For the past few months, things have been quiet at work due to a lack of technical projects. Whilst the company I work for is getting plenty of business, the IT side has slowed down as our main product (commercial motor insurance) is largely feature-complete. As a result, I’ve moved to a four day week, which usually means I’m free every Wednesday.
Since there are no restrictions on what I can do on this extra day—apart from not working for a competitor—I’m looking to fill it with additional experience in one of the following ways:
- Contracting: Primarily PHP development, but I’m also open to Perl and Java, though I haven’t used the latter two in anger for a while.
- Volunteering: Ideally at a strategic level—e.g. reviewing finances, policies, compliance etc.—as that fits my skillset better than on the ground campaign work.
- Paid directorships: I’d like to get some more experience as a non-executive director on the board of a small company, especially as my only non-work directorship (UKUUG) is coming to an end in September.
I do get the odd contracting enquiry, although I find that the rate expectations of firms requiring PHP developers are extremely low, so I haven’t picked up any work yet.