Tag: work

Happenings

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

I’m not at all happy with the weather the past few days. I tried running this morning and it was absolutely horrible.

Parkrun is back at the weekend but I don’t think I’ll be doing it. The COVID case numbers are shooting up very quickly, which puts me off. It seems like Parkrun has promised to return a number of times and then didn’t, but ironically now it looks like they’re actually going to do it, it’s happening at a time when there’s a higher chance of contracting COVID than any time previously.

I phoned the recruiter and said I was happy to progress. The next stage is to wait for the employer to send everything through. I’m not used to such a slow process! And it’s playing on my anxiety. Apparently they do some kind of background checking. The recruiter told me there would be a credit check (why?!) and a criminal record check. I’ve never had to deal with this for a job before so I don’t know what to expect. From my research it appears it will be the basic DBS check, because my role is not eligible for the standard or enhanced checks.

But since I’ve never done this and don’t know what to expect then I guess I should wait until this clears before actually handing in my notice? Obviously, I’m worrying I’ll fail the background check despite there being no reason I should. I’m worrying about references too. I’m sure my current employer will be fine, but the previous one… I have low expectations of them. I keep telling myself that they would gain nothing by starting a fight with me and potentially exposing themselves to a hefty lost earnings lawsuit, but eh. What if they just refused to give a reference? Thanks, anxiety.

Have a little faith

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

So, they have offered it to me after all. The recruiter phoned me Friday afternoon. I’ve said I’ll think about it over the weekend, but I’m pretty happy.

The only downside is the 40 hours vs 37.5, but as it’ll be mostly remote I’m OK with that. Everything else is either the same or better. A big thing is that they are using more modern technology, meaning I’ve solved the problem I would have if I stayed here for a few years, which is that the technology we use is rapidly approaching legacy status if it hasn’t got there already. The treadmill of technology…

I’m pleased with the salary. My employer gave me a 5% pay rise recently, and only because I complained that I hadn’t had one for over a year and a half (after being contractually promised a review after six months). He said (very unnecessarily) that most other companies weren’t doing pay rises with the uncertainty of the pandemic and he assured me that the raise he gave me was ahead of the average. The new job is a 23% raise.

The thing that stands out for me is that when I interviewed there, he asked how much I was making and then told me I was underpaid and offered a small raise over that. I’m sure he thinks this saves him money, but how much is it going to cost to replace me? Far more than what he’s saved. Whereas this new job didn’t ask how much I was making, they just made an offer based on their perception of my value.

So next week it will be formalised and I’ll give my notice. I’m not sure if my employer will counter-offer. I’d like to think they would, but they’re going to look a bit silly suddenly magicking up some extra money that supposedly wasn’t there before. Like Theresa May’s magic money tree. I think that they’ve burnt my trust enough on the financial side that I’m not open to counter-offers. Plus, the new job’s experience will be more valuable for my long term career value.

Uncertainty…

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I’ve had no interview feedback today which surprises me. Pretty much every time I’ve come out of an interview thinking they’ll offer it to me, they do indeed offer it to me and usually very quickly afterwards. I feel a bit unsettled to have not heard anything. However, it is a larger firm than I’m used to dealing with and large firms tend to move slower.

I don’t think I actually mind whether or not I get the job. If I get every job I go for then that just means I’m not aiming high enough. And equally, I’m not in a rush and this job isn’t perfect. If I don’t get it, there will be another comparable one along at some point. Either outcome is fine.

And yet I have been quite stressed again today. I’ve also been very hungry. Since I haven’t been running much lately I haven’t been getting hungry, but I guess anxiety will do that too.

I’ve been trying to force my body to relax a bit more. I spent the afternoon working on my laptop…. while laying in bed. It helps!

Interview

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

The interview went well, or at least I think it did. At the risk of sounding arrogant I think they will make me an offer. The question is: will I accept it? It’s 40 hours a week vs my current 37.5, but I’m happy enough with everything else that as long as the salary fairly reflects the extra hours I’ll probably accept. I guess there are a few big ifs in there. If they offer it to me, and if they go up to the top end of their salary range.

I feel like I’m jumping the gun a bit though. After I went through it all in my own head a few days ago I think that staying put for the moment is probably the right strategy. I can afford to see how things play out with my current employer, and maybe that’s even preferable. So if nothing comes of this, I probably won’t apply for anything else just yet.

I can’t believe how stressed my body has been today. The interview was this morning, but my heart rate stayed above 70 all afternoon. That’s crazy.

Popularity

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

I have two interviews this coming week. One is the second interview from the phone interview I did a few days ago. I misunderstood when he said technical test – it’s actually a ‘collaborative’ coding/technical test thing done there and then inside the interview. That’s good as it really is time limited to 45 minutes, but bad because, well, I’ve never done that before in an interview setting. Which is funny. It’s a test designed to show I can do what I’ve been doing every day for the past decade, and I’m worried I might not be able to do well on it because I’ve never done it before.

The other interview is a phone interview. It’s come via the same agency – when she phoned me to tell me about the second interview, she threw this one in there and said “I’ll send you through a spec, and get back to me if you’re interested”. Less than two hours later, her boss emailed me to say “great news, they want to interview you! Are you free Monday?”. Well, I didn’t actually say I was interested and I haven’t looked at the spec yet, but…

I’m not sure about this one at all. I would have filtered myself out if I’d seen the spec published as an advert. They are looking for Umbraco experience, which I don’t have. I don’t get why they’ve written a spec saying Umbraco experience is a must, and then they see my CV and instantly want to interview me. The other thing is that the software they make is for online gambling. That’s a very exploitative industry. On the other hand, how many employers don’t exploit people?

I would have skipped it even if they hadn’t asked for Umbraco experience, though. Umbraco is a content management system (like WordPress) and if your technical problem looks like a CMS… Well, I’m not sure you’re going to keep me interested for long. But we’ll see

Interview…

~ e.v. ~ 4 Comments

I had an interview today. It went OK I think. I got really nervous about it, but I don’t know why. I also got really nervous about seeing the physio last week, because…? The tablets make me more functional when I’m nervous but I’m not sure they reduce the nerves at all.

He asked me some technical questions, and I got the hard ones right and the easy ones wrong (duh). Not because I didn’t know the answer, just because I’m not used to having to suddenly remember and regurgitate obscure technical trivia over the phone. I’m not too worried because I was able to speak in depth on the harder stuff. Apparently the next stage is a technical test, which is usually where I look at it and go “I’m not spending the next week doing this!”, but we’ll see. He said it would be about 45 minutes, which is reasonable… assuming this estimate bears any relation to reality (big if).

I’m not too sure what I think at the moment. The recruiter told me it would be predominantly remote, in the office around once a month. But the interviewer had other ideas and said they were thinking of it being more of a hybrid role with 2-3 days a week in the office. The plus side is that it’s within walking distance (just about), so 2-3 days in the office there is much better than 2-3 days in the office at my current employer. But that’s not really the right comparison, is it?

Freedom?

~ e.v. ~ 1 Comment

So apparently we’re out of lockdown and most restrictions disappear on the 19th, or two weeks today. In the same press conference, the Government predicted that cases will rise to about 50,000 per day by the end of the month. I think this is completely bonkers.

But what I’m most concerned about is the removal of the work from home guidance. Personally I like working from home, but, ignoring that, I’ve only had one vaccine dose so far. So I’m definitely not getting on a train before I’ve had two doses. And even after that… I just can’t see myself commuting regularly. Commuting is horrible and while there may exist pleasant offices, my employer’s is not one of them. My ‘office’ at home is a hundred times nicer than an open plan office.

I don’t know whether my employer will start pushing for me to come back to the office, but he was starting to talk about it when we did salary review a few weeks ago.

I re-arranged my ‘office’ over the weekend so I feel ready to start interviewing again. I’ve been getting inundated by recruiters lately, so I went back through the last few days’ email. I found and replied to six that looked potentially promising.

Breathe again…

~ e.v. ~ 3 Comments

So I got a reply to my email and the end result is I’m getting a 5% pay rise from July, which is my 2020 pay rise, and there’s a 2021 pay rise to come. So it’s a good outcome, but I am still somewhat underwhelmed because the 2020 pay rise should be backdated to, well, 2020.

Anyway, it puts me in a better position to start interviewing again now. I read today that the number of vacancies is currently at the highest point since the pandemic hit, so it’s as good a time as any.

I found this highly stressful and I’m glad it’s over now 🙄

I booked an appointment with a running clinic nearby for next week. Unfortunately I had the dreaded numbness in my toes this morning when running so I just decided to get on with it, like I was considering doing the last time around. Apparently they do proper gait analysis, and the practitioner is a runner with a (super fast) 1:10 half marathon time, so I think it’ll be an interesting experience even if they don’t actually fix the problem. I don’t know if there really is a fix for the problem other than a neurectomy (where they surgically remove the end of the nerve), but that doesn’t make sense at the moment since all I’m getting is a phase of numbness every few months, which is obviously better than the permanent numbness that the surgery would leave me with.

I’ve been feeling it slightly for the past few days, but it’s been very minor. A slight loss in sensation is just an odd vague feeling that you wonder if you’re imagining, but today it was getting towards proper numbness. The weird thing is though that it seems to come on after about ten minutes of running, but then a little while later it improves. That seems a bit strange if it’s purely a nerve compression issue. That sounds more like a muscle warming up.

Anyway, my left leg feels like it doesn’t work quite as well as my right. At this very moment the left side of my bottom is aching, and the left ankle always seems a bit stiffer than the right. And I get a few twinges of plantar fasciitis in my left heel every so often at the moment. So hopefully he will say “at yes, you’re a bit unbalanced” and figure out how to rectify it.

Emails are hard

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

I didn’t send that email this morning after all… I felt too stressed about it. I’ve had a week off, it’s really hot and I haven’t slept well, and I did a lot of running last week. The thought of having to spend all day working was bad enough, without sending it and then having to deal with the outcome, so I just didn’t.

But I told my mum and she got a bit grumpy with me. I’d already talked about it with her and she’d suggested some wording. She thinks I should be hassling them and that it’s pretty bad I’ve been here for a year and a half without a pay rise. She’s right…

I checked my offer letter and contract yesterday and it’s not quite so clear as I thought. I was definitely told verbally at the interview that I’d have a review at six months then annually thereafter. But the offer letter actually says my first review will be “scheduled after six months from my start date”, which is the same words but arranged in such an order as to have no meaning. The word “after” makes for awkward English and makes the timescale completely unbounded. It’s obvious what I’m supposed to understand from it, but it’s not obvious what their intention was in writing it. Is it just clumsy phrasing or do they think they’re being clever? Probably the former, but the fact they haven’t delivered on it makes me wonder.

I chickened out of dealing with it today but I did send the email before I logged off, so it’s done. In the end I revised it to be more simple. I just said “It was my understanding that blah blah blah….did I misunderstand this?”. Which is just as effective, I suppose.

Plans

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

I’m off work this week, but I’ve decided that next week is the week! The week to start making moves. It was always my plan, at least for the last couple of months, to not do anything before this week off so as to avoid being stressed during it. Next week I will email the MD about my very overdue salary reviews. I think the phrasing will be something along the lines of “While I’m enjoying working here, I’m sure you understand that it’s important to me that my salary remains fair and market rate….” and then refer to my contract which says I’m entitled to an adjustment effective from May 2020, and another from May 2021. It’s fair and factual and doesn’t assume malice but it will set out my position that I haven’t forgotten and I’m not going to let it slide.

But really this is just the first stage. The second stage is starting to interview elsewhere again. I could just do that in parallel or instead of, but if I end up negotiating a salary elsewhere using my current salary as a baseline then I want that baseline to be as high as possible.

I don’t really know what to expect here. It’s possible that as soon as I mention salary they’ll find a reason to get rid of me, and the reason I’m concerned about this is that they’ve got rid of two other people since I started, under strange circumstances. I don’t think this is likely and I think it would be extraordinarily stupid as they are currently in violation of the written contract, but it’s a possibility. But I also don’t expect much positivity either. I mean, I don’t think it’s an accident that we are where we are. So I’m expecting that anything they offer will be more of a token gesture to satisfy the contract rather than a genuine effort to be fair and competitive. I guess my feelings are prejudiced by my last employer, so maybe I’ll be proved wrong.

But how they respond to it is up to them, not me.