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                     JOURNAL FOR SUNDAY 31ST AUGUST, 2025
______________________________________________________________________________

SUBJECT: Exciting news!
   DATE: Sun 31 Aug 19:25:14 BST 2025

At long last, I have a new job!

For months I’ve been submitting applications for hundreds of jobs. Only to
hear nothing, not even a single interview. Then out of the blue I got a call
from a recruiter. Would I be interested in a 6 month contract, inside IR35,
working as a senior Go back end engineer? I half-heartedly took a look at the
job description. I had 95% of the skills and it sounded kinda interesting…

*sigh* but I never, not ever, wanted to be a contractor…

I have worked as a contractor before. It’s always been as a full-time employee
and the company has contracted me out to various clients. Working for yourself
and being expected to solve all the problems and know all the answers is very
different. Very daunting. You must have faith in your skills and knowledge.

I had a chat with the recruiter and explained my reservations. He explained
how they partner with umbrella payroll companies and gave me their short-list
of recommendations. I went away, took a look at the umbrella companies, did my
own research.

Hrm, I’d become an employee of the umbrella company and for a fee, or “company
margin”, each month the company would handle all the paperwork like employer’s
national insurance, apprenticeship levy, pension, holiday pay, paying me.

It sounded OK. The company margin was about £70/month and after all of the
deductions I get to keep my remaining earnings.

I went back to the recruiter and said I was interested and wanted to find out
more. He asked if I could do an interview the next day…

I hate interviews. Especially technical interviews. I tend to get extremely
anxious. I’ve been on both sides, as interviewer and interviewee. It does not
help, I was still dreading it…

As it turned out the interview was amazing. It was less interview and more two
super-techies having a great chat :) When the interview was over I even said
if I hadn’t managed to impress them and I didn’t get the position it had been
a very enjoyable interview.

I then had to wait. It would be over a week before I heard anything back. I
didn’t know it at that point, but there was a lot going on behind the scenes
at the client. I was so happy and relieved when the recruiter contacted me and
said I had the position :)

That was when things kicked into high gear for me. I had to sign-up with the
recruiter and the umbrella payroll company. Proving my right to work was a
chore — my fault as I only had an expired passport for photo ID.

By now it was 28th July. The contract was due to start on the 11th August. One
last requirement of the contract was that I had an Apple MacBook to work on…

Damn. I’d been out of work for months and now needed to buy another computer.
That evening I placed an order for a silver MacBook Pro M4 (4x P cores @
4.5Ghz, 6x E cores @ 2.9Ghz), 32Gb RAM, 1Tb SSD, nano-texture display, US
English keyboard, upgraded 96W charger. Delivery was set for 6th—8th August.
Ouch!, boy did it hurt my wallet… £2,369.00[1]

Luckily the MacBook arrived in time, early actually, on the 5th August. I’ll
have plenty to say about the MacBook in another journal entry ;)

I was now all ready to start my new contract on Monday 11th August.

For the last 3 weeks I’ve been working as a senior Go back end engineer for…

Apple! :)

--
Diddymus

  [1] To be honest, the price wasn’t that bad. My desktop Intel i9-12900T
      (8x P cores/16x threads @ 4.9Ghz, 8x E cores @ 3.6Ghz), 64Gb RAM,
      2Tb SSD was £2,229.00, only £140 difference.


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