Cameron Blackwood

4 days to go till our Code to Command event in London Tickets are going fast now, we seemed to have really gathered pace in the last week, so much so I have had to order more food and drinks!! Get the last couple of tickets!! From Code to Command: Navigating the Transition to Engineering Leadership   Join us on Thursday, 12th September, for an exclusive event designed for tech professionals ready to take the leap from technical roles to leadership positions. Whether you're an engineer eyeing management or a young leader facing imposter syndrome, this event is for you!   🗓 Date & Time: Thursday, 12th September 2024, 18:00 - 21:00 BST 📍 Location: Myo Bankside, 133 Park Street, London SE1 9EA 🎟 Tickets: All proceeds will be donated to https://lnkd.in/efDzS5Nv   Agenda Highlights: Shifting from Technical to Managerial Responsibilities Kribashnee Moodley – Head of Engineering, Vitality UK Learn the key strategies to smoothly transition from coding to leading, with a focus on communication, delegation, and balancing responsibilities. Growing Team Health with the PETALS Framework Si Jobling – Engineering Manager, Rightmove Explore the PETALS framework to measure and enhance your team's well-being, ensuring a healthy and high-performing environment. Conquering Imposter Syndrome to Lead with Confidence as a Young Manager Quinn Koike – CTO, Orri Gain insights on overcoming imposter syndrome and leading with confidence, especially as a young manager in today’s diverse teams.   This is more than just a networking opportunity—it's a chance to equip yourself with the skills and mindset needed to excel as a leader in tech. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn from industry experts and make meaningful connections!   👉 Get your tickets now and support a great cause: https://codebar.io . See you there!

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Our NEW Software Engineering Salary Guide (for Startups & Scaleups) is HERE! Lots and lots of movement to be discussed, so if you're hiring or thinking about hiring, you'll want to have a read or risk being completely left behind. Here are some key takeaways over the past 6 months: - Mid-Senior End salaries pushing ~$160K+Super! - Senior Eng salaries up by close to $30K - Staff Eng salaries up by $20K-$30K - 10-20% bonuses on top of increased bases are becoming far more common And perhaps most importantly, new ALL TIME HIGH salary levels for top performers across most experience levels in Australia! Like I said - this one is DEFINITELY worth a read! Link is in the comments below 👇🏻

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🔥Exciting developments in the developer tools sector this week! From significant funding wins to groundbreaking new launches, there's a lot to catch up on. 🔗to full DevNewsletter: https://lnkd.in/ex5hunrE 🏆 Funding Wins Recall.ai Secures $10M Series A to Simplify Video Conferencing Integration Codesphere Raises €16.5 Million to Streamline Cloud Development and Slash Costs QA.tech Snags €3 Million Seed Round to Automate Away Testing Tedium Kotzilla Claws in $2M Seed Funding to Round to Simplify Mobile App Lifecycle Footprint Strides Forward with $13M Series A to Combat Online Fraud Vercel Goes Big with $250 Million Series E, Valuing Company at $3.25 Billion 🚀 Lots of Lovely Launches Keploy 🐰 Launches 'Keploy Cloud'; AI-Powered API Testing Platform Graphite Stacks the Deck for Developer Productivity with New Features and Free Plan fal Introduces Wizper: A Leap in Real-Time Audio Transcription Statsig Adds Session Replays to its Experimentation Platform LlamaIndex Presents Azure Code Interpreter for Secure Code Execution AssemblyAI Unveils Universal-1: A Multilingual Speech Recognition Powerhouse 🔦 DevTools of the Week Airbyte: Open-Source Data Integration, Your Way Codeium: Your AI-Powered Coding Sidekick 🗞️ In Other DevTools News Replit Announces Layoffs Amidst Generative AI Focus SmartBear Introduces HaloAI to Revolutionize Software Testing GitHub Copilot Gets Even More Powerful with Extensions #Develocity #DevTools #DeveloperTools #DevNews #DevNewsletter #DeveloperProductivity #DeveloperExperience #TechRecruitment

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I had an eye-opening conversation with a CTO client today about AI coding tools and how quickly they're improving. It left me reflecting on the future of tech jobs, and I'd love to hear people's opinions. They've been experimenting with AI-powered coding tools over the past few months, and the results have been remarkable—so much so that they’re considering reducing their team size. According to my client, they've managed to get AI to perform the equivalent work of three full-time engineers! This raises some important questions for all of us in the tech space: - Is AI already reshaping the tech job market faster than anticipated? - How should businesses and professionals prepare for this shift? - What opportunities and challenges does this present for innovation and workforce dynamics? I’d genuinely love to hear perspectives on this. Are we at the beginning of a major transformation in the tech industry, or is this just one example of early adoption? Any insights or thoughts are appreciated.

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MONEY SPENT ON PRODUCT TALENT = GREATER LEVELS OF OUTCOMES? I missed the ProductTank where David Cox spoke but have read his blog post on Mind The Product website on the same subject Organisations starving on a diet of low-hanging fruit (link to post in comments) It's really interesting and the crux of the article focuses on the idea of marginal gains and the concept doesn't really apply in Product Because people can waste too much time on marginal improvements in areas that don't have much of an impact The piece discusses the marginal gains culture at British Cycling that led to improves Medal hauls at major championships That yes, it was part of the story, but the biggest factor was increase financial investment Which ties into a question I posed a Product leader last week........ Regardless of the Product itself, the most successful Product teams: are they successful because they are paying the best, so attract the best leaders and the best talent? My reasoning was that the best leaders and the best talent ask the difficult questions, know how to say 'no' and recognise that commercial outcomes are fundamentally linked to every task that you are committing to sprint-to-sprint. As such, that Product talent develop better track records and command better money. It's a lot like Dave's British British Cycling analogy or a Football Team: those that spend the most on talent, achieve the better outcomes. Except Manchester United of course 😂 But thinking locally to the better paying firms that invest not only in good wage levels to attract & retain, but also in their wider culture. They think about how to refine their hiring processes to weed out the mediocre talent that is invariably attracted by the money, rather the broader opportunity. Those businesses tend to perform really well, even if they weren't the first Product of their type, to go to market Cheaping out on talent rarely ends in outstanding outcomes!

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How to spot a rubbish influencer 🔍 It's easy, really. Look for hollow, populistic statements. The one doing the rounds now is that years of experience mean nothing. This is, of course, utter nonsense. It's meant to appeal to the masses of junior developers, selling them false dreams. Saying that you only need to be a problem-solver to be a good software engineer is like saying that someone who only read about cycling can complete a marathon and maybe even win it. What years of experience give you is depth of knowledge. It gives you familiarity with more quirks of your domain, pitfalls you could avoid, ways to do things better... Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. #developerlife #softwaredevelopment #softwareengineering #developers

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Immigrants have an oversized impact on UK tech start-ups. 39% of the 100 fastest-growing companies in the UK have a foreign-born founder or co-founder, despite the foreign-born population standing at 14.5%.* So why are we making it so difficult for tech talent to move to the UK? Government policy, Brexit, costly & lengthy visa process, bureaucracy, stringent requirements. All blockers to attracting foreign nationals to the UK. Our approach & policies stand in stark contrast to more open & welcoming Nations. I recently posted about French tech immigration, and the positive impact a number of factors are having on the Paris start-up scene. If it hasn't already, I feel the UK is at real risk of alienating itself and losing the battle for much needed global tech talent to up and coming tech hubs across Europe and further afield. Particularly in bleeding edge tech sectors where we simply don't have enough of the current skill sets or future pipeline of home grown talent. I appreciate there are a lot of moving parts here, but others are getting it right (or at least more right than the UK) and we have to be better. *Data taken from a report published by The Entrepreneurs Network.

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This tech start up required two software engineers But had exhausted their recruitment channels Here's how we helped 👇 This tech start up had just received their six figure seed round investment. Excitement was quickly met with a stark realisation That they need to hire 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 software engineers, quickly, to scale the business, We consulted with the founding team on 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀, 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 and 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝘀. And championed their decision to try and recruit organically first. Three weeks later - "𝘞𝘦'𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘴, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘺 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘶𝘱 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴. 𝘋𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘱?" Here's how our process looked.. ✍ Job briefing - Friday 6th September 📃 Five profiles shared - Thursday 12th September 💼 Five first stage interviews - Two final stage interviews 💹 Two offers accepted - Friday 20th September If you're looking to recruit organically first, 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗯𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗿𝗮𝗹𝘀. The A players you want - and need - aren't casually browsing job boards and LinkedIn for adverts. - Their skillset is in demand. - They have endless opportunities put their way. - They aren't (even) always looking at new opportunities. But we can help you identify - and interview - the right people. We're looking at consulting with one (maybe two) more start up from October onwards. If you're based in South Wales/South West and have between two and fifteen employees And want all the heavy lifting done for you? Message me. 📩 [email protected]

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🧑‍🏫 Got a couple of hours on a Friday afternoon and keen to see how you can use Zapier to create no/low code process automation from Pinpoint Applicant Tracking System (or any system that has webhooks and an API!)? * Send new starters to IT * Find out when a specific applicant is hired * Add new jobs to a Google Sheet * Update status of jobs in internal project management tools https://lnkd.in/eeGye6bn 🤓 (API key has been deleted!) #RPA #integrations #ats #lowcode #HR #HRTech #zapier #talentacquisition

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Rant time: I HATE calling government agencies. They do everything wrong, which startups get SO right! Today I tried to call HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) to change a phone number on my account. Their security questions were: - Not set by me, but by then - Super oddly specific - Tedious and long-winded All whilst your struggling to understand an outsourced call agent over the phone. What TERRIBLE UX. - I mean seriously, why does it all suck? It’s like when you go to renew your drivers license, and they ask you to bring; - Your birth certificate, - Passport, - Proof of residency. So you go there and after 30 minutes of waiting, they inform you that you forgot to bring an original signed copy of the Declaration of Independence! What more do you need? The 10 commandments? On the two stone tablets? Startup founders, take this as a “what NOT to do.” Everyone knows government agencies suck, and even though they have all these questions, their security SUCKS too. We can develop 2FA and even 3FA security systems, using biometrics and CHOSEN security questions, to make an easier experience for our customers. What do you guys think?

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If you’re not hiring and will be in Q1, do yourself a favour and understand HOW to do it successfully. We’ve put together a Free toolkit for Startups & Scaleups to make your hiring and processes around it a little less rubbish (actually, a lot less rubbish). 1️⃣ Pinpoint the exact skills and mindset you need. 2️⃣ Craft job ads that attract the right people. 3️⃣ Save time with a clear, efficient hiring roadmap. 4️⃣ Boost team performance and hit critical milestones. 5️⃣ Elevate your onboarding process for long-term success. Drop me a DM and I’ll send you the PDF.

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How would £300,000 in funding help you as an early stage founder? I've recently been working with an early stage founder who set up on his own and now has a team of 8 (all done within 4 months). He come to a point where he needed to raise some initial funding. But this is time consuming and juggling raising funds and running your business is a lot. So I offered help. I went out and found some Angels for him and he's just closed £300,000 from an introduction I made. This is how I help early stage founders, not just bums on seats. I've got some time from December to help some early stage founders. If you fancy a virtual coffee for some advice or how I could help my DMs are open. #zygopeople #startupfunding #startups

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The evolution of Timbyr - Part 2 " Build it and they will come " - Utter bollocks! I couldn't have been more wrong. Having settled on the name, inspired by Grindr and Tinder, the app developers combined put in 8000 hours of work, two years of design, build and anticipation, we finally had a product live on the app-store. A day I dreamed of turned into the ultimate nightmare, I had put so much energy, enthusiasm, cash and belief into this product. I called every single client, candidate, industry friend. Timbyr is live and we were ready for them, that the future of recruitment had landed, there was no need to thank me, just doing my job. BIG FAT ZERO was the number of downloads on day 1 and 2 The end of week one, we had 3 sympathy downloads. "Build it and they will come" Screw you Kevin Costner - crest fallen, dejected and faced up to the chicken and egg conundrum. Candidates wont download the APP as there are no jobs. Clients wont download the jobs as there are no candidates on the APP and my client mates won't download the APP because they don't like change. AAAAARRRRGGGG. - I have just spent a SEVEN FIGURE SUM, 2 years of my life and it took two weeks to get double figure downloads. I wanted to quit, I wish I never started this stupid project, what a prick. I honestly didn't know what to do next ....................... Get into the mindset of my target market, what would it take for my clients, my mates, my industry contacts to download my app? Was it friendship, camaraderie, loyalty, sympathy, curiosity even? 😂😂😂😂 Absolutely not. It was chance to win a Jetski, something for nothing, thats what they all wanted. What was another $10k having spent over a million? It was worth one last throw of the dice and I nailed it. I paid for and branded a Timbyr jetski and announced I would give it away in 3 weeks, to be in with a chance, download my APP. 3 weeks later - 500 + downloads and one lucky winner George Tarabay $10k lighter and a new best mate, Timbyr was in business. Dylan Thompson Jordan Daniel Kelly Horsfield Samuel Chambers Luke Mitchell Scott Litchfield Nell Harris Josh Callagher Josh Gaschk David Francis

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🙋‍♀️ I’ve been capitalising hashtags for ages now, long before #ChatGPT became a 'thing', whether it’s on my personal posts or over on the Kin Collective Recruitment community feed. I’ll never forget the CamCreatives CIC networking event on the subject of web accessibility (hosted by the brilliant team at Nexer Digital back in 2022!) where they drove home the exact point Chloe Miller is making here: screen readers can’t distinguish between words in hashtags unless they’re capitalised. ⌨️🖱️ ⚠️ Such a simple but powerful takeaway, so please make sure you're making your posts digitally accessible! ⚠️ Why #writesomethinglikethis when you can #WriteSomethingLikeThis ❓ #AccessibilityMatters #InclusiveMarketing #ScreenReaderFriendly #DigitalAccessibility

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Throughout the years I have talked to Italian startups (many are impressive) and occasionally have been surprised by companies solely focused on the Italian market, which will seem limiting for a typical US VC investor or entrepreneur, mostly (I speculate) because of the goals of their strategic investors. In the, US the domestic market is large enough to support a single market strategy, and still most companies focus on a global footprint, with rare exceptions (e.g. Zillow only expanded to Canada; OfferUp is US only). In Israel, where the domestic market is tiny, all startups (especially consumer internet startups, e.g. the many free-to-play game companies) are default-global. If you focus on a single market, it'd better be big, because as copycats emerge across the world, catching up to a global footprint may no longer be an option.

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It's a short week for us in the UK, but that hasn't stopped us from rounding up the latest headlines in the DevTools sector. We cover news from startups/scaleups (and even some of the bigger players) from all over the world. Here's the week's news (and link in comments for more in-depth overview): 🏆Funding Wins Lamini Bags $25M Funding to Aid Enterprises in LLM Capabilities Development ThreatLocker Secures $115M Series D to Advance Zero Trust Security Aikido Security Scoops $17M to Accelerate Developer-Focused Security Parseable Lands $2.75M Seed Funding to Boost Log Analytics Capabilities Anetac Secures $16M to Safeguard Companies from Service Account Threats 🚀Lovely Launches WhyLabs Launches AI Control Center to Bolster AI Application Security streamvisor 2.0: A Game-Changer in Enterprise Management for Apache Pulsar Tabnine and Atlassian Forge Ahead with AI Tools for Developers Abstra Launches: Python + AI for Scalable Business Processes Eraser Launch: Your New Copilot for Technical Design Autopilot for Slack from Dashworks: Your 24/7 Knowledge Expert Lineaje Inc Tackles Open-Source Security with New Manager Tool Flatiron Software Co Software Launches AI Tool to Measure Developer Performance Latitude Unveils Latitude Deploy: One-Command Route to Production 🔦DevTools of the Week Mintlify: Setting the Standard for Documentation with Automation Pieces for Developers: Harnessing AI to Elevate Development Workflows 🗞️ More News Red Hat Boosts OpenShift and RHEL with Generative AI Integration Stack Overflow and OpenAI Join Forces to Bolster LLMs New Relic Announces Secure Developer Alliance to Boost Security Observability #DevTools #DeveloperTools #Develocity #DevNews #AI #DeveloperProductivity #DevOps #Observability #StartupNews

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Interesting stats from the team at Juicebox (YC S22) 📊 This is a data deep-dive for July: which technical skills were most commonly searched via the platform? 𝐓𝐎𝐓𝐏🔥📈 - Python - React - AWS Significantly, Python is searched three times more often than Node.js, which ranks fifth in search frequency. Interestingly, AWS is the only cloud provider to feature in the top 10, while GCP and Azure are ranked 18th and 26th, respectively. Machine learning and AI are also frequently searched, with both appearing in the top 15. However, I expected them to rank higher in the searches based on recent hiring trends.

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The UK Job Market has been a bit of a roller coaster in 2024. The UK job market is in a strange place right now - some sectors are booming while others are seeing a major slowdown. These are the things that have been coming up: Tech Talent Shortage: Despite recent layoffs, demand for tech roles - particularly those with AI expertise - remains high. Companies are still struggling to find the right talent, and the gap isn’t closing fast enough. Hybrid Working Is Here to Stay: Employers who are offering flexibility are winning the talent war. People want a work-life balance that fits, and hybrid roles are attracting a lot more interest than fully office-based ones. Wages & Cost of Living: Inflation is making it tough for everyone, and employees are increasingly expecting pay rises to match the cost of living. For employers, that means adapting or risk losing talent to competitors who will. Contract Work on the Rise: With economic uncertainty, many companies are leaning towards contractors and temporary roles instead of permanent hires. For job seekers, this might mean more opportunities - but it also comes with less stability. I’d love to hear your thoughts. What’s your biggest challenge in hiring or job hunting right now?

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Market update; June 2024.   I’m still receiving DMs from developers either out of work or struggling to find something new.   Here’s a bit of a random dump from me, based on chats I’ve had with clients that might help. Definitely not all doom & gloom but I'm being honest also; - Applying to recession proof businesses; If you’re looking for a role, think about industries like health funds/insurance/utilities/superannuation etc; strong industries needed in our society that always have cash (usually). Whereas SAAS/product/Fintech seem to be trying to stay lean.. - CTOs; are telling me they have projects they need to kick off (platform re-architectures etc) but their CEOs aren’t giving them the budgets they need. It’s a case of doing their best with the team they have. This is another reason were seeing less roles advertised. - Doing more with less; There’s more pressure on senior & staff engineers to be able to demonstrate they have a solid understanding of tech but can also deliver at speed, meaning they have to focus on quality AND shipping, which in theory improves profit. Also with less hiring on-shore due to budget constraints, this means a leaner team, meaning existing teams have to deliver. - Junior engineers; To land roles, juniors need to show proactiveness and the ability to get things done. This would position them closer to the expectations of a mid which is what hiring managers want right now (theyre just not telling you). - Consultancies; A few businesses have reduced their local teams, to move to an outsourced model as they minimise perm headcount. This means these consulting businesses are busy and are hiring. So your Accentures/TCSs of the world could be good places to apply if you're looking? - New fin year; is approaching meaning new budgets & usually more roles. However this doesn’t mean from July 1 you’ll see a huge influx of roles posted. One CTO I chatted to has been given the same capex budget as he was for last year (not great). - Fully remote roles; becoming rarer. Most businesses require 2 days a week in office (some, not all). If remote is your jam, try to find work in startups/small businesses wheres theres flex (that said, I do know some corporates contradicting what they’re saying; letting some of their high performing contractors work interstate). - Ignore job boards; Roles are getting filled quickly due to so many candidates on the market & not even making it to the internet. Just because you don’t see a live role in a companies careers page, doesn’t mean they’re not hiring. If it’s a solid business, send them your details. - “I’m applying for roles and not hearing anything” and the likelihood is you never will unless selected for interview. Some companies will be getting 1000 applications a week for 1 role. They cant reply to everyone. Don’t take it personally. - The green banner debacle; it doesn’t make you look desperate. Stop worrying about it 😊 Hit me up if you need to chat; [email protected]

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