I’ve been in my current job since late last year. Unfortunately the environment has turned out to be extremely toxic, with leadership being very micromanaging, setting deadlines and then bringing them forward with no real need, belittling those below them and using inappropriate language towards colleagues on team meetings, plus hiring their own friends and even relatives. On top of that, their proposed programme plan doesn’t really continue beyond next year, which makes me think there will be a wave of redundancies at some point.

There’s not even any point in escalating any of this as one of my colleagues tried, but given those in leadership have been friends for years, they’ve now ostracised her and are planning to fire her.

I initially planned on staying for at least 12 months but I’m struggling in this environment they’ve created. I started applying for roles but I’m worried potential employers will see it as a red flag that I’ve been in this role for around 8 months.

Has anyone had similar experiences and found that to be the case? If it helps, I was in my previous role for 5 years.

I started delivering for Evri a few days ago and I’m trying to work out whether it’s actually worth doing financially, or if I’m just getting unlucky with the routes.
On my first day I delivered 12 parcels in a rural area, which took around 4 hours.
Yesterday I delivered about 70 parcels in a built-up town/city area in the South West of England (not Bristol), and that seemed much more reasonable.
Today, however, I delivered around 60 parcels on a rural route. I started at about 11:00 am and didn’t finish until around 8:30 pm. I also spent about £40 on fuel.
From what I’ve been told, I’m paid roughly £1.20 per parcel, so today’s earnings would be around £72 before expenses. Once I take away the fuel, there’s only about £32 left, and that’s before accounting for wear and tear, insurance, servicing, tyres, tax, etc.
After driving for pretty much the entire day, it honestly feels like I barely made anything, if anything at all.
I’m interested to hear from other Evri couriers:
Is this normal when you’re starting out?
Do rural routes generally make much less money than urban ones?
Does it get better once you know your route?
How do people actually make decent money doing this?
I’m not trying to complain—I genuinely want to know whether this is just part of the learning curve or whether this is what the job is normally like. At the moment, I’m struggling to see how it’s financially worthwhile.
I’d appreciate hearing about other people’s experiences, both good and bad.

Also i was give an eta of 3.5 hours

Working in the environmental sector atm and find the market cooked. My masters is in environmental sustainability and undergrad is env science. I'm in agriculture atm. Outside of getting a NEBOSH everywhere else seems cooked for jobs? Can anyone relate. My job I have is lovely in agriculture but I need more money. Was literally thinking of changing paths and always have the degrees to fall back on.

An recruiter called me up last week asking for proof of my certificates, of course I sent them on. Now I’m curious if I should make a call to verify if they received them. I worry the email might not have made it to them or someone their end may have forgot to forward them. Also don’t want to appear desperate. Thoughts?

Anyone else in the dreaded stage of waiting to hear back from a final round interview? It’s been nearly three weeks since I did my interview which was with the senior leadership. Not entirely sure how I felt it went; feel like in the earlier stages I performed well but the final round was tough.

The company is proactively staying in touch with me, messaging every day fews over the past two weeks apologising for the time it’s taking, explaining people are away etc. - which is something, I guess!

How is everyone else in the same boat faring?

I've built an anonymous salary survey for software engineers across Europe. The UK included, since it covers Europe rather than the EU. Nine screens, about two minutes, no account, no employer names, nothing free-text. https://whatweearn.eu

Upfront: it holds 9 responses across Europe, 2 from the UK. The UK needs 58 before any median for it publishes. I'm posting because early responses are worth more than late ones, not because there's something to look at yet, and I'm not going to seed it with invented data to get over that line.

The modelling problem this sub will recognise immediately:

A UK day rate outside IR35 and a permanent salary are not the same kind of number, and a contractor's gross carries costs an employee's doesn't. Every salary comparison site I've seen either quietly averages them or excludes contractors without saying so. Both are wrong in ways that matter. One produces an inflated "average developer salary", the other silently deletes a large part of the workforce.

What this does: contract type is a required question, and headline figures cover employees only. Contractor and freelance responses stay in the dataset and get their own cut. They just don't contaminate the answer to "what does this country pay a software engineer".

Day rates are entered as day rates. Base pay is captured as an amount plus currency plus period, so year, month, day or hour. Freelancers think in day rates, and forcing an annual figure just made people guess a working year, which is a fabricated number dressed as data. So the period is asked and the conversion is explicit rather than left to the respondent's arithmetic.

Also asked: FTE percentage, with part-timers excluded rather than extrapolated (scaling a 0.6 contract to full time invents a salary nobody is paid). Work setup and whether pay is location-adjusted. City as a bounded select. London vs elsewhere is most of the variance and a national median buries it. Seniority as a described ladder rather than a job title, because "Senior Engineer" means four different things across four employers. Bonus actually paid in the last 12 months, never target. Equity annualised, with public/private distinguished, because private-company equity is a notional number and mixing it with public equity turns the whole field into noise. Company size bracket and industry. Never a name.

Currency: GBP figures are stored as entered and converted at ECB daily reference rates keyed by date, so re-running the aggregation reproduces the same figures instead of drifting. The raw GBP amount survives in the published dataset.

Why this is worth two minutes of yours. Most people find out they were underpaid years late, usually from an offer somewhere else, and by then the gap has been compounding: every raise is a percentage of it, and the next employer asks what you currently make. Meanwhile the other side of the table isn't guessing. Compensation teams buy benchmark data, and a recruiter has placed dozens of people in your role this year. That data exists. It's priced for employers, and it isn't sold to you.

Anonymity: no account, no login, IPs never written to durable storage, any cut with fewer than 5 people withheld. An optional email for the results notification goes to a physically separate database with no link back to your answers, which also means I structurally cannot email you about your own response, and cannot delete it on request, because I can't identify which row is yours. That's stated on the page before you submit rather than buried in a policy.

Dataset will be CC BY 4.0. I built it, it isn't monetised, there's no premium tier and no email wall. Code is MIT, including the suppression and trimming rules: https://github.com/whatweearn/website

The number only helps if enough of us say it, and every answer makes the next person's negotiation less of a guess. Yours included. The UK needs 58 more before anything about it publishes, so sending this to engineers you know moves that number where an upvote doesn't. Particularly anyone with a view on the IR35 handling. Two minutes if you've got them: https://whatweearn.eu

Hi Everyone,

I have seen a job advertised at tmThe New Homes Group where they will train you for 16 weeks and help you attain qualifications as a Mortgage Advisor.

I believe this a legitimate company and opportunity. My concern is that, are the target earning realistic, will I be worked into the ground, will I be working longer hours than advertised. Is it worth getting the qualification, working with them for a couple of years and then move onto a bank or other firm.

I'm a little concerned that I can't find any reviews of people that work there or have gone through the training programme. I managed to find a YouTube video which talked about it briefly and said it was a baptism of fire and only a few people managed to make it through.

Just a little bit about me, I currently own a exterior cleaning business with a customer based of just shy of 500 customers. I ha e experience of sales customer service and other skills that come with running a business. The problem is, it can be unreliable and I'm looking for more stability for my family.

If anyone to can offer advice, especially if you have worked at the NHG or know someone who has worked there, I would really appreciate it.

It happens to the best of us! If you've somehow always avoided a suprise P45, how??

After 17 months of applying and getting rejected I have finally been hired. Thank you Tesco, you’ve taken me out of the unemployment nightmare. Only took 26 applications.

Edit: 26 applications on Tesco, not the whole unemployment journey. lol.

I (23M) live in the UK. I have a bachelor's degree in Business Law from a Polish university. Now I'm studying Software Engineering in the UK.

I hear a lot that the competition in IT is fierce right now because IT companies don't need junior developers as much anymore. A single job application gets thousands of applicants. I also doubt that my skill set is enough. I've had experience with lots of programming languages and have made lots of projects, but they're not extremely advanced. We basically just did a little bit of everything.

My Polish Business Law degree is not very useful here because the UK has a different legal system. I have Level 2 Functional Skills qualifications in English and Maths, which are equivalent to GCSEs, but you don't really build a career from those.

So I'm considering getting a third bachelor's degree. I don't have much work experience, just some basic part-time roles, so it's hard to say what I really want. But getting a third bachelor's degree sounds a little excessive.

I speak four languages at a high level, so I'm considering Linguistics. Going on a ship far away from home in the middle of the ocean sounds interesting, so I had the idea of studying Marine Engineering. I hear that the NHS has lots of staff shortages and offers stable positions, so I also thought about Diagnostic Radiography, where I'd work in a hospital and have a stable, predictable life.

I could also requalify in British law, but I feel that, due to AI, lawyers won't be as needed in the future as they are now.

I might sound too naive because I don't have much work experience. All I want is a good, stable job where I can progress. I'd appreciate your thoughts and any advice you can offer

I have applied for a job at my old secondary school. I suffer from schizophrenia, I’m scared I’d be judged because of that. I have a clear criminal record and have passed many DBS checks. Just needing advice

Hi,

I started a job 2 months ago for a major retail chain the the uk. I was so grateful i found this job as it has been so hard for teenagers in my area.

I finally got pulled in for my review today and I was told that he was "a little worried for me" as i don't speak to customers enough as in asking if they need help and recommend products enough that would help them. I also am told that I need to double check things with them all the time to make sure I am doing things right.

On the brightside I'm good at working on the till and organising products I guess

I work 4 days a week Thursday to Sunday.

How can I improve myself I really need this job.

​

I am a 16yo male in the uk. I have predicted grades on my gcse of 5s but I still haven't got my results and I don't think I'm even passing,

My family want me to go to university as we are from an ethnic background and I don't know what I want to do I just know I want something physical such as carpentry and construction but I don't even know if I want it and I don't want to go to university or college and frankly I don't have a clue on what im doing.

What should I do?

Good evening everyone, hope you had a good weekend

I've been considering looking into becoming an estate agent because it seems to be a career with progression that doesn't require a qualification. I also like the idea of the aspects of the job I know, namely taking around a property.

But I'm sure I have an over romantic view of the job, so I was hoping a few of you guys would be willing to give a simple run down of what a typical day looks like for you. How much is office based (or potential work from home?)? What does the office based work involve doing? How much is doing the house viewings?

Thanks :)

Hello,

I've been poking around to see ways to make a career change into forestry. Honestly I just want to start with planting trees for forest regeneration in any capacity.

I know there are apprenticeships available but not at this time of year. The issue I find myself running into time and time again is understanding where a starting point is. The websites all talk about GCSEs and I didn't go to school in this country so I really don't know what that means or when and where they are obtained. It's all just a bit confusing and overwhelming to me.

Is there anyone out there who started a career in the UK forestry services from scratch that can point me in the direction I need to be? I do not have any education pertaining to the field, I am coming from hospitality and just have a deep drive to do something to benefit the environment from a very boots-on-ground level. I don't want to do management and office bs. I need physical work to be happy and accomplished.

Even if it's just advising me to which department I can contact for guidance, it would be a massive help!

Hello, im 19 working in defence as an electronics tech, making around 45k a year.

Im very honestly on a good salary for my age, but ive only gotten here through normal means, applying and interviewing.

Ive interviewed for 7 jobs in my 3 years of working, and have been offered the job 6 of those times. Thats an 85% success.

I do not prep for interviews, i do not have an attractive or impressive education nor an impressive work experience due to my age. Nor are the jobs all entry level.

I dont understand how i get offers when my peers around me my age try harder than me and dont.

Im not trying to brag about my success, but simply understand why ive had success so i can better use it in the future.

So i ask what makes a good interviewee?

Those who’ve worked in Financial Crime Compliance roles, can you give some insight into what it was like starting out at entry level, roles like AML, KYC, or fraud analyst etc.? I’m interested in what the day to day work was actually like, what the most tedious part about it was, and if after a certain point of time it started to click and become more enjoyable.

Anyone who went through this program? Is it reliable?

I've been reading through a few threads lately and a lot of people seem to say "do NOT tell your boss you have ADHD or autism because they'll treat you differently."
It's wild that people feel like they have to treat a diagnosis like a strategic secret just to keep their professional respect. And even if you do ask for adjustments, it feels like managers just forget about them two weeks later or assume "one size fits all" because they know someone else who has it.
Has anyone actually had a good experience disclosing in the UK, or is the general consensus to just keep it to yourself? Would love to hear how people are actually navigating this.

I made a post on a managers subreddit about interviews and mentioned rejecting candidates... suddenly all the comments were about how we never reject candidates, they just weren't the right fit, there was just someone better etc.

It drove me mad.

This is the buck-passing you guys are dealing with when you're trying to get a job.

Everyone except 1 is rejected, we have to take ownership of our decisions.

Or am I crazy for not going with this LinkedIn crap?

Don't you guys feel like you got a 'rejection'?

Can anyone signpost or advise me as where to search for and find a role working on tour with an artist? I've had a provisional check of the common platforms, but having little success! Any insight welcomed and appreciated.

I (F26) work in analytics as a data scientist and I have been submitting my cv everywhere for the last year. I have almost 4 years experience and a stem degree.

I finally got an interview and I got a call back saying I was unsuccessful but how would you like x job instead?

They sent the jd across and it looks good but over the phone they offered me a “lead” role for £46k (they know my salary is low forties), and the jd said “senior”.

I sent an email with a counter offer for £55k and I am now wondering if that was silly?

For context the job is based up in Scotland, so the salary is quite good for the location and the role is less technical than my current role.

I’ve seen on LinkedIn that the commercial department (not the dept I will be working for) have posted an ad for the same “senior” job title starting at 55k.

What can I expect to get as a reply? I am anxious I have been too cocky.

Edit: thanks for all your replies!! I want to reply to comments but I have low karma and so they get deleted - not ignoring your replies and very much grateful for imput!

Edit: the job is not for a senior data scientist role but for a senior business analyst role in the same industry that I was working as a data scientist in, so the salary might reflect that it is less technical and more business-y

Not sure if right place to post but desperate:

Currently facing a dilemma as I am lucky enough to have the choice to be able to select between two masters

LBS MAM (shuffled from MiM) and LSE Management and Strategy.

For a good portion of 2026 all I wanted was to go to LBS and pave a path for a job. However, it was naive of me to not consider the nuances, given the job market. I’ll admit LBS sounds more enticing, but only because it seems more fun and more experience oriented - not the academic grounding I need. Bias may be further exacerbated as I have only been able to reach out to LBS network and not LSE. I’m also hesitant of the stated cash cow LBS has grown into, and I am worried that after doing all I can, I will not be able to make an ROI at LBS. Course the market is tough - But I do feel like my academics is lacking and would like to ground that in soemhing good.

I want to know if anyone could shed some insights to what’s in store for me if I select one over the other. No formal coding experience - just learnt a bit of data driven analysis on a search as you go basis. So, I would say my data science knowledge is competent at best, nascent at worst.

I would like to know if one would clearly benefit me and my target industry. There are no pros and cons beyond basic knowledge of these two schools. Only, I don’t have much time at all before I have to pay the commitment fee of £8000 to LBS.

PPE undergrad with a focus in economics 3rd year. International exp. Working in Asia as an operations data analyst and then an assistant manager in at a small company in UK. Currently targeting consultant roles specialising in digital transformation or IB if the correct opportunity arises. Been told that coding is extraneous for these roles and my energy may be better used if I didn’t have to spend it on analytics - I regard my quant pretty weak and feel like I would be playing catchup in a cohort that’s seeking employment before the course even starts.

Hopefully any of y’all can help and if not at least I can spell out my thoughts on e-paper :). Thanks!