| I suspect you come across as a bit “Jack of All Trades; Master of None”. On the systems administration side of things going from one system to a rack isn’t nothing, it’s an achievement, but a lot of employers paying £100k may have applicants coming with more breadth of experience or significant scale - either 1000’s of systems, 10000’s of endpoints, maybe they’re looking for specialist knowledge implementing endpoint protection using Crowdstrike? In the developer dimension for £100k they’re likely looking for a PHP developer who has ‘full time’ written software in a professional setting for a number of years, worked on teams of developers and contributed to big projects and big codebase (~20k LOC across ~20 repositories is ‘hobby’ scale, plenty of places in industry are >=2 orders of magnitude larger), and perhaps they also seek prior experience with the frameworks they may use? I’m not sure you should be aggrieved, £60k is nothing to sniff at for a smaller-scale IT role with a “Does It All” blend of duties. Also beware almost everyone is far more replaceable than they might themselves believe. I doubt a SMB would have much trouble finding applicants for a £60k role involving figuring out your stuff. Maybe they’d just hire two people on £40k to have more arms around the problem domain and more resilience against a repeat? Definitely don’t underestimate that trying for “Checkmate” may/will result in an adverse reaction from your employer. Generally employers dislike being strong armed and even if they pay you today they may well begin working on their Plan B. If you want to take your career in a different direction and focus on something like PHP development you may have to accept this involves taking one step backwards before you can take two steps forward. Maybe that’s a PHP Developer role which focuses just on that, and not 36 other things, but maybe it’s a bit more entry-level because you don’t have the experience today to join as a “Team Lead” of a 10-person team doing XYZ. Lastly, by far the easiest way to find your next big thing is within your network, not shotgunning your CV into lots of places who have publicly advertised an opening. Look in your local community for topical microconferences or user groups and get involved. Look for more national user groups or communities around e.g. Kubernetes (if that’s your jam) and get involved. Many of those will have Slacks with #jobs channels where hiring managers will post opportunities. Being a participant in the community, particularly if you’re a respected value-adding member, is a foot in the door. |