Kit Barclay

We've published another great article from Wayland Goodliffe, Senior Backend Engineer at the John Lewis Partnership. This one describes how he uses GitHub Copilot for code reviews. At the end of the article he shares his detailed review.prompt.md file which he developed iteratively for when he is nearing completion of his own tickets and when he is reviewing a colleague's merge request. https://lnkd.in/eMpPizRx

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IR35 and Off-payroll: Your guide to who is actually responsible for what? One of the biggest challenges of IR35 is the widespread lack of awareness among those hiring contractors. The complexity of this legislation often leads to misunderstandings, putting businesses at risk of non-compliance and unexpected tax liabilities. This comprehensive guide simplifies the often-confusing aspects of IR35, providing clear instructions on who should be doing what. You'll gain insights into the critical areas of the legislation and learn how to apply them correctly to your business. 🔍 Key Takeaways: ✔ Understand the difference between IR35 and Off-payroll rules. ✔ Identify which part of the legislation applies to your business. ✔ Discover who is responsible for tax liabilities and status assessments. IR35 and Off-payroll rules coexist, making it essential to understand which rules apply to your specific situation. This guide breaks it down step-by-step, ensuring you can navigate these regulations with confidence. 1️⃣ Read the full guide today. 2️⃣ Book a free consultation if you'd like our expert help with your compliance! #IR35 #HR #HRnews #process #IR35assessment #IR35Compliance #Compliance #Consultation #Offpayroll #Offpayrollworking #Contractor

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Testing is often an unnecessarily emotive subject in the software industry. I particularly recall a trip to a 'Software Craftsmen' London meetup in the early 2010s - the culture disintegrated into a shark tank when a brave soul dared to even slightly question (respectfully) the received wisdom du jour. As a fresh graduate, was I then going to ask any questions I had? Was I heck! I didn't go back, safe to say. (I instead found the London Clojurians, a much friendlier bunch - my kinda people 😊) Fast forward to today: I wanted to define a more objective language to talk about testing - a recognition that, despite all of the religious fervour, there can be a pragmatic middle ground that adequately mitigates the risks at a reasonable cost. So, rather than vague lamentations around 'we need time to improve our tests', 'we don't have enough tests', etc, the dimensions in this JUXT article give us a more precise, objective language to talk about the value and costs that our tests bring, prioritise certain areas over others, or quantify our improvements. https://lnkd.in/eu8rp8Wa Have I missed any big ones?

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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.

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And now for some readings of user level RCU .. and a landmark paper that led to the implementation of liburcu - the user space RCU library, a Christmas Day evening read .. Why RCU is difficult in user space ? RCU, particularly its high-performance Quiescent-State-Based Reclamation (QSBR) variant, is easier in kernel mode because the kernel scheduler automatically detects quiescent states whenever a CPU context-switches, enters user mode, or idles, allowing grace-period tracking without any explicit cooperation from kernel code. In user mode, applications lack this built-in mechanism, so threads must explicitly register and periodically report quiescent states (e.g., by calling specific functions), imposing invasive global constraints on the entire application. These requirements make user-level RCU harder to adopt broadly, as they complicate library design and require modifications to all potentially reading threads, which is impractical in many user-space programs. User level implementations of RCU : This paper contributes to user-level RCU by formally describing efficient and flexible implementations that overcome the limitations of prior approaches, which either imposed high read-side overhead or severely restricted application design. It presents multiple classes of RCU (including QSBR, memory-barrier, signal-based, and bullet-proof variants) with detailed algorithms, performance analysis, and comparisons to locking, directly forming the foundational basis for the liburcu library's core flavors and enabling its widespread adoption in user-space applications.

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I've been in the software testing and quality space for almost 3 decades 🤯 Ouch....I may feel a little bit old 🤣 18 of those years have been spent in some kind of leadership role, and I've learnt a lot along the way through the good and not so good times. In my latest blog post, I share my top 5 tips for those who are new to leadership in Quality, but I'm hoping these tips may help people in other types of leadership roles as well 🤞🏻 So, if you are new to leadership, or an experienced leader taking on new teams and challenges, then why not have a read. As always i'd love to hear your thoughts. #Blog #Leadership #QualityTalksBlog #Tips

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"Software architecture for developers" ... my 2-day introduction to software architecture, aimed at developers/engineers looking to move into tech lead/software architecture roles. We cover: - what software architecture is about - architectural drivers (requirements, quality attributes, constraints, principles) - the software architecture role - architecture diagramming (an architect's superpower) - architecture documentation - "how much up front design should we do?" Workshops are available to run privately in-person at your office, and I'm also running two more public workshops in 2026 in conjunction with the lovely folks at Trifork: - May 12-13; Amsterdam, Netherlands - September 28-29; Copenhagen, Denmark Links in the comments.

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There’s a tonne of vibe coding going on at the moment, it gets something working, to see if it feels right and then worry about the structure later. That can be genuinely useful early on. It’s also how you can lock yourself into decisions you didn’t really mean to make. I ran into this building Nota. Until a few days back, transcript templates were just typed structures in code. Clean, simple, and quite tempting just to leave as they were, because they worked so there was no immediate pressure to change anything. The more I thought about where it all might go, the more that “simple” choice started to feel brittle. Versioning would be a faff, editing would mean shipping code and anything beyond the original use case would feel bodged in rather than designed. It would have been easy to keep going and tell myself I’d migrate later. Sometimes that’s fine, but sometimes it just stores up work you know you’re going to have to do anyway (aka tech debt). That’s where I’ve found it useful to slow down and be a bit more honest with myself. Not “does this work today?” but “what does this turn into if people actually use it?”. I’ll often sanity check that with an AI as well, not for code, but to call out where I’m making optimistic assumptions. Vibe coding gets you moving... but at some point though you need a more brutally honest review, whether that comes from a person, an AI or just taking the time to properly challenge your own decisions. The tempting feature is always speed. The harder decision is knowing when to pause and fix something while it’s still cheap to do so. #nota #vibecoding #decisions #techdebt #legaltech

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July marks a natural reset point, but before rushing into delivery mode, it’s worth carving out time for a structured look back and look forward. Here’s a simple approach I’ve found useful across tech and product teams: Undertake a retro for last FY - What worked? What didn’t? - What lessons should shape the new year? Align on H1 Priorities - Use the endorsed annual plan as your guardrail, but don’t over-index on detail. - Focus on what must be true in H1 for you to make meaningful progress. Surface Risks & Resource Hotspots Early - These conversations are critical to occur across both senior and middle management. - Ensure consistency in language and intent to avoid misalignment down the track. The goal isn’t to rewrite the plan, it’s to ensure you’re resourced and aligned to execute confidently. Start smart, not just fast! #TechLeadership #CTOTips #FinancialYearReset #StrategicPlanning #Prioritisation #ExecutionExcellence #TeamAlignment #FY25

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How do you take Agile beyond the standard Scrum model? Damian Tworzydlo shares how he developed the Agile Delivery Framework at j-labs software specialists, a structured approach built on four key stages: Discovery, Setup, Delivery, and Finalisation. The result? Clear expectations for clients, standardised quality, and a scalable process that keeps teams aligned and efficient. Check out the full podcast for more insights like this ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/eawZvzXY

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Don't just chase grants... Some fantastic advice from Rachel Fletcher in our recent interview. Watch the full video to find out the full detail, but the short version is that the grant provider will always be looking for an outcome and that might not align with the direction you want your business to go. That being said, if the outcomes do marry up with your vision then they are a fantastic way to inject some cash and grow your business. You can find an invaluable grant finding resource on the FCS Associates Ltd website here: https://lnkd.in/e6RQ2KQ6 and Rachel sends out a regular grant bulletin that you can subscribe to here: https://lnkd.in/eMwKNfkB Don't forget, the Barnsley StartUp MeetUp will return in September so if you're missing your fix then head over to the YouTube channel and brush up on some of the awesome guests I've interviewed: https://lnkd.in/dygNzNg5 Enterprising Barnsley Barnsley Council South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority South Yorkshire Incubator and Accelerator Network Sheffield Digital TECH SY DMC

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Nearly every major site launch/relaunch I've been a part of has led to a degradation in site performance, despite grandiose promises of a better performing codebase and platform. Why? The "reference code" is built to be performant - and it is. These sites are lightening fast, but they are also incredibly basic. No enterprise brand is going to launch with the limited feature set it comes with. So what happens? You tack on integrations for Ratings & Reviews, Loyalty, Personalization, Video, Customer Chat, and on and on until the next thing you know you have 30+ integrations to provide the features & functionality customers have come to expect. Each one of these vendors is going to tell you that they will have a "minimal impact" on performance. For some it's true, for others it's not. But even a relatively minor 50ms increase for 30+ integrations adds up to over an added 1.5s load time. So what can you do? * Choose your vendors carefully * Review how their integration impacts their existing customers * Ensure you are only loading integrations on the pages they are needed on * Only load integrations when a customer interacts with it * Be ready to customize their implementation to make it more performant Vendors are far from the only cause of performance issues so follow along for more to come on this topic. Improving performance has been a core focus of mine and I have a lot more tips to share!

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