I graduated last July and started on the grad scheme with my company in September. The pay is pretty good and I have no concerns about the safety of my job - it would be a major PR reversal for the company to cut graduate or apprentice jobs, though overall the company is downsizing. My mortgage has dropped from £230 a month to £180, which helps. I'd have preferred to have sold my flat when I moved away from Glasgow but wouldn't get a good enough price for it at the moment, so I rent it out now which gives me a bit of profit over the mortgage. I'm happy to hang on to it until prices rise. I think I was lucky though - I'm glad I'm not graduating this year because I think it would be much harder to find a graduate job... losers.
anyone got any advice, the guy who i am freelancing for is constantly changing things even though i am ready to submit the work, he has agreed to pay me the original amount agreed, however every revision he makes is another 8 hours work for me. I did tell him every revision he makes will cost him more money however i havent seen a penny of it yet because he is just pissing me about changing things just before i submit them. This weekend he wanted to review my work so i saved it as a .pdf, and i password protected a .rar of all the files used in the creation of the work just in case he pulls a fast one. am i right to be suspicious? The amount is question is only £140 for 20 hours graphics work (yes i know its stupidly low but i need the money, i got photoshop licenses etc... from my mum as a birthday gift so i dont have many overheads) its now running into the 3rd week and i havent seen anything.
This may be a stupid question, but have you sent an invoice? I was in the same situation with a bit of flash work recently and the company didn't pay up well past the usual 30 days so I rang up and asked and they got all bitchy about not having a second invoice. I sent them one and after waiting over a month already I requested it be paid within ten days. Ten days passed so I rang them and the guy started spewing some nonsense about thinking I meant ten working days even though there was a date on the damn thing. I'm happy to say, I'm never working with that tit again. I'm always amazed by people/companies like that. Whenever we get an invoice, I'm pretty sure it's paid either straight away, or within the week. I think it's just disgraceful that companies quibble and try and leave it as long as possible.
Let me about! In my previous role I had to deal with this a couple of times and it used to drive me nuts. Pay your damn bills people!
I know i'm pretty safe in my job and i have a rather good salary, but i can't help feeling a little unease about this recession (I'm calling it the Credit Munch). It's as if everything around us is grinding to a halt, I don't like to see shops closing and I don't like to see the increase in crime that it's causing. I can't believe the government is bailing out the banks, if I was in debt would they help me? No! It's ****ing unbelievable. I can't even type it annoys me so much.
Dont sell your self so cheap. I'm more or less in the same situation as you are(and its pissing me off) but I can advise you how I do it differently. First, don't lift a finger untill half the money is on your accounts. Graphic design sector is subject to loads of scamming. You are right to be suspicious. Just make sure he pays you for the work done so far before you start on the revisions. And really, charge some decent money, you're prolly worth it. If you start out low it's really harder to get on top later. Good luck with that!
Heh, you could but my house is tiny!!! Because the housing market is what it is though people trying to sell are now turning to renting out, so there's a load of cheap places. If you're serious about moving to London definitely check out gumtree for jobs and places to stay to gain an idea of how much it'd cost.
about 20% of our workforce has been made redundant which is scary as we dont know when the next round will be coming up. in order to make myself more useful im putting in unpaid overtime in the hope that my job will be okay should management decide more need to go. also im on a fixed rate mortgage so bah!!
I changed jobs at christmas and got a pay rise, almost 5 figures pay rise in fact. I moved to a managed email provider, who are getting plenty of business through the doors, as lots of small to medium businesses are looking to cut costs by having someone do all the work for them for quite a bit less than the cost to employ 1 or 2 staff to manage a full email system for a year. We're obviously in competition with other players but it seems there's enough people making the switch to go around
Think about it: if the banks went bankrupt you'd have no money at all as you wouldn't get your savings out, as they would have no money to give to you, but you can bet someone would still chase you to pay off that loan/credit card/overdraft.
However, if your bank were a member of FDIC (any bank into which I would deposit my money is a member), your deposits would be insured up to $100,000. That actually got temporarily increased late last year, iirc. So you would have your savings, but it would effectively come from the same place--the federal government. Edit: This is assuming you live in the US, but I'm sure our friends across the pond have similar setups.
Heh, Freaky, I'm in the same boat. I work for an email provider and we just keep taking on more support staff as a lot of traditional brick and mortar mom&pop stores are going web based instead. Where this whole thing is bad for some areas of industry it's really good for others.
I'm a city employee on contract to a non-profit. My job is pretty safe, considering if the city cuts my job, I'll be hired on by the non-profit.
In the UK the government insures us to £35,000 of savings I think. Maybe slightly more as they increased it a bit ago, but don't remember how much by. Given they bought huge chunks of banks there's little chance they will go bankrupt now. Our taxes are paying to keep em afloat!
The recession is treating me well so far... the biggest annoyance, like someone else said, are the exchange rates. I've got more holiday than I've ever had before and have the ability to take it because our team is now twice the size, but the exchange rates (wherever I think about going) are a bit FUBAR so I'm not getting quite the same value for money as I would have a year or so ago.
2 days before I get laid off. Because no more money. Because the last couple of weeks have been **** and this is a great opportunity for me to try something new / see the world.
