desarun

I'd probably make your github profile private for a while as well. Or at least removing your real name from it.

Oh dude, we've all been there.

9 years ago I was working for a major broadcasting company in the arse end of London as a junior dev, building one of their Android apps.

We'd roll features out months before & enable them with feature flags via a json file we'd manually push to a prod server at a later date.

We'd just built a huge new feature letting you request content to be downloaded to your set top box remotely & it had a 250k marketing campaign to go along with the launch.

Senior dev trusted me with prod deployment rights.

I pushed the wrong json config to prod, launching the feature weeks before the marketing campaign.

Thank god I was a junior perm, that was definitely a firing offence.

Tangentially related to your use case but check out https://moodeaudio.org/

Got it running on a Pi+DAC & use spotify connect mostly, but occasionally throw stuff from my NAS on to it.

Not for long. A few services are moving away from scala to kotlin (ktor), probably more to follow.

Plus most of the UK despise him.

The latter: https://xkcd.com/323/

Bourbon.

If you set aside the slow erosion of human decency that is the Daily Mail, their tech stack is very impressive.

From an engineering point of view they kill it, they're one of the most visited sites in the world.

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/dailymail.co.uk

True. Got a friend who basically works as a contractor CTO. His day rate is around 2k. Which is insane.

Yeah, the serious money's in contracting in London. You can make anywhere from 400-600 per day.

Get yourself a solid year long stint somewhere & the pay will be £100k - £150k

Yes, yes it is. Unless it's Edinburgh in August due to the Fringe festival, where rents go past London levels.

I do. As a guy contracting for a FTSE 100 company now who've just had a buyout offer from the states, I'm surrounded by a bunch of execs that are incredibly happy (assuming it comes off)

Note that all of this is UK based.

Startups in London will offer shares for senior positions in much the same way as San Fran, normally with a vestment period, but it's not as common.

I'm not 100% on what the 3x rule is.

What I do know is that most of my contractor friends are on around £500 per day, which assuming a 260-workday year is 130k. There's a couple of oracle DBA's on around 800pd, which is 208k.

But then you have to administer a database & there's only so much I'd be prepared to do for money.

As a contractor, normal tax rules don't apply (and are normally much more beneficial). So a contractor earning 90k & a FTE earning 90k still results in the contractor coming out miles ahead in terms of raw income.

Obviously there's offsets to this. No sick pay, no paid leave, no free pension contributions etc.

I'd disagree with that.

Leads I know at several major London companies are in the 70-90k range.

Pre-brexit exchange rates put that salary not too far off SF, plus lower living costs than the bay ($3000 for a one bed? No thanks).

Hell, I don't know many contractors on less than 100k (once you do the math).

Watch out for the hidden costs.

As I found out today if you want the analytics data in CSV, or query it to any level that's useful beyond "We have 5 users in Stockholm on KitKat", you'll need the next service tier up, which is $25 per month per project.

But if you want basic analytics, then it's free & easy.

upday?

I love their solution.

They turned it off, then on again

I'm going to be in Sheffield in a few weeks.

Have you guys got a physical store yet? I'm moving from hotel to hotel at the mo, so getting stuff delivered is a nightmare.

Jesus that's overpriced.

Then get down to the Coach & Horses and drink your sorrows away.

Ah Isleworth, how I hated thee.

I'd go a step further here.

If you can, aim to save at least half.

And never charge on a per-project basis. Bill a daily rate, 1-2 week sprints, demo, rinse & repeat.

It's much easier for expectation management & rapidly adjusting requirements. Which is every requirement.

I put out a job advert on JobServe Monday for an Android dev in London.

In 24 hours I got 12 CV's (we're skipping recruiters), reduced down to 3 we actually want to see.

I reckon we'll have a shortlist of 10 applicants, cut down to 3-4 interviews on Friday.

I'm an Android contractor myself, and it's true, there's a lot of chaff around.

What's your recruitment process?

I read this and thought "I am not a true developer, I am merely a journalist-style hack".

Disclaimer: Contractor, native app dev.

Hmm not sure about the permission for dialling out...

Hey there. I made the jump last week.

I work in London, and used to work for a FTSE 35 company. I was there for about 2 years, and worked primarily as an Android developer.

I'm not sure about the situation where you are, but here in London there's tons of Android contracts.

I made the decision to jump about a month and a half ago after getting screwed over a promotion that was promised to me. Any loyalty I had to the company died at that point.

I had a month's notice, and two weeks holiday before I quit. Two weeks before I officially handed my notice in, I let my manager know I was contemplating going contracting. She was very understanding, and tried to make me stay.

I started phoning round recruitment consultants letting them know my experience & what I was after.

After two weeks, twenty plus recruiters, 30 plus contracts, and two interviews, I landed the third interview.

The one thing holding me back the most, and probably the reason I didn't land a job sooner was that in contracting land, you're expected to start pretty much the next day, and I had a 2-4 week wait before becoming available.

I got the job, started my company the same day (£15 & 15 minutes time). Got an accountant via recommendation & started two weeks later.

I'm not going to lie, the jump was terrifying. Losing the security of permanent employment, & imposter syndrome play a big part in keeping people in perm jobs.

After a week in this job though, I'm incredibly happy.

I'm not getting full contract day rates (£400+), its more around £250, but I'm two years out of uni & doubled my salary by quitting.

That's not even including the tax benefits of getting paid via your own company.

My advice would be make damn sure you're good enough (not by validating your own abilities, but by getting other contractors to evaluate you), and start getting in touch with recruiters.

Your world isn't going to come crumbling down by having a conversation.

Oh, and don't trust recruiters. They're a necessary evil.

This helped me: http://www.contractoruk.com/

I stopped taking it as I didn't feel the need to. As far as I can tell there's no reports on long term usage.

As for side effects, was a little harder to sleep, and I had to remember to eat. I lost about a stone in a month, but then my appetite came back.

Oh, and it has asparagus-like effects on the body.

I've still got some in a drawer I keep for the days I've got a hangover. Beats the hell out of coffee & a fry-up as a cure.

I took modafinil for around 3 months last year when I started on a huge porject at work.

I work as a software engineer and my output was pretty staggering in comparison. The code was cleaner & probably better than anything I'd done before.

It was fantastic at keeping me focused for hours...

Christ, who on earth do you work for?

That sounds horrific...

I work for a ftse 35 company as a dev and there's nothing close to that, just the usual "Work done on our time or our equipment is ours"