First contract - what am I doing wrong?

[bogeyman]

Everybody ...Get out of London ...its full of Rats.

I think he was entirely correct, and possibly prophetic.

Most of the 'people' who live in London are, in fact, rats, or, even more worringly, Squirrels.

[unixman]

Hi Guys. People have asked why not go to London when it is 40 mins away. It isn't 40 mins away. To get to the City, door to door takes about 2 hours 20 mins. Hence my reluctance. I live about 45 minutes from Milton Keynes by car.

Bogeyman says:

Well, you obviously feel you have marketable skills, and yet you have buried yourself in some dull little UNIX sysadmin enclave while the world has marched on by.

No. In the last 15 years, I have worked for several large companies and gained some good, up-to-date skills. Not just core unix.

Thanks threaded, I can write scripts, but I want to work in the UK. for now.

[bogeyman]

Hi Guys. People have asked why not go to London when it is 40 mins away. It isn't 40 mins away. To get to the City, door to door takes about 2 hours 20 mins. Hence my reluctance. I live about 45 minutes from Milton Keynes by car.

Bogeyman says:


No. In the last 15 years, I have worked for several large companies and gained some good, up-to-date skills. Not just core unix.

Thanks threaded, I can write scripts, but I want to work in the UK. for now.

But can you do any serious programming or software dev?

[Clog II The Avenger]

"I live about 45 minutes from Milton Keynes by car. "

Bournemouth?

[hyperD]

"I live about 45 minutes from Milton Keynes by car. "

Bournemouth?

Considering the traffic, Bletchley?

[BlasterBates]

It sounds to me like you're a longway from everywhere !!, well anywhere you could easily get jobs.

I think you're going to have to stay over somewhere in the week anyway.

[Bitbucket]

Women in London are really sexy

[Captain Jack]

Bitbucket, stop posting pics of your favourite tranny everywhere.

[unixman]

Hi Bogeyman. Eons ago I did C and C++. Now I do unix shell and (more often) Perl. I am not a software developer though. I write code only as needed in my systems management role. For example: to help with backup reporting, or space allocation in disk arrays. I would not attempt to pass myself off as a programmer.

[Captain Jack]

Unixman, I would suspect that you could only command relatively lowly contract roles with that sort of skillset. Most clients look for fairly hardcore developers who can directly add £££'s to the bottom line. I'm afraid system admin dudes are normally seen as either permies or relatively lowly paid perma-temps. Anything you did yonks ago won't count to a client unless you are prepared to lie and blag it.