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9 articles
We tracked three developers who entered the industry in 2019 via three very different routes — a degree apprenticeship in Sheffield, a self-funded bootcamp in Manchester, and a CS degree from a Russell Group university. Five years later, the salary gaps, confidence gaps and hiring biases tell a story the prospectuses don't.
When a Leeds software agency shrank its office to save money, it didn't plan to become remote-first — it just sort of happened. Eighteen months on, the gains are real, but so is the bill nobody invoiced for: lost over-the-shoulder debugging, slower juniors, and onboarding done entirely through a screen.
One freelance developer, five working days, and a blow-by-blow account of how a tidy Monday plan dissolves into unpaid Friday extras — plus the Sunday evening emergency nobody budgeted for. What it says about day rates, boundaries, and the contract clause you skimmed past.
That viral tweet comparing a Silicon Valley package to a Leeds salary skips a few steps — like tax, rent and the actual hours involved. We run the numbers on real take-home pay for UK devs at every stage, from first junior role to IR35-wrapped contracting.
COBOL mainframes, VB6 booking screens and fax machines are still quietly keeping Britain running — and honestly, some of them are doing a better job than their modern replacements would. A tour of the systems that refuse to die, and what it would take to finally retire them.
The Friday-before-a-long-weekend deploy is a peculiarly British ritual, and it ends the same way every time: one engineer, a pub garden, and a laptop balanced on their knees. It's time to retire it.
The greenfield rewrite is the most seductive lie in software, and UK businesses keep falling for it. For developers keeping ageing Rails systems alive in finance, retail and the public sector, here's the case for strangling the old beast slowly — and getting the budget holders on side.
You already know tests are good. What you don't have is a spare afternoon to write them. This is a field guide to testing strategies that survive standups, stakeholder calls, and the third context switch of the morning — including the 90-second suite that changed how our team works.
Brexit, a pandemic, a hiring boom, a bust — the UK developer job market has been through the wringer. Here's our honest read on where salaries, remote work and in-demand skills actually stand in 2025.