South African emigrating to UK in 2020, Seeking Tech Jobs

[mercuree]

Hi there,

I recently obtained British citizenship and am emigrating to the UK in January 2020.

I have proven experience as a software developer working for the same company for the past 8 years.

During my tenure at this company I have worn multiple hats. Primarily centered on Customer Relations, IT Administration and Software Development.

I have prior experience that touches on these fields as well.

I am looking for something to get me started. Possibly a part-time or daily-rate based position but am open to more long-term offers as well.


Please contact me if you would like to discuss further, or need access to more information.

[CR001]

You will need to wait till you are here ideally, have your NI number and can apply for jobs and attend interviews.

Members are also not permitted to name companies specifically on the forum.

[mercuree]

You will need to wait till you are here ideally, have your NI number and can apply for jobs and attend interviews.

Members are also not permitted to name companies specifically on the forum.

Wow that was a fast response! I accidentally hit submit and was still editing my post.

I am basically just trying to get a feeler for what may be available to me as I land. I have limited funds and am going to have to hit the ground running, so to speak.

[CR001]

It really depends hugely on where you will be based in the UK.

Presumably you have accommodation sorted??

I can PM you a list of UK employment agencies if you wish?? this will help if you want to start temporary or contract work.

[CR001]

When you say 'limited funds', how much do you reckon you will have??

[mercuree]

It really depends hugely on where you will be based in the UK.

Presumably you have accommodation sorted??

I can PM you a list of UK employment agencies if you wish?? this will help if you want to start temporary or contract work.

I was planning to stay with my Father, but he is moving to Cornwall. So I may stay with family in London or friends in the South Coast. Kinda hoping to avoid London until I have settled properly. I think Southampton may be where I end up settling initially- but time will tell.

I would appreciate that list, thank you. I have been using a few but with limited success.

[CR001]

London is VERY expensive, but the pay is higher than regional.

I will send the list to you later when I get home. I found it very useful and had it before I got to the UK.

[mercuree]

When you say 'limited funds', how much do you reckon you will have??

At the very least, enough to survive 2 months as if I was a full time resident (i.e. taking account average cost of living, taxes, rent, transport, food, mobile).

This all depends on my severance pay from the company I am with here in South Africa and savings, selling all my household items etc.

Last I calculated, I could possibly go about 4 months, including paying rent. But that was an overly optimistic projection.

My employer is going to keep me on as a remote worker, until I am settled and find something else, which should yield around 750GBP per month after conversion but before taxes (not quite sure how that's going to work yet).

[CR001]

Then again, it also depends on what area/suburb specifically and what type of accommodation you are seeking. For example, I live in a houseshare with other non related people, in a small room (and I mean small) and pay £95 per week but it does include all bills (council tax, tv licence, utilities, water) and I am on a tube line, the start of the Northern line.

Bigger rooms cost more and many do not include bills either.

A london travel card, weekly or monthly, gets more expensive the further out of central london you are. I am in zone 4 and pay £50.50 per week for a weekly travel card.

Mobile phone sim can be cheap, like Giff Gaff offers a free sim with a range of options on data, varying from £10pm to £25pm, no contract.

Food shopping can be done relatively cheaply, if you are sensible. Lidl is the best value at the moment.

[mercuree]

Then again, it also depends on what area/suburb specifically and what type of accommodation you are seeking. For example, I live in a houseshare with other non related people, in a small room (and I mean small) and pay £95 per week but it does include all bills (council tax, tv licence, utilities, water) and I am on a tube line, the start of the Northern line.

Bigger rooms cost more and many do not include bills either.

A london travel card, weekly or monthly, gets more expensive the further out of central london you are. I am in zone 4 and pay £50.50 per week for a weekly travel card.

Mobile phone sim can be cheap, like Giff Gaff offers a free sim with a range of options on data, varying from £10pm to £25pm, no contract.

Food shopping can be done relatively cheaply, if you are sensible. Lidl is the best value at the moment.

Thanks. This appears to be inline with my calculations. Good to have that sanity check.

Someone mentioned a "habitual test period" in another thread. Am I correct in understanding that until I have a rental agreement in place - and have not lived in the UK for at least 3 months; I am considered a non-resident? I am just looking into the tax implications of foreign income. I see that RSA and UK have a DTA in place. Have yet to wrap my mind around all of that though.

[CR001]

You would need to declare by income earned not paid through the UK tx systems.

Note the habitual resident test applies only to certain things and not actual residence or employment. It mostly applies to benefits and certain NHS services. This was implemented to a pod British citizens living abroad now or who have never lived in the UK being a burden on the state.

[mercuree]

Aha. Good to know. Thanks. I don't plan on asking the state for anything initially. Just my NI number in order to gain employment. Will also convert my driver's license ASAP.

[CR001]

You have 12 months to exchange your driver's licence, so sort the other more important things out first.

[CobaltPotato]

Hi Mercuree,

Thought I’d post a reply as I’m a South African developer working in UK, currently in Belfast. When people say London is expensive they’re understating it - it felt like I fell down quite a few rungs in the socioeconomic ladder when I moved over from Joburg. I had some incredible experiences in London, and the city has some amazing things to offer - but in the end the highs weren’t enough to cancel out how bloody difficult and crowded the city felt every day.

Be careful of recruitment agents this side of the world, as well as potential employers. In SA the labour courts have teeth, and you won’t often find an employer misrepresenting a job. My experience in SA was that generally you got the job you got sold, and they didn’t gloss over the negative details. E.g “this is a support and maintenance role only, there’s very little dev work”, “the previous team left the system in a complete mess and we’re still fixing it”, “you’ll have to work weekends close to a deadline”, or at a famous investment bank “we have a very aggressive culture and people generally only last 18 months”.

Here are my experiences to date in the uk:

Job 1: consultancy which promised working on cutting edge tech, the potential to travel around the world on projects. Reality was that it was a body shop with an extremely high turnover due to most of the staff being placed on resume killing support and maintenance work at banks.

Job 2: bank which promised ‘occasional’ overtime and a 9 to 5 work day. Reality was that people generally only left at 6. Overtime was not occasional either. I won’t complain too much about this one though because the manager did keep his word regarding greenfield work and I learnt a lot from him.

Job 3: promised a lateral move into a business analyst position, with upcoming greenfield work. Started getting very angry about a year in when the greenfield work they’d promised wasn’t materialising, or the business analyst role, and I was mostly doing support and maintenance junky work. I got put in the lead position on a project after that, so that redeemed my CV, but again...why didn’t they tell the truth about the timelines involved during the interview. I would have gone somewhere else.

Job 4: promotion, so a nice jump in title but almost a year in and still no greenfield work - although a project is due to start shortly.

My experience so far has been that recruiters and employers tend to exaggerate how much greenfield work is on offer to reel you in, and don’t tell the full truth about how much of your time will be spent on support and maintenance work. I’ve only worked for financial companies since coming here, and a lot of their code is very old, and very large, and patched and mutated to the point of becoming spaghetti. These companies do not seem to want to rewrite, only patch what there. So be careful which jobs you accept, check glassdoor for reviews and beware of any that sound like they were written by HR. (Company 1 planted fake positive reviews on glassdoor because every person leaving was trashing them on the site.) Anyway, I’ll end this post because it’s turning into an essay, but let me know if you want any more advice. Good luck!