My Job Requirements

I have nearly 20 years experience, so my skill-set is in high demand from all sorts of different organisations. If I were looking for a job, then these would be my priorities:

1. Understanding of medical appointments – My situation is that I currently have cancer. Although it’s recommended I work, some of my time will be spent in medical appointments at the hospital that is 15 mins walk away from me. Currently this is expected to take up 1 weekday every fortnight.
2. 100% working from home – This means that, several years down the line, the company policy will NOT change to ‘everyone in the office’. Almost all meetings should be remote-first, meaning that everyone is an equal participant in them if they are working remotely. Some people can of course dial in from an office location but they should be at no communication advantage compared to remote workers. Also, the main communication for the team and organisation should be done online, remote workers should not be ‘second class citizens’ to water-cooler gossip.
3. No Java technology stack – This means that Java and IntelliJ are not used as the mainstay of the application stack. I do not like working with Java and find it convoluted.
4. No unethical industries – This means no gambling, no defence, no industries which disadvantage society in a big way in general.
5. Good Pension – An above-average pension contribution. I would expect to be seeing at least 6% max employer contribution which is double the NEST minimum.
6. Good Pay – This is negotiable but I need to pay my bills, and that includes the 10% inflationary cost of living crisis we’re in.
7. Ability to use my own development environment – My customised development environment will run without issue on Linux machines, OSX machines, and on Windows 11 with WSL2. I am SO much more productive and happy using it.
8. Learning and dev time or budget allocated (nice to have) – This is a ‘nice to have’ but really if you aren’t able and willing to expense costs such as monthly technical books (£50/month) maybe you should be asking yourself why not, as an organisation.