some point we all need to take a very long hard look at ourselves and realise that crying foul when the wheels come off life is not the answer. People set themselves up to not be able to absorb the terrible things that can happen in life. Some general advice that should serve anyone that is contracting well is:

1. Don't live above your means! 2. Save at least enough money to carry you through 1 year of living expenses should you lose your current contract. 3. Always keep a close eye on the contract market and move contracts regularly. That keeps you interview fit and aware of current demand. 4. Realise that life is not fair and plan for it! Not only do you sometimes get terminated by an employer (rightly or wrongly as they might simply not need your service anymore) but you could have an accident tomorrow that puts you out of work for months. (Believe me I have had such an accident and if I did not follow rules 1 and 2 I would have not been able to relax and recover fully before needing to rush back to work)

Best of luck and I hope that the lessons of this experience does not pass you by.

I have previously had a great experience with the LG G3. Its battery would last me at least 2 days with basic use and definitely an entire day even with quite considerable use.

I have no idea what the G5 or G6 will be like.

I think your approach definitely has value and can most certainly work. If you make enough from current contracts in 10 months it definitely is possible to set 2 months aside for learning new tech and not feel financial strain.

Having no dependents also help and I am also in the fortunate position to not have any big financial commitments. The difficulty I find is in consciously setting aside 2+ months. Physiologically I always feel like I need to work while there is work available. Thus I am contributing to my own problem instead of solving it.