James Snell

I love being part of Fast Flow Conf and feel genuinely lucky to work with such a thoughtful group of fellow organisers. What I’m most proud of this year is the pivot we’ve made for FFC UK 2026. We listened carefully to what senior leaders and experienced practitioners were telling us, and we acted on it. The result is a conference that’s more in tune with the problems organisations are actually wrestling with right now. I’m particularly excited to hear real, grounded stories from leaders introducing Agentic AI into their organisations. Not the hype - but the messy reality: how humans and agents collaborate, where decision‑making really sits, and what this means for accountability, flow, and team design. I’m also fascinated by how this is reshaping the SDLC at a system level. Writing code was never the bottleneck - so as agents accelerate that part of the system, where does the real constraint move to next? 📣 The CFP now closes on 13th April. If you’re leading teams through this shift, we want to hear your story.

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In the competitive world of technology in Cheltenham, a noticeable trend emerges: an increasing emphasis on soft skills. While technical prowess is crucial, decision-makers are looking beyond just technical qualifications. Recent interviews highlight that roles offering £65,000 to £75,000 for senior developers are now also focusing on communication and teamwork abilities. For hiring managers, this means broadening your interview strategy. Not just code challenges, but real conversations that gauge a candidate’s flexibility and problem-solving. Introducing peer interviews can offer insights into a candidate’s team dynamics. Three ways to adjust your hiring approach: 1. Introduce role-play scenarios in interviews. 2. Assess communication through group discussions. 3. Provide feedback on both technical and soft skill performance. For those adjusting their hiring process, let's discuss how a refined approach might benefit your team! Send me a note if interested. #HiringTrends #SoftSkills

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Agentic coding — does anyone else find it’s significantly more effort to explain, with sufficient detail, precisely what you’re looking to build, than it is to just write the code yourself? The sheer amount of detail you need to articulate to see reasonable results is just ridiculous! Personally, I’d much rather write the code myself, even if it’s a language I’m unfamiliar with. It’s like winning the lottery — the lack of personal satisfaction from not having earned it counts for far more than you’d initially think.

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A prospect asked me last week why our rates are higher than the freelancer they found online. So I walked them through it. Our rate covers a project manager, a QA engineer catching bugs before the client sees them, a senior reviewing every pull request, staging environments, CI/CD, monitoring. The freelancer's rate covers one person writing code. No shade to freelancers. For small, well-scoped tasks they're often the right call. But comparing a $35/hour freelancer to a $65/hour agency is like comparing a bicycle to a van. Both move. One carries the whole operation. The part most founders miss is coordination cost. I spend roughly 30% of my week on stuff that never hits an invoice. Aligning priorities, unblocking developers, reviewing architecture calls, handling a client's 11pm panic text. That overhead is what makes delivery predictable. Remove it and you get cheaper code that costs more to fix later. You're not paying for code. You're paying for the system that keeps it working. #agencylife #softwaredevelopment #startups

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One of the most interesting conversations from my NY trip was on what's really happening in horizontal software assets... AI is starting to expose a problem for a lot of horizontal SaaS businesses. For years, software companies were rewarded for digitising workflows. Now AI is increasingly doing the workflow itself. Features that once justified entire software categories are being embedded into larger platforms or recreated by AI-native startups in a matter of months. The implications are significant: • Pricing power comes under pressure. • Product differentiation becomes harder to defend. • Customer switching costs decrease. • Growth becomes more expensive to sustain. • Valuation multiples come under scrutiny. Meanwhile, many vertical SaaS businesses remain far more resilient. Industry-specific workflows, compliance requirements, operational complexity, and deeply embedded systems aren't easily replaced by a chatbot or AI copilot. This is one reason why we're continuing to see strong investor appetite for vertical software and tech-enabled services businesses, even as parts of the broader SaaS market face increasing pressure. For investors, the conversation is shifting. It's no longer: "How fast can this business grow?" It's becoming: "How much of this product still exists if AI is free?" The answer could have a major impact on software valuations over the next 5-10 years... Camino Search

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Wondering how to get your job application noticed in the crowded UK dev market? I've been chatting with a lot of software developers recently, some early in their careers, others with years of experience, and one thing keeps coming up: "How do I actually stand out?" The truth is, the UK dev job market is tough right now. But I’ve seen what works (and what doesn’t), and I wanted to share a few tips that have helped candidates land interviews, and offers. Here’s what I’d recommend if you’re applying right now: 1. Customise, customise, customise - I can’t stress this enough: tailor your CV and cover letter for every role. Show how your experience matches their needs. Make it super easy for someone to see why you're a great fit at a glance. 2. Build (and show) cool stuff - Your GitHub or personal site can speak louder than your CV. Share real projects, ideally something beyond a to-do list app. If you've used a company’s API or built something relevant to them? Shout about it! 3. Let your passion show - Make it clear what kind of work excites you, whether that’s fintech, AI, or clean architecture. Add a bit of personality to your LinkedIn or portfolio. It helps you connect with the right teams. 5. Network is your net-worth - Go to meet-ups, tech events, comment on posts, send friendly DMs. A lot of roles never get posted online. The more people who know what you’re looking for, the more chances you’ll get. 6. Stay sharp with in-demand skills - Keep an eye on what’s hot in the UK, Java, JavaScript, C#, and cloud stuff are still in demand. Even just having a recent course or project to show you’re staying current can help. 7. Don’t get discouraged - You’ll hear nothing back from some roles. That’s normal. If a job feels right but you haven’t heard back in a couple of weeks, follow up! It shows you're proactive, not pushy. 8. Make your online presence count - Your LinkedIn and GitHub should clearly show what you're about, your skills, interests, and what you’re aiming for. This is often the first thing someone sees before they even open your CV. - Final thought: If you’re applying right now, especially as a junior, just know it’s normal to feel stuck sometimes. The first job is often the hardest to get, but once you're in, everything gets easier. Keep going, keep building, keep learning. And if we’re connected, don’t hesitate to reach out. Always happy to offer a bit of advice or point you in the right direction. #SoftwareEngineering #TechCareers #UKJobs #DevCommunity #JobSearchTips #CareerAdvice #RecruiterLife #SoftwareDeveloper #HiringTechTalent

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“Don’t optimise early” is *right* for software But “don’t optimise ever”? Only if you want bigger bills and more expensive power I’m looking at 5 - controversial - ways software engineering could do better this week. Number 1 is “optimisation”. The maxim most people know is “Don’t optimise early!” And that’s right. Otherwise you’ll waste time and money almost all of the time. But “don’t optimise EVER”? A big mistake. These days, many people feel that it’s cheaper, easier, quicker (pick any you want) to just throw more cloud resources at a problem. And some application spaces, like LLM construction. often rely directly on pure brute force. (Honourable mention to all teams developing more cost-conscious approaches though!) Because - and this isn’t just about AI and LLMs - hugely increasing cloud usage and forecast usage is… ⚠️ driving up electricity prices [plus factors too, of course] ⚠️ creating water scarcity ⚠️ costing more money! What’s your take - is optimisation a thing of the past, or should it be growing in importance?

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£104.4m. That's the Post Office's IR35 bill — accumulated largely through the contractor workforce engaged on Horizon-related remediation and systems change work. Technology teams. If you're a CTO or engineering leader, this should hit close to home. Our departments are often the largest consumers of contractor and consultancy labour in the business. We engage specialists for platform migrations, legacy remediation, cloud infrastructure, security — often through complex supply chains involving consultancies, sub-contractors, and PSCs. And most of the time, those engagements sit completely outside any central workforce compliance view. Procurement sees a supplier invoice. Finance sees a cost centre. HR sees nothing. And no one is assessing whether the person who's been embedded in your team for 18 months, using your systems, attending your standups, and reporting to your tech lead has ever had their employment status reviewed. This isn't just a tax problem. It's a technology leadership problem — because we're the ones creating the demand, shaping the delivery model, and often selecting the suppliers. If your engineering org relies heavily on contractors or consultancy-supplied engineers, it's worth asking: does anyone have a complete picture of who's actually delivering work, and has their status ever been assessed based on how they actually operate day-to-day? We broke down the full Post Office case and what organisations should be doing differently 👇

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Spring for Apache Pulsar 1.2.15 and 2.0.3 are now available | On behalf of the team and everyone who has contributed, I’m happy to announce that Spring for Apache Pulsar 1.2.15 and 2.0.3 have been released and are now available from Maven Central. – Chris Bono https://dy.si/MTKnG

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It's that time again! I've got a talk up this year that started out as a discussion in a DigiLocal CIO session about the best ways of talking to young people about testing the code you've written and led to me writing a basic testing framework in Scratch and seeing how feasible TDD was in that environment. The talk is called "Testing from Scratch" and if that sounds in any way interesting I'd really appreciate any votes to get it into the programme, but there are loads of great talks on offer (in particular, I'm curious to see what both Lorraine Pearce and Michael Luke are talking about) so do have a scroll and see all the wonderful things on offer

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So over the last few months I have seen a dramatic increase of posts on here about AI being amazing, AI replacing Developer's jobs and AI being rubbish at the same time. Every post on my feed when I log in seems to be one of these variations. Let's face it the Internet has never been a place for nuance but this is ridiculous. The polarisation on AI is even larger than the previous LinkedIn monster of choice........."Returning to the Office". 👻 📰 So what is the/my truth? I'm a seasoned Developer, Manager, Director and CTO in the tech space (which is code for "i'm old and i've seen stuff"). I also run a pretty popular AI meet-up in Belfast. In my opinion AI is no different from the evolution of the Developer role I have seen in the past. 👟 Back in the 90s we Internet Developers had a simple landscape. HTML, JavaScript, PHP or Classic ASP with VBScript. 🎉 Then in the early 2000s the world increased. New platforms, new languages and new toolkits. Ruby, .NET, Perl, Django, CSS, various CMS platforms and a flurry of JavaScript libraries. That was before Databases and other things came into the discussion. Back then we had to adapt, learn new skills and evolve as the landscape evolved around us. We did that. We survived. 📱 In the 2010s we saw the dramatic escalation of Cloud technology, DevOps, Agile practices, even more frameworks with .NET Core, mobile app explosion and more. Again, we had to adapt, learn new skills and evolve as the landscape evolved around us. We did that. We survived. 🤖 AI is another evolution. What I think is freaking people out is that the world is not getting larger but getting smaller. We now have tools that can do leg work for us. It makes the cross language learning curve much smaller. It gives us a powerful tool to understand concepts and difference quickly. It makes prototyping easier than ever. It's making something that took time to become an expert in the wide landscape a lot quicker and smoother. 🌹 It's not all roses though. The AI can, and does, get things wrong. It's currently not scalable. I would trust it with some code but not all. I wouldn't trust it with my infrastructure (yet!). We still need our skills. We just need to evolve again. We will do that. We'll survive. Developers being laid off across the globe is, to me, a correction of the post Covid-19 mass hiring when salaries went through the roof and Developer roles were a sellers market. That is correcting itself and companies are letting AI take the blame. It's nonsense. They just took on too many staff. The AI journey is an evolving one and we need to evolve with it but it's not replacing us. We will always need good Developers to make good product. AI will be great for making boilerplate and prototype product but we will need to utilise it, govern it and maintain things. We will do everything faster but that's not a bad thing as the broad landscape was slowing us all down. We Developers will evolve. We'll survive.

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If your company still occasionally spends from founders’ or employees’ personal cards, it doesn’t just mean you have “scrappy ops.” It means: • untracked risk • poor expense hygiene • silent resentment within the team • and a finance team doing archaeology every month Personal cards aren’t a workaround. They’re a signal that your spend system is broken. Period. Get corporate cards, especially the ability to create and manage as many virtual cards as you need from a single dashboard.

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Inside or Outside IR35? From a recruitment standpoint, the distinction has major implications.  Many IT specialists value the autonomy and tax efficiency of being outside IR35. For companies, attracting top talent often means being able to offer compliant “outside IR35” contracts. But the risks are significant: misclassification can lead to costly penalties and reputational damage. 👉 What are the consequences for IT companies? Higher costs: Many companies now face increased taxes and National Insurance contributions when working with contractors. A shift in hiring strategies: There’s growing popularity of permanent contracts or well-defined B2B agreements, to stay compliant. Recruitment risk: Top IT specialists often prefer flexible, contract-based work. IR35 limits these options, making it harder to attract and retain the best talent. How has your company dealt with IR35? Have you managed to build an effective model for working with IT contractors under the new regulations? #IR35 #ITRecruitment #UKTech #SoftwareHouse #ITContractors #TechRecruitment

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Not every tech skill needs a permanent hire. Whether it’s for legacy systems, short-term initiatives, or niche expertise, contractors can fill critical capability gaps with precision. At Tenth Revolution we’ve explored the business case in more detail here: https://lnkd.in/eX6cF6cX #SkillsGap #TechContractors #StrategicHiring #TRG

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🔒 Guarantees Every Outstaffing Agency Should Offer When you partner with an agency, insist on:   👉 Replacement window 🔁🧑‍💻 Swap a dev free of charge if skill-fit misses 👉  Trial period ⏳🧪 2-week “try before you buy” ramp-up 👉 SLAs 📈⚡ Defined response times for blockers, bugs, escalations 🗣️ Ask your vendor about these — or ask us how we deliver on every project.

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I’ve recently published a Salary Survey focused on roles across OOSD. Seven roles benchmarked: ✈ Business Analyst ✈ Product Manager ✈ Technical Lead ✈ Project Manager ✈ Solutions Architect ✈ Programme Manager ✈ Director   Scaling or adjusting teams for OOSD capability...   If you’re navigating complex Modular, Offer & Order journeys, Buy/Build strategies, Planning etc, the Compensation Report will help talent & retention ideas. 1. Save this (three dots, top right). 2. Share it with a friend by ♻️ reposting. 3. Connect with me. 4. Comment OOSD for the Salary Survey. #AirlineTechnology #OOSD #NDC #IATA #OfferandOrder #ModernAirlineRetail #AirlineDistribution #PSS #GDS

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How often do software engineers in Scotland get the chance to help build a new product category on a global scale? I’m recruiting with a company that genuinely feels like one of those opportunities. You'd be building an AI native product that's changing how an entire industry works. This sounds like hype, but it's the truth. And they're now scaling fast. In addition to that, the engineering team are leaning into AI in how they build too. They are using tools to move faster, iterate harder and raise the level of what they can ship. If you joined, you'd be part of a company that's growing quickly, taking market share internationally, and building the kind of momentum that can put a team, and a city, firmly on the map. I’ve worked in Scottish tech long enough to know these stories do not come along all that often. I believe that this is one of them. If you’re a builder, and you want to be close to that sort of journey, I’d be keen to speak. Drop me a DM or email sean.gilger@be-it.co.uk

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Are you using role-based IR35 assessments the right way? Many businesses use role-based assessments to speed up hiring decisions. It’s a smart way to get an early view of IR35 status, but only if done properly. The key is knowing the difference: ✔️A role-based assessment helps streamline hiring. ✔️A blanket determination risks non-compliance. The distinction matters. Role-based assessments can bring consistency and efficiency – but only when combined with individual checks once a contractor is engaged. Our new article explains how to apply this approach without falling into the blanket determination trap. 👉 Read it here: https://buff.ly/WqYiHgc #IR35 #IR35assessment #IR35Compliance #Compliance #Consultation #HRnews #HR #HMRC

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