Soldato
Depends what sort of contracts you are going to go for - Inside IR35 generally require you use an Umbrella company for PAYE. Outside IR35 generally better off being a Ltd company.
This Business and Moment...
- Thread starter randomshenans
- Start date
Is going on the sick an option?
Meh... I've thought about it.
Honestly, I really don't like faking sick days, I really want to - but despite being the most non-superstitious person in the world, I just have serious anxiety about that sort of thing biting me in the ass somehow, later on.
I guess I'm just a bit of a worrywart about that sort of thing, I just have probably one of the best roles I could ever have landed waiting for me in January - and I don't want anything to come back and haunt me later lol..
I guess you have a point..
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Recruiter advert - "Hybrid" with no geographic, recruiter first line of LinkedIn chat "Would you be ok working 4 days/week in Nottingham".
The role is product management portfolio level but seems that being onsite is important..
The team is distributed (at least with Poland as the recruiter is in Poland).
The customers are distributed geographically..
Any third parties will be distributed geographically.
In short, previously I'd spent a good 1-2 days/week seeing customers globally or visiting offices updating sales training, doing development (a SAFE PI in Pune or Scrum in Krakow).
Not to sound like a "wha" but .. wha.
The role is product management portfolio level but seems that being onsite is important..
The team is distributed (at least with Poland as the recruiter is in Poland).
The customers are distributed geographically..
Any third parties will be distributed geographically.
In short, previously I'd spent a good 1-2 days/week seeing customers globally or visiting offices updating sales training, doing development (a SAFE PI in Pune or Scrum in Krakow).
Not to sound like a "wha" but .. wha.
Soldato
The FC who I replaced 14 months ago got in touch a couple of weeks ago about joining her new team as a finance manager as she needs to step up, so I had my third interview for that yesterday.
Not sure I could do the drive into Reading 2-3 times a week, probably get the bus and train instead.
Final interview today for the bigger company though. Hopefully I’ll have two offers to contemplate over the weekend.
Technical vs managerial - at the moment leaning more towards technical as I think it’ll have more legs for future career progression. Also much bigger company with more potential.
Not sure I could do the drive into Reading 2-3 times a week, probably get the bus and train instead.
Final interview today for the bigger company though. Hopefully I’ll have two offers to contemplate over the weekend.
Technical vs managerial - at the moment leaning more towards technical as I think it’ll have more legs for future career progression. Also much bigger company with more potential.
I've been having fun playing with ideas!
Got back from Arctic Trek, which was absolutely epic. Tiring, but so amazing. But while being away, it just fueled me to come back and do a ton of stuff so that's what I'm doing...
Here's a quick breakdown of how I fill my time
It's Cheaper In - A site that tells you, based on your subscriptions, which countries you can get it cheaper in.
https://itscheaper.in
This is functional now, just need to add some guides to it and a bit of a user flow and push it live. I'll have that knocked out by end of next week. Monetization is essentially guides to tell you how to sign up for each service in other countries, with affiliate links, too. Small fun project, small effort to get it done. Most of it was me, a non dev on chatgpt.
It's Available In - if your fav show is removed from Netflix in your country, this site just tells you where you can watch your shows, which country. Another VPN pusher, essentially. Maybe if they're popular as sites, I'll see if a VPN company wants to buy them
https://itsavailable.in
Started this yesterday, took the below video. Just need to return the results back, tidy up a few things (mobile, responsive, logo change etc.) Then it's done and will be live. Should be live by the weekend. Will post on reddit and that. Like I said, a fun one and I have spent less than a day on it.
The Ultimate Directory - A directory of products, spanning all departments; sales, marketing, finance, eng, HR, business systems etc etc. that helps you truly compare which product is right for your needs at which point of your company size and growth. Not just comparing features but to be able to compare costs over time, users, projected growth etc.
What might be a good shout for your business at the start can add a hell of a lot of operational costs in a short space. Making sure people can pick the right products and also know what it will be like to migrate from that product to another.
What's more, as a company you can not only track all your internal tools you use as a company, but if you are a product company, you can set alerts for all updates in your space. New pricing from a company? New features? New product released? You get access to that competitor data to help you see what people are using, what's new, how they should use that to build better products.
https://theultimate.directory
Doing functional wireframing at the moment to make sure that I cater for all the user journeys I need and then can start to make them a bit more designed and functional and will at least start to build out the site myself from a front end point of view and then can start to look at making it functional. Think I'll get my mate to help me with this haha
I really like this idea. The way I am building it is really unique and monetization is cool on it as well. You can pick from both sides as there is value on both sides.
Pharmalogiks - Enterprise Shipping product for pharmaceuticals and biotech companies. Product is decent now. Waiting on our man in industry and contact to line up some meetings with GSK to start some sale talks. Really love the product, it's far better than anything that anyone has in this space.
https://pharmalogiks.com - LIVE
This will need a team to execute on. It's not small. But we're teaming up with some other guys (Big Microsoft guy & a guy who recently exited his company here in switzerland) to scale when needed and deliver it.
PeakFolio - Another one that would be delivered with the above guys. The elevator pitch is: “Imagine a tool that pulls all your team’s data from different platforms into one place, where you can see how any decision—like reallocating resources or adjusting budgets—will impact everything else. Peakfolio lets you drag-and-drop changes, visualize scenarios, and make proactive decisions with AI insights, so you can see the big picture instantly. It’s built for product and portfolio managers who want to get ahead of issues, strategize smarter, and drive real impact—all without the hassle of managing tons of separate reports or spreadsheets.”
Might well be speaking at a conference in Barcelona in Jan for leaders in portfolio management about leveraging AI for decision making in portfolio management. Will aim to have some outline prototype designs just in case, but won't focus on a sales approach, more the AI and data side, but could be a great way to validate the solution.
Bespoke Sky - AI document generation for Aviation compliance. We've built a system that allows users to automate repeatable tasks, such as test plans. It will allow them to generate a test plan, or review a test plan, as well as other processes that they do many times but takes them a lot of their time to do. Fully custom LLM based on specific compliance documents.
https://bespokesky.com
Mate who works at one of these companies is very slow, so trying to manage him while he has a massive workload, to help us get into where we need. It's a bit painfully slow though. My effort on this right now, other than trying to get the info we need, is small.
LearnShift Solutions - I had a friend come to me, who has to take a ton of compliance aviation training (aviation big around here) every year, but the people who offer it are old school. It's super niche. So it's all in person. Guy was like, haven't had time to think about making it an online course. My mate was like could we do this for them? Take 30% of rev from each course sold? They're 3500EUR courses, and they have more demand than they can take a month. I've set up many LMSs before, have all the recording equipment thanks to YouTube, so was like do it. Meeting him soon to discuss flying out to meet the guy.
https://coursecreat.ing - LIVE
Cheezus - Not forgotten it at all. I have this redesign I want doing. I had a guy who was going to do it and ghosted me, so took me back to square one. I'm chatting with a few people this week about plans to release the new version on that which should reduce operating costs and mean it's super easy to keep running as well as being so much more valuable to users. The other cheese app stopped operating, so I still get a fair number of downloads weekly, so I should capitalize on it.
cheezus.co
Other -
Of course I'm still planning road trips and running my socials, which have rocketed up on insta to 17.5k and tiktok to 45k in the last month or so.
This is an update for me rather than anyone else.
My to do list of stuff and building really cool ****! I don't want a corporate job... so doing this sort of stuff would be my ideal.
Everyone still lovely?
In a bit x
Got back from Arctic Trek, which was absolutely epic. Tiring, but so amazing. But while being away, it just fueled me to come back and do a ton of stuff
so that's what I'm doing...Here's a quick breakdown of how I fill my time
It's Cheaper In - A site that tells you, based on your subscriptions, which countries you can get it cheaper in.
https://itscheaper.in
This is functional now, just need to add some guides to it and a bit of a user flow and push it live. I'll have that knocked out by end of next week. Monetization is essentially guides to tell you how to sign up for each service in other countries, with affiliate links, too. Small fun project, small effort to get it done. Most of it was me, a non dev on chatgpt.
It's Available In - if your fav show is removed from Netflix in your country, this site just tells you where you can watch your shows, which country. Another VPN pusher, essentially. Maybe if they're popular as sites, I'll see if a VPN company wants to buy them
https://itsavailable.in
Started this yesterday, took the below video. Just need to return the results back, tidy up a few things (mobile, responsive, logo change etc.) Then it's done and will be live. Should be live by the weekend. Will post on reddit and that. Like I said, a fun one and I have spent less than a day on it.
The Ultimate Directory - A directory of products, spanning all departments; sales, marketing, finance, eng, HR, business systems etc etc. that helps you truly compare which product is right for your needs at which point of your company size and growth. Not just comparing features but to be able to compare costs over time, users, projected growth etc.
What might be a good shout for your business at the start can add a hell of a lot of operational costs in a short space. Making sure people can pick the right products and also know what it will be like to migrate from that product to another.
What's more, as a company you can not only track all your internal tools you use as a company, but if you are a product company, you can set alerts for all updates in your space. New pricing from a company? New features? New product released? You get access to that competitor data to help you see what people are using, what's new, how they should use that to build better products.
https://theultimate.directory
Doing functional wireframing at the moment to make sure that I cater for all the user journeys I need and then can start to make them a bit more designed and functional and will at least start to build out the site myself from a front end point of view and then can start to look at making it functional. Think I'll get my mate to help me with this haha
I really like this idea. The way I am building it is really unique and monetization is cool on it as well. You can pick from both sides as there is value on both sides.
Pharmalogiks - Enterprise Shipping product for pharmaceuticals and biotech companies. Product is decent now. Waiting on our man in industry and contact to line up some meetings with GSK to start some sale talks. Really love the product, it's far better than anything that anyone has in this space.
https://pharmalogiks.com - LIVE
This will need a team to execute on. It's not small. But we're teaming up with some other guys (Big Microsoft guy & a guy who recently exited his company here in switzerland) to scale when needed and deliver it.
PeakFolio - Another one that would be delivered with the above guys. The elevator pitch is: “Imagine a tool that pulls all your team’s data from different platforms into one place, where you can see how any decision—like reallocating resources or adjusting budgets—will impact everything else. Peakfolio lets you drag-and-drop changes, visualize scenarios, and make proactive decisions with AI insights, so you can see the big picture instantly. It’s built for product and portfolio managers who want to get ahead of issues, strategize smarter, and drive real impact—all without the hassle of managing tons of separate reports or spreadsheets.”
Might well be speaking at a conference in Barcelona in Jan for leaders in portfolio management about leveraging AI for decision making in portfolio management. Will aim to have some outline prototype designs just in case, but won't focus on a sales approach, more the AI and data side, but could be a great way to validate the solution.
Bespoke Sky - AI document generation for Aviation compliance. We've built a system that allows users to automate repeatable tasks, such as test plans. It will allow them to generate a test plan, or review a test plan, as well as other processes that they do many times but takes them a lot of their time to do. Fully custom LLM based on specific compliance documents.
https://bespokesky.com
Mate who works at one of these companies is very slow, so trying to manage him while he has a massive workload, to help us get into where we need. It's a bit painfully slow though. My effort on this right now, other than trying to get the info we need, is small.
LearnShift Solutions - I had a friend come to me, who has to take a ton of compliance aviation training (aviation big around here) every year, but the people who offer it are old school. It's super niche. So it's all in person. Guy was like, haven't had time to think about making it an online course. My mate was like could we do this for them? Take 30% of rev from each course sold? They're 3500EUR courses, and they have more demand than they can take a month. I've set up many LMSs before, have all the recording equipment thanks to YouTube, so was like do it. Meeting him soon to discuss flying out to meet the guy.
https://coursecreat.ing - LIVE
Cheezus - Not forgotten it at all. I have this redesign I want doing. I had a guy who was going to do it and ghosted me, so took me back to square one. I'm chatting with a few people this week about plans to release the new version on that which should reduce operating costs and mean it's super easy to keep running as well as being so much more valuable to users. The other cheese app stopped operating, so I still get a fair number of downloads weekly, so I should capitalize on it.
Cheezus - The Vivino for Cheese
Welcome to Cheezus, the app that puts a cheese monger in your pocket! Whether you're a cheese lover or a producer, our app makes it easy to discover new cheeses and pairings, and connect with new customers. With Cheezus, you can search for specific cheeses or browse our database for new...
cheezus.co
Other -
- I have a mate who runs a construction business and bought a bank monitoring company, all their process is manual at the moment and could be far more efficient and higher throughput if it was automated with a solution. He's asked me to build something and take a % of each report they do. A initial report is 3.5k and subsequent are 1.5k. They are bottlenecked at the moment in what they can do, but could do far more. I already lofi mocked up the solution and know how I'd do it. Timing just waiting for it to be right with him. Could be a nice passive one to keep me ticking along.
- Another mate wants to build a solution that helps companies scale, but more on the people, process, etc point of view. Not product ways. He's ex HR and has some ideas around that, so will sit down with him and see what his ideas are and how it could look.
Of course I'm still planning road trips and running my socials, which have rocketed up on insta to 17.5k and tiktok to 45k in the last month or so.
This is an update for me rather than anyone else.
My to do list of stuff and building really cool ****!
I don't want a corporate job... so doing this sort of stuff would be my ideal.Everyone still lovely?
In a bit x
It would save so much time, if the job ads contained basic info, I don't care about the paragraph of marketing BS putting the company in good light. I want to know...Recruiter advert - "Hybrid" with no geographic, recruiter first line of LinkedIn chat "Would you be ok working 4 days/week in Nottingham".
The role is product management portfolio level but seems that being onsite is important..
The team is distributed (at least with Poland as the recruiter is in Poland).
The customers are distributed geographically..
Any third parties will be distributed geographically.
In short, previously I'd spent a good 1-2 days/week seeing customers globally or visiting offices updating sales training, doing development (a SAFE PI in Pune or Scrum in Krakow).
Not to sound like a "wha" but .. wha.
- Salary Range
- Remote/Hybrid or On-Site?
- Location (Town/City) not the County or UK...
- How often do I need to attend office and any other potential travel that will be required.
- Will I be required to work outside the working hours for DevOps or support... Is it paid as OT?
Soldato
@Freefaller did you make a decision?
Man of Honour
No not yet! Well in the current Ts and Cs I'm not keen. So if they will change them then I might. Problem is the PM consultancy are USA so pretty crap for someone used to European work life balance.
Soldato
Well best of luck. It sounds like a pretty cool opportunity, though I'd be concerned about working in a country with questionable morality
Man of Honour
The biggest stress for me is getting the family over.
Soldato
When I was reading your post, I was wondering if there were decent jobs there for your wife as IIRC, she's done well for herself too
Well, after 7 months in my new job. Got called into the office, I've been sacked but I be working till end of February and they want me to do a handover during that time to the tech guys in India......
I knew something was going on when all of a sudden Im doing user support and application support when I am suppose to be an Senior IT Systems Engineer.
Fun times ahead!!!
I knew something was going on when all of a sudden Im doing user support and application support when I am suppose to be an Senior IT Systems Engineer.
Fun times ahead!!!
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Urgh, sorry to hear that.
If they're firing you and moving your responsibilities to people in India, definitely make sure you focus on sorting yourself out (I'm sure you will) but now is the time to look after number 1.
Feb into March and beyond is a good time for job hunting, lots of companies with fresh budgets and plans.
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Thanks,
Yeah I will, not the first time Ive been down this path. Thankfully I have no debt and abit of savings. I learnt from the last time!
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Man of Honour
Yeah she'd be allowed to on the visa we'd get. We'll see. Then we have to rent the house. So it means packing it up and getting it rental ready which it isn't!
Man of Honour
Ah mate that's crap.
Hope you land on your feet and find something better to move onto.