Welcome to episode two of Inspect. My name is AJ. And I'm Les. This week we're just going to have a little recap of what we touched on in the last episode.
You may recall that myself and Les used to work together at last jobs. And back in November of 2016, we were both made redundant from that company. And we just thought we'd go over their experience and what we learned from it and how we bounced back from being made redundant, especially around Christmas time when it was not a great time of year. So do you want to start with?
Yeah, so I mean, it starts out as the whole company was liquidated, like you said, in November of last year. I still remember it quite clearly. It was a cool Friday morning. I was getting in nice and early to do a not recommended live deploy.
So I just finished doing all the backups and everything else. And it sort of hit 9.30, pretty much everyone was in. And pulled into the meeting room initially. We thought it was quite a job deal, you know, to start some good news or something like that.
But the strict faces as we went in and the two strangers that turned out to be demonstrators, everyone pretty worried quickly. And yeah, read out the bad news. Thank you for your services. You've worked for three quarters of a month and you're not going to get paid to this.
Please go home. Yeah, I think that was, you know, obviously the whole thing was a bit of a shock. But the fact that it happened quite late into the month as well, and then it was a case of, right, you're not going to get paid for this month. And obviously there's nothing else coming up for the rest of the year now.
Yeah. And yeah, the literally, I mean, I remember because we used to sign 9.30. I remember I was just getting settled into the morning, you know, I just made myself coffee and I was just unpacking my bag and getting ready to sort of sit down and get on the day. And that's when we got called downstairs to the boardroom.
But yeah, it was a big shock. And, you know, I'd only been there for less than a year. So you'd been there for about a year just over, wasn't it? I think it'd been about a year and a half.
I'd been there. Some people been there a good, like 10, 11 years. Yeah, exactly. So quite imagine how they were feeling.
But it was a tough time, actually, because, you know, the whole of the company being made redundant all at the same time meant that all of a sudden, there's these 30 people that are on the market looking for work all at the same time, ordering something fairly similar. Yeah. And it was just on the lead up to Christmas as well, when everyone's expecting to sort of have a little bit extra spending as they're normal, as you do around the whole season. You know, it's a time when you don't want to be out of job and have to depend on your savings.
Well, yeah, I mean, that was sort of compounded by the fact, sort of like I was mentioned earlier, is the three quarters of a month, which has been a full month by the time you get your head round and things. And you sort of, you do your whole week, sort of prepping a CV or getting out there to a group and stuff. But that month was pretty much lost. And then you've got the, once you do landage, which could be in, you know, a week.
It could be in two, three weeks. But once you do, you've then got the month waiting time for your first paycheck. Yeah, it was definitely, it wasn't a great time at all for anyone. I mean, being made redundant is never good, but preferably not around coming up into the lead of Christmas.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, that was the first time I've ever been made redundant. I suppose saying we've got made redundant while technically true. It's a little bit of an injustice because it was the whole company went into a good nation. Yeah.
True. So it was a non-EDV team or particularly individuals. It was absolutely everyone from managing directors downwards. But yeah, it's the first time it ever happened.
Well, I've always been quite a glass of time for kind of guy, but for some people, you could just sit in their eyes. They were absolutely devastated. Mm hmm. Yeah.
So what did you do thatally? Did you do the first thing you did when you left the office? Well, the first thing I did was I panicked because of all my monitors and deck stangs and keyboards and the hardware, and mission control, that everyone used to call it in the corner of getting that out, the door and transporting it. I was getting lifted into the office at the time because my car was in the garage and yeah, it just wasn't.
That was my first concern is I don't want to have to leave my stuff here if the minutest is about to go around with sticky labels and go mine. Yeah, well I was quite fortunate in that way because they had a big bag on me because I had my gym bag on me. So obviously I had to skip the gym because I had to film a bag with all this stuff that was in my desk that I had accumulated over the course of the year where I was there. And the first thing I did was just go home and I just was trying to link it in really.
And it's like messaging a few of the recruiters that I already had on my contacts list. But you were definitely more productive than me. I had one of my colleagues help me pack up all the stuff. We got into the car.
We left the office about 12 to 30. And I think by then a couple of the guys that went out for the coffee heads gone over to the pub across the road. So they went there to join them. And yeah, until about half one half two in the morning that was me done.
So I woke up in the morning with a splitting head ache over and had to tell the misses that I didn't have a job. And at the time we were expecting twins in two months. Yeah, but she took that well. Yeah, she was not the the calmest one.
I was probably the calmest one there. But I think that was probably due to the hangover. No, I did the complete opposite. I treated a bit more like a what's the word?
No opportunity. Like a colleague of it. Anyway, but no, the first thing I did, I was just waiting. Like I said, I went back and got into LinkedIn and I had a few contacts from previous jobs, which I had good dealings with before.
It's a couple of recruiters. I got sent a message to them. But word got out really quick actually within about two hours. I was getting calls from recruiters who had heard about the company going into the collation.
That's pretty quick. Yeah, so obviously these recruiters really do talk to each other. The word got out really quick in fact. So I actually got quite a lot of calls that first day, which is quite handy.
And it wasn't that long actually until I found another role. I think it was only about a week or ten days before another role had been confirmed. But like you said earlier, it's not just the lack of wage for that month. I didn't actually start until the new year then.
Ouch, yeah. So it was in total, it was about three, well November, December, and January, so three months of no income, which obviously meant that you had to. So you had to dip in your savings and your rainy day money, whatever you've got. Yeah, I think that's probably what comes to the first major learning or experience of this situation.
And it's not just for developers, it's pretty much everyone. It's always had that rainy day fund. I mean, I built up quite a nice nest egg just in case anything like this happened. And yeah, it's to prove for the pudding of luckily I didn't suffer too much over that sort of time span because of it.
Yeah, definitely what I've taken away from it as well. But the importance of just keeping enough side to cover your regular expenses for a couple of months if the worst does happen. Yes, yes, definitely. At least two, three months you need to be able to cover that just in case.
And it's not just in redundancy, it's like any major bit or anything that comes out. But I know this comes in, it's almost common sense, but it's quite easy to, oh, I won't ever need that, or I'll be fine or all that sort of stuff. But it's more of like insurance without having to pay for it a month. Yeah, exactly.
So what was your work? Did you do with any recruiters after that? So I dealt with a lot of recruiters. I may need to keep my options open, but I remember that that Saturday morning being terribly hungover and pacing around in the living room.
And basically working myself up into like a Zelliter state of how much of an opportunity this was. So for years I've been moaning about digital agencies, the inefficiencies. You know, the basic like, oh, you could do it better. I could do it better.
I could do it better. That sort of stuff. And taking this sort of opportunity to put my money where my mouth was and to go out and either do it better or to say fair play, I was wrong. I caught my hands up and stopped having an opinion on the matter.
So although I got a lot of crew was going to contact and stuff and I did do a few phone interviews, went into a few interviews and stuff. It was pretty much that day that I decided that was going to set myself up as my own company and try and break away from the agency model and to try something which is a little bit different. Unfortunately, I found out by LinkedIn and stuff that a fair few other people were doing it as well. It's a model called the Hollywood model based off the oceans and the heavens film type.
But yeah, I thought at the time I was being unique and different and I still stand by that position and it's worked really well so far. But yeah. So you're going, OK, what's your company called? So I ended up calling my company Co.optopus.
It's a legacy name. I initially a couple years ago, I set up a company with a technical director of another company and did really well. But unfortunately, his mum got quite sick and he had to return to Brazil where he came from. So that was called Octopus tree.
So when I had this chance again, I was like, OK, cool. I'm used to saying name. I spoke to him. He got his permission and all that sort of stuff.
But somebody else had taken it by then. And yeah, the name just all default from there. It's like anything. It's like all variables are all programming.
The hardest thing is naming something. So I decided to go with something and just stick with it. It's not the worst name. It's not the best name.
But I like it and it means something to me. I suppose that's what really matters. Yeah. OK.
So when you would still deal with recruiters, I mean, my previous experience and all that sort of stuff is I've got a few favorite recruiters. Or ones that I enjoy. And funny enough, actually, one of them has got me all of my jobs since I started working in the industry. But I don't really engage with other people.
I've picked them. They're nice. They're honest with me. They don't try and mess around.
Have you done that? Or do you try the most scattered kind of approach? No. What I do is if I've been placing a role by a recruiter and then I'm moving on, I do tend to get in touch with the same one again.
And just let them, you know, if I've had a good experience from someone else in the past, I will approach those people first. And just see if they're still covering the same sort of areas and same job roles. And then, yeah, if they've got anything, then I'll pursue that first. If they haven't, then I'll maybe ask them to recommend someone.
But I've found that as soon as you make it a little bit obvious, especially on LinkedIn that you are looking for work, the recruiter is just confronting to you anyway. And I don't know if this is exactly how LinkedIn works, but this is my assumption is that when you have a LinkedIn premium account, it basically puts you in a different state, like as an active job seeker. And I think that people who are recruiters, like who have a recruiter account on LinkedIn, can probably see that you're someone who's actively looking for work. And so when they're searching for candidates, you probably appear all high because that's what I did.
I paid for a premium account. Well, there was actually a data promotion on which was handy the first month was free. So I signed up for the premium account, got it free for 30 days. And I noticed that as soon as I did switch it premium, I had loads of recruiters automatically contacting me and they just knew that I was actively looking.
So I must have flagged up on this, this side somehow. Yeah, I mean, there's quite complicated algorithms, pine linked in, only from the articles and stuff I've been reading. But I think it's more the notifications on companies and stuff. So if someone marks a flag to the company or it's insolvent and equidation or that sort of stuff, their employees, if they have got the premium or the high package, I can't remember what the name of it is.
But if they have got that, they can start targeting people quite effectively. So whether you've got a premium one or a normal one, the links in or the parts of it are quite good. So all the algorithms to show people what's going on. But that's purely from what I've read.
I've not been able to see the source code and I would give my left pinky to have a look because it's quite interesting to me. But it's not something I've really dug into. It'd be interesting to know how it works. I mean, if anyone's listening and they've got any insight, feel free to get in touch and let us know what's going on in the background because it's quite interesting the way it works.
I mean, I've got a lot of great relationship with LinkedIn. I think when you are looking for work, actively looking for work, it is a really good tool. It really helps. It puts the right people in touch with you without you having to make too much of an effort.
But when you're not looking for work and you're just maybe using it to maybe share updates or keep in touch with ex-colleagues and people in your network, then it just becomes so annoying because you've got so many interruptions. I find. Well, I guess it's like saying, it's the purpose that you're using it for. Having recently, my company, going to a lot of business meetups, meeting other entrepreneurs and people doing different industries and stuff, LinkedIn is actually a massive tool to them.
And it's more like the articles, the blog posts or that are linked into it. But what it's been used for and stuff is huge beyond the whole business to client sort of approach or business customer. There's a lot of business to business interactions going on there. And as soon as I set down the business and stuff, LinkedIn is actually one of my I've got a load of articles on there.
And it's one of the first places I'm going to target because it's where the high spend clients or business to business relationships. That's where you can really build them quite easily. So yeah, I suppose it's what you're using it for. For the absolute years, I've had a LinkedIn account, but it's been passive.
I've never actually used it to get a job once. But every day I get three or four recruiters email me saying, this person's looking for an episode. I'm actually looking at my emails now. There's an episode of contract, cycle contract.
There's all these different bits that could be interesting, and it's got prices and day rates and all this sort of stuff going on. But it's quite useful to gauge and see where the market's going. I definitely noticed a trend going more towards Unbrico and cycle in the last couple of months, I suppose. Whereas the beginning of last year, there was a lot of episode ones, but episode were stupidly priced.
So I was looking at 600 to 800 a day everywhere else. It was quite lower. Okay, but there you go. I mean, straight away, you can use it to analyze the market passively.
Yeah, that's actually one of the reasons why I keep my LinkedIn sort of in a actively seeking state, but I keep it up to date. I keep my notifications on because even though I do get emails through from recruiters, I ignore 99% of them. But the ones I do every now and then read, it's just a good indication of what's going on in the industry, what are the latest trends, what are the latest sort of contract rates going rates and form my sort of role. What's a good market rate as a permanent employee and as a contractor?
Because you just never know any of the information as we found out last year. Yeah, definitely. I mean, on that sort of topic is an important fact, or one of the other learnings was the, well, for some people, was the importance of keeping the CV up to date or whether it's handy. Yeah, true.
Yeah. I know that some of the guys that used to work with us because they were there for so long, sort of age 10 years. They pretty much didn't even have a CV because this was one of their first jobs when they first started their career in this industry. But as someone who's moved around in a few jobs in the last four or five years, my CV was fairly up to date anyway, and I tend to keep it up to date because just as a record, because I kind of forget what I've been doing in my job after a while, I just keep a record of things that have, like, key skills that I've picked up along the way.
I'll just keep jotting down on my CV and then if I ever need to actually apply for a job, then I'll just tidy up those notes and make them read a bit better. Yeah, definitely important to keep a CV up to date. It's a shame that we still have to result to having these paper CVs where we're sort of selling all of our achievements, but I'm now just finding a bit archaic the way it all works. But because I don't really contribute to many open source projects or anything like that, and the CV is obviously the best way for me personally to get across what my skillset is.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, like you're saying, it is a little bit archaic, and especially when we have so many better ways of displaying what we're capable of, where we've been, what we've done. But then again, I suppose the opposite side of it is a lot of the time, most of the projects I've worked on that are most proud of. I can't tell anyone about lately. I've got NDAs and all this sort of stuff signed, which stops me from actually, I suppose it's show voting, but my skill sets and what I can do.
So what can you do at that point? But it is right, CV, listening out what you've worked with, what you've done and stuff without the practical examples. So as a developer, have you ever had to show, show off your GitHub page, for example? Yes, yeah, I have.
And I suppose as any self-conscious developer is my GitHub page goes through 20 plus repositories to zero, as I get to embarrass stuff my old codes and rip it all down and start re-implementing and doing all that sort of stuff. It depends what sort of month it is. It tends to be the winter months when it's dark and it's a bit more gloomy. Everything comes down because nothing's good enough.
In the summer months, it's a bit more heavy flag-fying code that works or just fun hacking code that goes up. Recently actually I've made a shift and moved towards TFS Online, which kind of puts a slight block on that. GitHub is so much more easier to see. Everyone pretty much uses it as a sharing collaboration tool.
I don't know about your experiences on that, AJ. I've only got into GitHub in the last six months or so. I never really had anything to really share on there before. But now in the last six or 12 months, I suppose, I've been experimenting more with smaller projects than just putting on GitHub and using it as more of a social network.
But the main reason I go on GitHub is to just see what other people are doing and get ideas. But I haven't got many repositories and it's not like I've got thousands and thousands of stars and people walking on my projects. It's just a place for me to store my code really. It's a nice clean interface.
I like the way it works. I've never been asked to show my GitHub page to any recruiters or any potential employees. I don't know how important that really is. I mean, every role I've had, I've been asked to show code that I've worked on.
It was quite hard in the early days and normally revolved around saying, I can't do that by coding interview or that sort of stuff. Because in the early days I was working for companies and I can't show code that isn't legally mine. But yeah, I suppose it may be a slight difference between front and back end. I find actually that one of the more, the better approach that I've had or the one that's yielded more results has been that instead of providing code, I've asked that can they provide code for me to analyze and review.
Because one that shows how you see code at your full process and that sort of stuff. But an interview is one way, it's both ways. And if they haven't got code they're happy to share, to show, to potential employees for whatever reason. Are you really going to be happy working on them code bases?
That's actually really interesting. I think one of the most interesting, pre-interview tests that I've had from an employer was, I was given a piece of minified JavaScript. And it was all working, so I was going to HTML file which was putting in that JavaScript. And it was just doing something simple, it was like a tool tip on a hover state.
And the test was to unminify that JavaScript, which is easy because you can just run that through a code, like a beautifier or something, like a code format. But then what you have to do is because all the variables have been renamed to single letters, then go rename all those to more meaningful variables to make it readable for a developer. And obviously you have to make it still work in the end. And those variables and functions needed to be given names, which are relevant to what they're actually doing.
As it was JavaScript, what's minified? Because the closure is in the scope. Whether you can just do a final replace on say A, for example. No, you can do that because obviously A would exist as a variable name, but then it could also exist as an argument for a function or it could exist as an scope variable.
So you had to really go through it, sort of line my line and be quite careful, not necessarily from top to bottom, but you had to sort of start from one place and then see, okay, so this function is doing a kind of work out what this function is doing, what might be calling this function, then you had to go find somewhere else in the code that might be calling that function. And then maybe give them temporary names, make sure that it's the work, and then go back and then just rename them to what they're actually doing. It was a really good test. And I think if more interviews were like that, I think it would make the job feel a bit more worthwhile as well.
Like you've really been challenged and it'll give you a bit more of an idea of what the sort of work that you might actually be doing in the job. Yeah, well I mean it's completely opposite to the coding tests which are pretty much in my mind pointless. I mean I've done some interview exams which are basically testing your knowledge of syntax, and especially the ones that multiple choice which have like different API calls, different, you know, it's slightly different things or asking about multi-threaded processes and how to safeguard and all that sort of stuff. But that information or when you're doing it on the job is like I'm challenging any developer or modern developer out there.
To say that they don't use stack overflow, extra resources, books, all this sort of stuff for pretty much each problem that they haven't resolved a couple of times. Because our job's all about learning. It's not necessarily about knowing the syntax inside now. It's, you know, it's a progressive enhancement of what you're doing.
And those sort of interviews, well I've never actually gone to a secondary interview of those online discretion. Because if people are asking those sort of questions, it's not a company that I want to work for. Yeah, it's not about just knowing the syntax is about knowing where to find the answer and how to solve the problem, not necessarily, you know, what the actual correct syntax is like. Yeah, well in my limited experience, people that are very hung up on syntax are, and pretty much know that they're chosen framework or language inside now are very, very clever, smart people.
But at the same time, they over-complicate solutions to no end, where pretty much they're the only ones that can maintain them, develop on them, extend them. They come in like the nightmare projects. And that's not just like the mid or lower level devs, but also to other high level devs, because coding is not about being smart, it's about doing it right and in the most readable, sensible way. Yeah, absolutely.
Alright, so if we just sort of go full cycle and just get back to the initial topic about the redundancy, what would you say is the biggest thing that you learned from the whole experience then? Well, I suppose it's following the Boy Scouts, always be prepared, as we touched on the Rainy Day Fund, but the biggest thing I've learned is, you know, just to look at everything as an opportunity, you know, it's that, okay, it's a very optimistic and it's like a glass is half full and all that sort of stuff. But there's so much potential out there. I mean, if you talk to thinking in terms of money, is the only way to really get a good pay increase when you're a permanent employee or something like that is to move jobs, and you very rarely ever move down, you're always nearly always move up, or you hit the same sort of level with a good pay increase.
So you're going to have a good level with bonuses after your first six months or something like that. In terms of learning, it's moving to another place is brilliant. So you've got the new technologies, new people, you know, people to challenge and motivate you. You've got the pressure to learn and achieve your three month review in your six month review.
Or if you're going it alone, it's the perfect chance because you don't feel like you haven't got the option, you're not jumping, you're being pushed, and you can sort of throw caution to the winds, especially if you've got Rainy Day Fund or some sort of backup. And then you can just go for it. I suppose that's the biggest learning I've come out with. What about you?
Well, don't know if you can really add anything there. You've pretty much covered everything. Sorry. Yeah, no, that was a good answer actually.
That's pretty much what it is, isn't it? Although the situation was not ideal, you just got to take it as a learning experience and pick yourself back up and move on to the next, the Rainy Day Fund is definitely probably the most important one, I would say, because you just don't know how long you might be out to work for. It could be a week, it could be three months. And life doesn't stop, just because work has stopped.
So I've mortgage pay still have bills and school fees depending on what have you got. So that's what stuff needs to all carry on. And then everything else is just a new opportunity, isn't it? Meet new people, maybe change direction of your career.
And like you said, do something like what you've done and start your own business and see if you can go alone. Yeah, it's been a good experience. And we both come out of it on a positive note, which is the main thing I suppose. I've been keeping it as you have as well.
We've been keeping in contact with majority of the people from the old company. And yeah, I don't think anyone's actually gotten into our straights. Everyone's sort of landed on their feet. There's been four, five new businesses set up.
People have moved to new companies and happier than ever. It's a good experience for everyone out of the ashes. Yeah, I think we're quite fortunate as well about the location that we're in. Like within the Berkshire area, there's quite a sort of up and coming tech hub as well.
And there's a lot of companies that can choose from. There's quite a few agencies, there's a lot of big sort of corporates as well. We've got companies like Microsoft and Dell and Virgin Media and Verizon, all within pretty small commute distance. So it wasn't too difficult to find another company that is looking for someone with your skills.
Even though the fact that there were 30 people all looking for the same sort of jobs all at the same time, there was kind of enough to go around, which was really fortunate. I imagine if we were in another part of the country where maybe the tech industry isn't as thriving, it would be quite difficult. But I suppose it's just fortunate of where we are at the moment. Yeah, I suppose it comes down to as well with how people approached it.
No one really gave up or threw in the towel. Pretty much from that first week, it's like you went straight home, you went on LinkedIn and saw that sort of stuff out. Everyone was proactive. Unless it's someone like you who just goes and transits or isn't.
It spends the evening in the pub, but why not? So if you enjoyed the show, do remember to hit the subscribe button wherever you're listening to this. And if you want to drop us any feedback, you can catch us on our website at inspect.fm or you can drop us a message on Twitter at inspect.fm and we will catch you in the next show. See you next week.
Cuz bye.