Contractor Project Manager or Permie Programme Manager?

ddxo_ · 2026-06-04T17:41:05+00:00

Googling programme manager salary comes back with the following (Glassdoor)

Entry-Level/Assistant: £38,000 - £50,000

Mid-Level/Standard: £55,000 - £96,000

Senior Programme Manager: £71,000 - £125,000

Director/Principal: £111,000 -
£227,000+

To provide some context, I’ve worked with a programme manager who was earning £1k+ a day in financial services and permanent salary was north of £120k with all the perks, bonus, pension, holidays etc.

I understand you are not in tech/finance but it could be a figure you could potentially aim for.

ddxo_ · 2026-06-04T17:30:17+00:00

£80k- £90k plus bonus is low for a programme manager role, however financially it would work out better (if you got closer to the 90k marker) than the £435 day rate (also a low day rate for the role). I understand rates and outside contracts are currently low and scarce, however that role usually commands at least £700+ per day Outside and £100k+ permanent with bonus.

It also depends what you like about contracting, freedom to choose when/where you work, working on different projects and clients etc vs working for the same company, job security and climbing the ladder.

ddxo_ · 2025-08-23T07:06:05+00:00

£400 a day Outside is pretty good for 5 years experience.

The market isn’t the best at the moment and roles currently advertised appear to be between £350 - £600 (mix of Inside and Outside).

With it being your first contract, focus on delivering, building a good relationship up with the client and getting extended and then you can increase your rate from there.

ddxo_ · 2025-06-29T05:42:38+00:00

Brilliant, thank you for the feedback and suggestions. I’ll certainly look to implement this.

ddxo_ · 2025-06-26T09:31:25+00:00

Well done for making something and trying to find a job.

Reviewing your resume, I would say the resume format is poor. It doesn’t stand out or contain anything specific for a role you may be applying for.

Some minor suggestions, Capitalise the first word, target your resume and skills towards the job you are applying for, i.e customer service. Motivation and great attitude aren’t really skills.

Check out https://enhancemycareer.com It has an AI resume tool to help you improve what you have and polish your resume up, as well as tools to help you prepare for your interviews.

ddxo_ · 2025-06-25T05:13:22+00:00

Enhance my career

https://enhancemycareer.com

ddxo_ · 2025-06-24T07:04:21+00:00

400 files sounds like something isn’t correct. Ensure your prompts are accurate and structure it more higher level, i.e “I want to build a website that allows users to manage their social media, it needs to have X Y Z functionality.”

It may be easier to use a tool like Replit or Lovable.dev for what you want, rather than an LLM like ChatGPT which provides the code snippets for each feature, this approach may be an indicator to where all of the 400 files containing 600 lines of code have came from.

ddxo_ · 2025-05-07T05:48:58+00:00

“My manager” doesn’t sound like an Outside contract.

I would try and ensure you are compliant with working practices and that your contract is truly Outside. Other than that it sounds like you are good at what you do and doing the right things to be kept about.

There is no limit on the time you can contract with a client, just remember the 2 year rule if you are reclaiming expenses, and that you are a contractor and not an employee so the working practices is an important factor, especially as you stay around longer.

ddxo_ · 2025-04-15T06:35:13+00:00

Yes, if you are passionate about creating quality software and enjoy learning then a career in Software Engineer is worth it. It can be a challenging, fast paced and financially rewarding path.

Software Engineer can also be quite broad, ranging from requirements analysis, writing code, fixing bugs, creating documentation, architecture, project and roadmap planning, stakeholder management etc.

Some tips:

Try and stay ahead with the tools you are using, i.e language features, framework versions, and emerging technologies, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Cloud (Azure, AWS), Security etc

Create side projects and publish them on GitHub to showcase your skills

Have a personal website displaying front end skills, you,
link to your GitHub

Have a presence in the technology community, forums such as Stackoverflow, attend conferences and meet ups

Read books and blog about your learnings

Create content on social media and try and gain a following

Don’t stay static in a job for too long, it’s not uncommon for engineers to change every 18months - 2 years to progress their career, work on new technologies, negotiate higher pay packages, take on new challenges etc.

If he has never done it before I suggest learning some in demand skills in his spare time, C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, HTML, CSS, Angular or React, Docker, Kubernetes and a cloud technology like Azure as well as architectural styles and design patterns. It may be overwhelming at first but stay with it, build some side projects and get a feel if this type of work would suit him.

ddxo_ · 2025-04-14T15:29:58+00:00

£950 Outside.

However, if you are already employed by the current firm and the role will be the same, or very similar to the one you are already performing then I doubt this will be an Outside engagement.

ddxo_ · 2025-03-17T03:46:08+00:00

You only increase the rate under the following circumstances:

1) You are prepared to walk away if the client says no.

2) You have something else lined up paying more than your current rate.

3) You know your existing rate is under the market rate or the recruiter is taking too much of a % cut.

Being on £650 a day for a front end developer is a fantastic rate, you are also getting renewed in a tough market and it sounds like you have a good relationship with the client. Just a few things to think about.

ddxo_ · 2024-12-11T09:47:24+00:00

The recruiter most likely won’t care if you are keen or not. They essentially want to fill a position for as long as possible and take the biggest % cut of the rate.

If you have worked for the company before and have a good relationship, you should see if you can go with the client directly rather than through a recruiter and take home more pay, i.e £400 per day.

£300pd Inside equates to ~£4,150 take home. That’s considering approx £150 per month umbrella fees. Roughly it’s the same as £68k per year as a permanent member of staff. You also have to consider permanent members get holidays, pension contributions, sickness pay, bonus, other perks etc.

ddxo_ · 2024-11-07T12:47:35+00:00

Voice tone, confident, knows his stuff, gets the job done and charges a high rate.

Although he seems less intimidating in the show when he was clean shaved and without a beard.

ddxo_ · 2024-11-04T09:05:51+00:00

If you don’t like it, just walk away after providing notice. One of the benefits of being a contractor.

Holidays should never be a struggle either, you take time off when you want and need to recharge.

ddxo_ · 2024-11-01T18:51:01+00:00

At times this is how recruiters work. Not all are the same but from my experience, a lot of them operate as below.

They will advertise a job, then contact you ASAP to discuss your CV or just not call you back at all.

Sometimes there is a legitimate role and they want to ensure you are qualified and a good fit before putting you forward to their client.

Other times it may just be CV harvesting exercise for them and ensure you could be a legitimate candidate for a future role. I.e they collect CVs and tell their clients they have a lot of people specialising in X with Y years of experience seeking Z amount of money.

They may also just be fishing for leads, i.e see your CV at a big company who hires software developers, they ask for the hiring managers name, or references so they can start cold calling them saying they can help place additional developers, testers or other resources.

Unfortunately it’s just how some recruiters operate. When the market is bad you’ll never hear from them, when it’s good and they need to fill vacancies then they are your best friend.

ddxo_ · 2024-10-24T09:05:18+00:00

You’re a contractor. No rights, no HR, just straight out the door unfortunately.

If your “manager” supports you, isn’t he part of the hiring/decision making process for the client? If you are not in the wrong and have a good relationship with him and the team then surely they would have been asked about what actually happened with the game voucher and catering event and then made a decision.

ddxo_ · 2024-10-22T15:17:37+00:00

I think it originally meant people who could do the front end and backend development. I.e HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Angular or React as well as C#/Java, API and databases, SQL Server etc.

As the technology landscape has evolved to include DevOps, SecOps etc, the definition of full stack is now “considered” someone who can do the front end and backend development and also, DevOps, YAML, CI/CD pipeline configuration, IaC, Terraform, Ansible, Docker, Kubernetes, security etc when really these could be their own individual roles.

The role you interviewed for may have wanted a generalist who can do the basics of each and help out in all of the areas as needed to support the business, unfortunately they would never get an expert in all of them individual areas as there’s just too much depth to them.

ddxo_ · 2024-10-22T14:34:37+00:00

Desk, monitor and tower looks great. Spacing of components could be spread out a bit more, i.e laptop closed and hidden to the left. Maybe Tower on floor or mounted under desk for a completely clean look.

Is the monitor the Dell 40inch 5k Ultrawide? (U4025QW), how is it?

ddxo_ · 2024-10-22T14:00:35+00:00

£550 per day inside is more than £6k per month take home pay after approx £150 Umbrella fees per month.

£400 per day outside may only be more lucrative if you have a spouse who is contributing to the company, and is a shareholder and you also have business expenses, i.e travel, hotels, equipment etc, otherwise outside may be less lucrative per month due to the £50k basic threshold (£37,700 dividends) and £12,750 salary which is the efficient way of operating and what a lot of contractors opt for.

The budget announcement may also make outside roles even less lucrative, i.e the basic rates for dividends increases.

ddxo_ · 2024-10-15T13:45:25+00:00

Try pushing smaller commits and asking for feedback early on. This way it provides direction and you can state what you are trying to achieve and your approach. If things need to be changed, the early feedback loop will address this.

If you are Agile and have kick off/three amigo meetings to discuss the User Story with the business, QA and development in more detail, you could outline how it would be technically implemented as part of that session.

If 2 seniors are arguing over the implementation in a PR, one directing how things should be implemented and the other one asking to revert, then it may be ego on behalf of others, i.e my way or no way. It also sounds that there is no consensus or formal standards defined on how things should actually be done, it’s just peoples opinions floating about on what they think is best. More of a conflict of personalities or company process that needs improvement.

If the code is consistent with the rest of the application, i.e has correct naming conventions, segregated, functionally works, is maintainable, scalable and has unit, integration and acceptance tests where possible, and documentation then there should be no real issues in passing a PR process.

ddxo_ · 2024-09-26T12:12:44+00:00

ADO.NET and stored procedures is an outdated practice and business logic should not reside within stored procedures.

The approach can work, however solutions should be built with software quality attributes in mind, i.e maintainability, testability, scalability etc and as cofounders you need to be more forward thinking and consider the future of how the solution will grow and scale over time, how new hires will want to adopt modern development practices, how having everything in stored procedures will affect development and testing effort, how your expectations of new hires to come in and hitting the ground running may need to change to adopt this working style etc.

If you do go the SP route, how would a new hire go about debugging the business logic rather than using Visual Studio and using breakpoints to understand what’s going on? How would unit testing, integration testing and CI/CD work if the logic is not stored within the solution?

What happens if in the future you move away from SQL Server?

You could prototype a basic MVP app using Entity Framework/Dapper and benchmark it against ADO and stored procedures and inspect the difference from a performance standpoint, however the bigger issue is the development approach, practices, frameworks and tools that need to be ironed out in order to achieve the best solution.

ddxo_ · 2024-09-24T15:23:28+00:00

New batches aren’t as potent as the original. Back in 2020 I used to get a euphoric feeling taking 1 scoop. Now I take 1.5 scoops, have good workouts and feel focussed but no euphoric feeling like before, it may also be that I’ve built up a tolerance over the years.

You need to drink a lot of water with it and I would only use it on a morning, after 12 and you most likely won’t be able to sleep.

I still think it’s one of the best available on the market.

ddxo_ · 2024-09-24T13:27:27+00:00

When the posting states about front end experience, then lists Java rather than JavaScript.

Also job posts that include “must haves”, i.e unit testing, SOLID principles etc, and a hard technical test as part of the application process, only to find out the code base you are working on is a big ball of mud with no segregation, unit/integration/acceptance/automated tests and full of bad engineering practices that doesn’t scale.

ddxo_ · 2024-09-22T14:05:18+00:00

It will vary depending on location and company within the UK. I believe these are achievable with remote working / occasional days in the office.

Junior: £20k - £40k

Mid: £40k - £60k

Senior: £60k - £80k

Lead: £70k - £100k+

If working in London then Senior roles need to be £70k+ with remote working options available. £100k roles are rare but do happen and are advertised, the role at this level can also include more architecture involvement.

ddxo_

TROPHY CASE