No work for a year in London

[Winterlit]

I’ve name-changed for this post.

My husband and I have found ourselves without work for a year while raising two kids in London. We’ve had a string of unpredictable events that depleted our savings in the 3 years before. So, we only had savings for 3 months plus I had made some small investments that I could liquidate. Since then we’ve used credit cards and taken out 2 loans.

We thought it may take us 6 months at the most to find work! We work in tech as freelance contractors (for over 15 years) and all contract work has dried up. A couple of small freelance jobs almost went through but got cancelled last minute. We’re very proactive people and as such have applied to permanent jobs as well as working on a tech product for which we are applying for investment for.

We have had so many contract jobs, permanent jobs and investment rejections - in the hundreds! - over the last 12 months. Moving to a cheaper city is a last resort option I’ve thought about but changing the kids schools + home is not something I want to do. Especially as one of them is in secondary.

I have this feeling that perhaps we’re too experienced to be hired?! Perhaps most of the tech hiring is happening at junior levels. I say this as we know many others in their mid 40s also out of work for 6 months + in London.

I’m not sure why I am posting! Maybe to hear a hopeful story or ideas on how to get out of this mini crisis for our little family.

As a side I had a fairly emotionally and possibly physically traumatic childhood and have been working / self-sufficient since I was 16. My partner has also been working since a young age. We worked many jobs to pay our way through uni. We got together young and supported each other a lot in our careers.

I feel bad complaining as we have our health, our two lovely children and live in a fairly stable country. Apart from the recent riots! We’re both UK born ethnic minorities so it’s close to home. Anyway, that’s a digressions. Essentially, financially this last year has been a lot!

We’ve cut back on many expenses and are living quite frugally with a small mortgage on our tiny London flat. Our biggest expenses are school fees and we’ve given ourselves another academic year to see if we need to change to state school.

My husband and I feel even stronger as a unit through all of this which has taken me by surprise as it’s quite a testing time. We’ve had some issues in the past and had couples therapy a while back which was very helpful. We’ve also always actively worked on our relationship since the beginning which I feel is helping us now.

A bit of long winey post but I guess I am so ready for some tailwind! 🤞 🍀

As people have suggested:

• remove kids from private school
• make sure you claim everything you are entitled to
• consider moving to a cheaper area
• look at other sectors if there is nothing in IT at the moment, although I have seen quite a few roles advertised in the Civil Service job board that seem to match both your skills
• being in London you should be able to quickly get a job in retail/hospitality while you look for something more permanent.

How are you going to repay the debt?
Pay your mortgage? This situation is worrying!

I read your post with sympathy until the bit about school fees...so you're not desperate yet?

Has your children’s school shared what the impact on fees will be of Labour’s VAT plan and have you budgeted to accommodate any fee increase?

Are you able to work from home? My DH is in IT, not in London, but has lots of people who work for him - contractors and perm staff - who never come into the office. Can you look further afield?

You are at the stage where you need to get ANY job , not THE job.

1. Apply for absolutely everything from shop work/call centre/care and beyond.
2. Consider contracts outside London. There is a whole world outside the M25 (although where I live near Bristol, despite having some major employers or large departments of major companies, is 2nd only to London in terms of cost of living.
3. Consider pulling DC out of private school. Or if you consider relocation then move them to a cheaper private school.

What about lower paid work?

Yes you get 18 gor cleaning but to actually find anything is impossible. I have been looking for just a nanny position for 5 months now with no luck, there are lots of jobs when you look but even with 20 years experience i can't find anything and hardly get any interviews. It has never been so bad..

We are seeing so much of this in tech these days. Dh, early 50’s, went from contractor to permie a couple of years back and now his employer (like so many at the moment) is undertaking massive redundancies with his role being one of them, after first ending huge numbers of contractor roles. He has at least a dozen ex-colleagues and friends who have been out of employment for 6-12 months, living off the savings they’d built as contractors. I don’t think many people are aware of just how bad job losses are jn the tech sector right now. In so many cases the jobs are either going to AI or being off-shored.

Dh is one of the lucky ones, as he has previously worked in the civil service and has been able to secure a new civil service job, albeit at a much reduced salary.

We have one dc at uni, another one due to go in a couple of years and will have to completely re-think how we/they are going to cover the costs, plus we can’t overpay to shorten our mortgage as we’d planned to either, but we’re just grateful he’s found permanent work. Unfortunately I think you are most likely going to have to reframe your expectations salary-wise in favour of secure employment.

Stop paying school fees. Get a job. Any job. McDonald's. Tesco. poundland. Anything. Then work up.

My first point would be you can't do private school on tick, many working families are withdrawing their DCs because of VAT coming in.

Second, do you have the knowledge to fix computers, not high end stuff, installing software, setting them up, upgrades, installing servers and switches - if so go self employed, the two freelance IT techs I know do very well looking after small business IT needs.

In the meantime one of you needs a job - the credit debt isn't going anywhere, and you can't keep adding to it!

Maybe try FE as a lot of college courses are vocational and they prefer industry-experienced teachers. They would expect you to get a teaching qual when in the job, but not a PGCE. There are a lot of hourly paid roles so no commitment on either side if it doesn't work out. Room for permanent roles and progression to management if it does.

Jeez, I thought we were just coming out of a recession. Is this the same recession or a new one?

Aside from tech sector issues, you’ve also hit the 50s doldrums that apply to all sectors.

In the short term - one thing London is really short of is mobile tech support. I run a small business from home and I’ve had such difficulty finding a reliable techie who will come to the house since my last brilliant IT guy left the country. There are lots of “shops” where you can take your tech in but that’s not feasible if you need it for work. The number of people wfh since Covid has only increased the problem.

Exactly my point.

It's a really hard position to be in and I agree being an experienced person age 40+ is definitely against you. DH got made redundant in April and companies only seem to have analyst / junior positions available.

I agree with a previous poster - look further afield & apply even if it is far away. I work for a company in London where we go to the office once per week but we don't advertise that in the ad, we only disclose at interview. You could easily live in eg Manchester and do the once per week commute.

I used to work for one of the big IT consultancies and have just gone back to working full time after taking 10 years out of the industry (had a very poorly child and chose to work in local part time jobs of which there are none in my area!).

The job I have taken is for a house builder and we have a lot of contractors on the project I am working on. We are based in Yorkshire but most of them do not live locally and don’t travel to the office much at all (although it is only 1 hr 30 mins on train from London).

I work in PMO and I would say there are quite a few jobs in that area as I’m still getting emails and phone calls.

I understand why you’ve held out as it is normal to wait for a contract but I would be taking anything right now to get finances back on track.

Good Luck!

It might take time but honestly, twelve months is a worrying amount of time for a good developer to be out of the market. Kudos for keeping skills up to date but that really doesn't replace actual experience in our fast moving world.

Are you using your networks efficiently, not to bypass the formal recruitment process but to find places where skills and experience would be a good fit? Ask every single person you know in the market (not for a job) but for their opinion on the current trends and where they see things going in future.

No one minds taking 20mins over coffee or over video to express their opinion to a willing audience. Finish up by asking for other contacts whose opinion would be relevant. Eventually the people you are talking to will have positions which might be a good fit and then you can follow up.

As a business, we are always short of good devs at the same time as being inundated with CV's. Winnowing out the people who would be a good fit so that a personal recommendation from someone whose opinion is respected is almost always given at least a first interview.

And yes, we are fully committed to diversity and value differences. We don't need clones just people who can be stars in the own right at the same time as working within a team.

If I were looking for a change of direction I would be moving into Cybersecurity, where the most vacancies are. Looking for any role with options to move in that direction might be worthwhile. .

Vanishingly few projects do not depend on the seemingly contradictory skills of ability to work independently and as a team.

You need to claim UC, you can still do this if you own your own home, although they don't pay towards your mortgage. Have you taken a mortgage holiday? You both need a job atm, any job. Have you joined a recruitment agency? Like someone else said office cleaners etc actually get paid pretty well, certainly better than the £0 ph you are on currently. What year at secondary? Unless going into year 11 take them out and go to a state school. If year 11 try and see if the school can offer any financial support. You seem to be taking a very passive approach to all of this OP, with your 'solution' to just take out loans. Go on martins money saving expert as well, lots of good advice there.

All of this excellent advice.

Seriously OP, unless work in your field is imminent, I'm not understanding your calm and approach at all.

Why would she work as an office cleaner on the min wage when she could be freelancing tech support to individuals & small businesses for £60 ph?

@Mirabai Because neither OP nor her husband are currently working? Any job is better than none, whilst waiting to get back into the field of work which they are experienced and qualified to do, surely?

free government funded cyber security course

Money saving expert
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/

I'm amazed you're still paying school fees on no income when there have been a gazillion threads on how people will have to immediately remove their children from private schools because of the VAT.

I wonder as well if you need to tweak your CV more, particularly for permanent roles.
It's amazing that you're designing your own tech product, but if I was hiring for a permie role, that and the extensive contractor experience would make me think you're just applying for the role in the short term, rather than as a career path.
Also agree with cybersecurity, I was fortunate enough to get a free place on a Scottish government funded Women in Cyber evening course. I have dropped out as I've realised it was too technical for me, plus I got the other job, but it's definitely an avenue to explore .