I see a lot of people lost their regular jobs in the last months - August - November 2023, wondering what they will do now.
The problem is not so much that they lost their regular job, but now they can't find a new position.
Yes, it's not just you, sending multiple applications for jobs and nobody wants to hire you, it's a global problem.
It happened to me too, and I will share my experience with those who are worried about what to do.
What happened to me?
In the last 11 years I was working as a full-stack programmer, my stack was PHP, database architecture, VueJS, ReactJS, frameworks like Laravel, Symfony, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Prado Framework and actually many many many more, I didn't remember a programming language I ever saw and didn't understand it, no matter it was not part of my stack.
My job before moving from Bulgaria to Slovenia was to solve people's problems, helping them optimize their businesses, but not only. People are thinking that when you are a programmer, you can only program something. Well, is not like that or maybe not every programmer is like that.
Want an example of how I was optimizing someone's business?
The owner of a famous pizzeria in Sofia, Bulgaria called me and said he has a problem with his website, he said it was non-stop hacked by someone and currently is not working again.
I got access to his hosting, found out that actually his current developer is doing this, asking him for money to fix it.
I moved the hosting to a new place and made a new website.
Owner was so happy that the problems stopped, that he want also to do some other stuff for him.
- I extend its website backend with newsletter functionality, so the kitchen staff can easily select the menu for tomorrow and it gets automatically sent to the clients, who subscribed for it.
- He built a kids playground, we mounted CCTV inside and also embedded the cameras in the website to be live watched by the parents.
- We also mount CCTV cameras in the kitchen, helping him to watch the situation at any moment, no matter where he is.
I hear multiple times people saying to someone if they have some problem, to call me, I can help them.
I saw a couple of times during the years my phone number and name written on some boards in a couple offices. Staff was informed if there was some technical problem, to call me.
I have also learned other knowledge in the last years, but let not make this article a story of my life and experience.
I had stable carrier and good number of customers in my home country Bulgaria, but I moved to live in Slovenia in 2019, which changed the things - as nobody knowed me, the only option for me was to start working for some local company as developer, which I did immediately - I have just 2 days traveling from Bulgaria to Slovenia and then again on the new working place.
I started in a small 5 people company in Slovenia, I moved to a bigger one after 5 months of work, and then moved to a bigger company with approx. 30 programmers and stayed there for the last 3 years.
Company was fully okay, they knew what they were doing, understandable, nice organization of the work, no chaos, stable company, paying the salaries without any delay each month, the only problem was they didn't have a good company policy for payment indexation.
In short - to whatever payment you negotiated when you were starting, this will be your payment in future.
Well, good, but because inflation in the whole world was knocking on the door in the last 3 years, my salary was staying the same, which wasn't making me happy. I had some talks with the owner, he said currently we can't talk about payment indexation.
What did I do after the talks?
If you see there is no chance of making your salary higher, what will you do? You will start looking for another job with better payment.
I did the same. When I came back home I realized no matter how much effort I put in my work, nobody cares about this. Even if there is better solution for the client, the company don't care.
Maybe I have knowledge or experience, which can help the company clients, but nobody ever asked me about my opinion or what I think about it.
Yes, I'm full-stack programmer, but this doesn't mean that I can do only that in my life. Big companies have some strange thinking that programmer shouldn't be asked for solutions of something, they need to receive task with detailed requirements and just to it.
Well, in the real life a lot of the complex tasks by solved from the ideas of the programmers, who are doing the job, not from the company owner, the product manager or the team lead.
My online store was started
I created a online store for home decoration products in Slovenia and decided to invest part of my salary into 4-5 products, which I saw are missing on the market.
I chose the name, got the domain, put my store on the hosting, set up basic shipping prices and put these 4 products in the store, everything in 2 days.
SEO optimization
There is multiple ways to make marketing, I'm not fan of stopping peoples video with my annoying ads, if I want to buy something, I will search it in Google, find it, order it, pay it.
I started reading how the specialists are doing SEO optimization and during my tests I got my first order, just 2 weeks after I registered the domain.
Order total was for 192 EUR. After delivering the order I was on a minus 20 EUR, but for me was important to check the process, see how someone order, how I get the stock, how I need to calculate my costs, how to calculate the VAT, how the delivery was going, how to do invoice on the end. I was okay to invest this 20 EUR. Order delivered, customers was happy.
2 weeks later I got a call from a customer - interested in making an order for 2450 EUR. Week later, the order is done!
In the right direction
These two orders showed me I'm going into the right direction and most important - I can use my full knowledge and ideas for myself, not waiting for someone to ask for my opinion or experience.
Orders were increasing each month, respectively visitors, customers, ranking in Google, Bing, Yahoo Search.
Contract canceling
All these years I was focused working for other people, even overtime, somedays 15-16 hours per day, weekends, no birthday, working on Christmas or New Eve.
Well, nobody came to tell me in the end “Hey, good work, thanks that you stay in the office more than us, we was going to rest, you was continuing to work, can you pay your bills or are you happy with the payment. Maybe you need promotion.”
Now I decided to focus on my work, on my ideas, which didn't made my employer happy and we came to an agreement to cancel our work together.
Today
What about today?
Today I'm working sometimes 10 hours per day, sometimes 2 hours per day, depending on how many orders or deliveries we have, everything together with my half.
Interesting what I'm doing today?
Here is a not full list:
- product searching
- ordering samples
- negotiating with factories
- organizing delivery of heavy pallets to us
- organizing our warehouse
- company management
- taxes
- customs clearance, importing procedures
- monthly accounting
- contracts with courier companies like DPD, GLS, DHL, Intereuropa, Post of Slovenia
- processing orders from clients
- talking with customers if needed
- packaging and labeling
- sometimes deliveries of heavy orders to customers
- SEO optimization
Today we have a couple online stores, in Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, sometimes sending also to Bosna, Macedonia, Austria, Denmark, Netherlands.
We support payments in multiple currencies, we have one backend system, multiple storefronts in different languages and currencies, shipping costs for each country, based on weight, size, distance. Invoicing system is fully automated for the OSS/IOSS scheme.
One product it's going to all stores, in different language for each store.
In our backend we also enter the cost of the product per piece, so we can calculate our end client price, VAT is added automatically depending on the customer country.
The online stores I made are generating 28 000 EUR average monthly revenue. No ads, just organic search from search engines.
Probably if I apply today for a web developer, I will be rejected.
Probably if I apply today for an SEO specialist, I will be rejected.
Probably if I apply today for online store administrator, I will be rejected again.
Probably if I apply today for product sourcing, I will be rejected.
In 2012 I applied for a driver of a small van to deliver packages, the only requirement was to have driver license category B.
I was rejected, because there was someone who was more qualified for it.
If me having a driver's license category B, I'm not okay to be a driver, then who is?
If me who can build a eCommerce business, generating 28 000 EUR monthly revenue can't work as online store administrator, then who can?
If me, who can optimize 4 online stores in different countries to have orders for 28 000 EUR monthly, only from organic search, can't be an SEO specialist, then who can?
SEO specialists can check my online stores www.hiska24.si, www.decoadria.eu , www.decorello.it with their tools for monitoring and check my work, done for less than 8 months.
Don't let other people decide what you can do and what cannot. If you feel you know more than you are doing, then just do it for yourself and don't listen the rest.
