Adrian Lote

I actually really like the idea of non-coders vibe coding. Sometimes it's hard to get across requirements and software can be so abstract at times so if someone could show you a vibed out blueprint of something they want then it can be easier to discuss and determine a solution. Use it for production? Personally, I think it opens you up to all sorts of vulnerabilities that will just sink your product and create a very expensive lesson. A mock out of what something could be? Without a doubt. Vibing still forces you to ask questions of yourself, like: - What does this page even do? - Where does this button go? - Do users even care about this? - How should this UI flow work?

37

45 Comments

👻 Kiro 👻 has had a whole host of great new features recently. There are the really big ones like Skills support and the constant evolution with new models like Opus and Sonnet 4.6, but one of my favourites is ACP... The Agent Client Protocol lets you take advantage of one of the best coding assistants 💪 around and use the underlying agent in a variety of different clients. I've been exploring how you can take advantage of Kiro for use cases that aren't all about writing code 💻 and how you and your teams can all reap the benefits from its huge capability. I've got my latest post in the comments on some of my favourite new ways to use Kiro with ACP. Let me know what you think. 🚀 #kiro #genai #kirocli

27

2 Comments

First written in 2018 and now updated, Monzo's engineering principles encapsulate what we value and what we expect engineers to embody. What we value has evolved over time, and our principles should change to remain aligned with that – we don’t want these to be just words on a page, but a useful resource to guide decision making, inspire better systems, and be the foundation for a culture where engineers can thrive. https://lnkd.in/eKzXEJMi Proud of how they turned out.

186

Specifically for any ex-Babylon colleagues (and this applies to any of you who managed to make any money out of the exit; I know we all had equity, but there were some dodgy shenanigans by the SPAC investors 😡), but also more generally for people who: * Were in a company exit and held shares/option, and * the employer's national insurance contribution (NIC) was paid for by you as part of the exercise/sale of your equity. The employer's NIC is actually tax deductible, and so you could get a lot of it back (depending on your marginal tax rate). I had to fight with HMRC for nearly two years, but eventually the following did the trick and they paid me back this morning. As a heads up, I had several phone calls with them (after 90 minutes on hold) where I was unable to quote the actual laws and regulations involved, and they rebuffed me. I resorted to a session of actual law-diving and found the bits I needed. So, what you do is: 1) Look through your exercise documents and find the witholding amounts that were for employer NICs. 2) For the year when the exit took place, your proceeds will show up as taxable earnings on your tax return. Amend your tax return for that employment and add the total of the employer NICs as a deductible expense (they're not an expense, but there's no other place on the return to put this information). 3) In the explanation box ("Is there anything else you'd like us to know", or some such), put the following: ` This income derives from a shares transaction. As part of the share agreement governing the exercised options, I entered into an election with Babylon <or whatever company> under the terms of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, schedule 1, paragraph 3A(2), whereby I agreed that they could deduct the employer’s class 1 national insurance contributions from the proceeds of the conversion paid to me. My exercise documents (available on request) show that this contribution amounted to £XXXX <the amount you're deducting>. Under the terms of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003, Part 7, Chapter 2, Section 428A, income tax relief is available to me on this amount. Because there is no area where one can claim additional reliefs of this kind in the HMRC tax return software, I have entered this amount into the “expenses and capital allowances” box in the Babylon Partners area on my return. ` And then wait. This will trigger a flurry of letters from HMRC, and possibly a compliance check, but you do eventually get it back 😊 It amounted to an additional 20% of the total proceeds from the exercise; well worth doing!

88

8 Comments

👀 When I review a frontend candidate’s code, I’m not just looking for: Semicolons in the right place Perfect formatting Fancy hooks or clever tricks I’m looking for thought process behind the code. Here’s what really matters to me: 🔹 Clarity – Can someone else understand what’s going on quickly? 🔹 Separation of concerns – Logic, UI, and side effects neatly handled? 🔹 Performance awareness – Are there unnecessary re-renders, heavy loops, or DOM issues? 🔹 Scalability – Would this pattern hold up in a bigger app or team? 🔹 Naming & structure – Can I guess what useWidgetTracker() does without opening it? 💡 You’re not just coding for computers. You’re coding for teams. 📣 If you’re preparing for interviews: Write like your future teammate will debug it tomorrow. #frontendinterview #codereview #reactjs #webdevelopment #careeradvice #techleadinsights #frontendengineering

167

13 Comments

Unpopular Opinion: Experienced developers who '10x' themselves using AI are full of it. Sorry, I literally do not believe you. Of all the posts I've read of experienced SW developers who claim AI has made them '10x' more productive (and yes there are LOTs who literally say this) - not one has shown any evidence . The best I have seen is people who say "I finished this project in X days with AI and it WOULD HAVE taken me 10X days without AI'. Oh ? and how do you know that? One of the most important thing I have learned from 40+ years of SW development - 'we' suck at estimating how long things will take. Really Really Badly. Finally people have started doing scientific-ish studies to validate these claims. First result hot-off-the presses - 5+ year experienced SW developers given random real tasks performed 19% slower using AI then not. AND - most interesting, they believed they did it 20% faster. https://lnkd.in/gYSW4C8i

1,246

509 Comments

I mentioned one of my “down the pub” software development opinions to James Lewis at EventCentric. He suggested that I mention it to Kent Beck and so, while I remember. But definitely, the tone here, is “crazy talk over a pint.” ———- XP optimises software development for folks with ADHD. The Extreme Tuesday Club is likely a hotbed of ADHD diagnoses. TDD, CI, Small Releases: we need those rewards to keep coming in regular doses. Pair Programming: “Stay on target, stay on target” Refactoring, Boy Scout Rule: “Ooh, while I am here, I should fix that as well. Now where was I? Oh the test list.” Sustainable Pace: We can only focus so long in one stretch, even with the above. Planning Game: one story at a time, don’t get distracted by other things. Business value, not “shiny thing.” Small stories because we get bored easily. Whole team working so that we can get to that shiny story faster. Osmotic Communication: Quick, let me blurt out my idea before I get distracted and forget I wonder if there is a correlation between XP teams achieving flow, and XP teams filled with neurodivergent people who have figured a coping mechanism for productivity.

312

67 Comments

Here are the highest-paying companies in the UK for Software Engineers! (based on 'all levels' from Levels.fyi): 🥇 Citadel – £274,692 🥈 Wintermute – £274,382 🥉 Meta – £242,189 I posted late last year about how US companies (especially HFT / quant firms) were dominating UK compensation. Back then, Wintermute (UK founded) weren’t even in the top 10. Now they’ve jumped to #2, ahead of HRT, Jane Street, Meta and other huge names. Every company in the top 10 is now averaging £200K+ total comp for engineering roles. That would have been unthinkable for London just a few years ago. For founders: if you want to attract top engineering talent, this is your benchmark. As an aside, if you compare the London top 10 with the San Francisco top 10 you see a completely different type of company. SF is tech dominated. UK is still very much finance dominated. I'd love to see more UK founded tech companies in this top list!

378

3 Comments

"So how do you see the market currently?" This has to be the most common question I get asked, and I love looking back at the data of the placements we have made over the years. Here's one example of what has really changed... The true rise of 'Product Engineers' and 'Founding Engineers'. This used to be the one superstar on the team, or as the Dutch would say, "the sheep with 5 legs". But for the roles we now recruit for, this is the new norm. Every business now wants product-minded engineers who can connect feature development to business value. This isn't about engineers becoming Product Managers, but it is still the constant drive for efficiency and doing more with less. In recruiting terms, we now have twice as many interviews as we did 5 years ago to reach the same outcome. That's a huge shift! It must be exhausting interviewing out there, but if I could offer anything to Engineers, it's always showcase what you actually built and why that drove business value, being a technology subject-matter expert isn't enough anymore.

53

2 Comments

I've been involved with dev hiring for more than 25 years. The magic 1:10:100 ratio is as applicable today as it was in the late 90s. For every 100 developers, you'll find 10 competent ones and 1 good dev. In the UK, there are ~450K developers. 45K of those are competent. 4,500 are actually good. Now, it turns out it's a very small world (network) in that 1%. If it's that you're looking for, your best bet is someone INSIDE THE BUBBLE. Most of them know each other, or knows someone who does. A talent search from inside such a densely-clustered network often takes a small fraction of the time (weeks) compared to someone outside the network (often many months). And some of us have significantly more reach than others, having spent decades active in developer communities, potentially speeding up the search even more. More importantly, it takes one to know one. A candidate may well claim to have skills and experience that you're looking for, but can a recruiter or an HR manager actually tell the difference? In many cases, the filtering that happens is almost random. This too can dramatically slow down the search, as the agency or the HR department throw out gold nuggets and waste your time with pyrite. (I'm reminded of the time a client's HR department refused to let my client even interview a developer they were asking for specifically.) While it's not my main line of business, I'm regularly asked to look for good developers, which I'm happy to do even though - to be clear - I'm not a recruitment consultant. It helps good devs find work where they'll be appreciated, and it saves employers a tonne of time and money.

133

37 Comments