What would you do in this situation?

[djones123]

The initial message was deleted from this topic on 12 March 2016 at 17:27

[BS30]

Only you know if the role is right for you. Chances are if you're posting on here asking, it doesn't grab you as an 'I love it!' type of role/challenge.

That extra £6k means probably about £250-£300 or so extra in your pocket per month - how big a difference will that make to your day to day life? That's a consideration in addition to potential for progression (role and money) at the new place as it sounds like there's none where you are now.

Then there is also the flexibility aspect - although it has no cash value, full flexi time is a big winner in my book.

[SoupAnxiety]

The migration project may turn into a fire fighting project, with the "migration" becoming the usual "bodge the new system" or even "just make the current system a bit better". The pay is better and local has its own perks but as above it's a trade off with flexi. It sounds like you'll be moving from one job with drawbacks to another. The best job I've had as a developer in terms of rewarding / fulfilling work was at a startup on bugger all money but whizzbang technology and an excellent team. Mature software is great for employment security / stability, pay tends to be better and the rest but putting up with spaghetti code and a PITA legacy system needs a few sweeteners (pay may or may not be enough).

[pbg2770]

Personally, that kind of uplift wouldn't make the move worthwhile. You and they have to price in the risk of moving to a new environment.

Any other incentives? Share scheme? Equity?

[djones123]

pbg2770 said:

Personally, that kind of uplift wouldn't make the move worthwhile. You and they have to price in the risk of moving to a new environment.

Any other incentives? Share scheme? Equity?

No.

I met CEO this morning and discussed about my concerns. He showed me the road map of new development and assured me that my focus will be on new development and other developers will carry on fixing bugs in old legacy application.
I have tried to negotiate the salary but he is willing to increase the holiday allowance from 20 to 25 and will do the salary review next year.

[SoupAnxiety]

djones123 said:

No.

I met CEO this morning and discussed about my concerns. He showed me the road map of new development and assured me that my focus will be on new development and other developers will carry on fixing bugs in old legacy application.
I have tried to negotiate the salary but he is willing to increase the holiday allowance from 20 to 25 and will do the salary review next year.

If it's likely to become a big / notable product it could be worth jumping ship for future CV fluff. "Lead of team which built SuperApp".

[russ_a]

I would normally say go contracting but....

[Terminator X]

The grass is generally always greener. I'd leave.

TX.

[Ynox]

djones123 said:

I have tried to negotiate the salary but he is willing to increase the holiday allowance from 20 to 25 and will do the salary review next year.

That's pretty crap for a tech role! All bar one role I've had have been 25+ days (current one is 27). Don't use a promise of a salary review as part of your decision either - if it happens, great, but these things tend to not happen quite often.

As for legacy stuff - it's not great, but it's not bad. I do enough legacy coding in my day to day role - e.g. EJB 2 stuff. Equally I also work on more modern platforms. Both bring their own challenges and we are slowly improving the legacy platform (hopefully it'll be going eventually - we'll see!).

Full flexible working like you say - e.g. 11am starts have got to be worth more than £6k a year really. I've got a degree of flexibility - e.g. I'm working from home today, but if I said I'd start at 11 people would rightly so tell me to ps off!

[djones123]

Ynox said:

That's pretty crap for a tech role! All bar one role I've had have been 25+ days (current one is 27). Don't use a promise of a salary review as part of your decision either - if it happens, great, but these things tend to not happen quite often.

As for legacy stuff - it's not great, but it's not bad. I do enough legacy coding in my day to day role - e.g. EJB 2 stuff. Equally I also work on more modern platforms. Both bring their own challenges and we are slowly improving the legacy platform (hopefully it'll be going eventually - we'll see!).

Full flexible working like you say - e.g. 11am starts have got to be worth more than £6k a year really. I've got a degree of flexibility - e.g. I'm working from home today, but if I said I'd start at 11 people would rightly so tell me to ps off!

Yes you are right about salary review; it has become a fashion now to say 'we will review your salary next year' but doesn't happen all the time.

Plus points so far;

- Closer to home
- Different job title (may be just job title, my current job title is senior .net developer but i do mentor junior developers time to time)
- Opportunity to work with more experience people (company has hired very experience development manager and i have also spoken to him). His plans are to use all the stuff we don't use here like SOLID development principles, continues integration, unit testing and etc.
- There might be some flexibility in working hours.
- I have spoken to few people who left the company and so far I had a positive feedback from all of them.
- I have clearly mentioned to CEO that I don’t want to spend much time on legacy application and he is happy with it.

Negative points;

- Recently two guys left the company one lead developer and other one was Development Manager. Lead developer is leaving because he wants to work in new stuff (.ner , mvc) but since the new development manager has taken over company has changed their strategy and they want to migrate current application.
- Really small company, in three rooms. Never worked for small company before so don’t know how it would be. 4 people sitting around one table.

[RizzoTheRat]

Can't help on the particular role, but with regards to the small company thing...

I went from a multinational to a relatively small company (about 50ish employees) and love it. At my old company things were done because that was the way they'd always been done, and the amount of stupid inefficiencies caused by a big management chain were staggering. In a smaller company if I'm not happy with the way something is working I can talk to a person who has the power to change things, everyone is on first name terms with directors in a small company. What you might find is a downside, although personally again is something I love, is that in a small company it really helps to be multi-skilled as often people will need a hand with something that's not part of your day job. I'm an analyst but since joining the company I've delivered training, built hardware, worked on bids, and had the occasional menial task simply because I happened to be the person who was free on a day something needed to be done. Some people might hate it but I love the flexibility and I expect you'd need to be prepared for that in a small company.

[TurricanII]

Have you asked for a pay rise/appraisal at the current job, rather than waiting for them to approach you? Many companies ignore such things. If you like everything else about the job then give them a chance to bump up the pay.

[djones123]

TurricanII said:

Have you asked for a pay rise/appraisal at the current job, rather than waiting for them to approach you? Many companies ignore such things. If you like everything else about the job then give them a chance to bump up the pay.

There is no appraisal system here. His PA recently left the company after working 5 yrs and she also asked for pay raise but didn't get it. Now she works for one of the big 5 tech companies in the world on better salary.

Edited by djones123 on Saturday 21st November 20:29

Edited by djones123 on Saturday 21st November 20:30

[DragsterRR]

djones123 said:

Old legacy system is really old

Define old?

[djones123]

DragsterRR said:

Define old?

asp classic

[TurricanII]

Are you going to be harder to replace then the PA?

Definitely worth asking for pay rise and then you know where you stand.

[djones123]

TurricanII said:

Are you going to be harder to replace then the PA?

Definitely worth asking for pay rise and then you know where you stand.

I don't think its harder to find my replacement as there are many developers in the market.

[Ynox]

djones123 said:

I don't think its harder to find my replacement as there are many developers in the market.

I'd argue this is incorrect. Sure, there's a lot of devs out there, but in my experience recruiting lately it's pretty difficult to get truly good staff (there's a lot of bullstters out there!). Add into the mix that it takes at least 3 - 6 months for a new developer to learn the products well. Then you're looking at 20% of the first year's salary as commission for the recruiter.

In short - it's harder to replace a dev than a PA really.

[DragsterRR]

djones123 said:

DragsterRR said:

Define old?

asp classic

Pah, that's not "Legacy".
I'm currently rewriting BLISS code on VMS to move from Alpha to Itanium, originally written in 1986.

[0000]

From the sound of it, I'd take it. Worst case you find yourself being asked what your current salary is when negotiating for another job and have to answer £50k instead of £44k.