Tech Team Weekly

Tech Team Weekly

A weekly podcast covering the latest essential UK technology news and how it impacts our teams. Hosted by Sanjay Purswani, Neil Studd and Gwen Diagram. read less
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Episodes

Not Asking For Pay Rises?
14-02-2022
Not Asking For Pay Rises?
With inflation skyrocketing and energy bills about to go through the roof, the governer of the Bank of England has this week warned against workers asking for substantial pay rises, asking everybody to deal with the "pain" of the rising cost-of-living, whilst simultaneously taking home over £500,000 a year. We get deep into when and how we should ask for a pay rise, whether cost-of-living increases should be a given, how companies can better support employees during tough financial times, and Sanj declares some strong feelings which may lead to our Patreon earnings being diverted into legal fees. In the wonderful world of our stand-up section, we've got busy hiring times, scary talks, Xbox dev kits and EV research. Plus, the world's shortest news quiz!  TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Start 01:16 The Stand-Up 08:20 This Week's Epic 23:26 The Wash-Up LINKS DISCUSSED THIS WEEK: Lara Hogan - Resilient Management Humans Plus Tech podcast Ecologi TechTree YouTube: Uncharted movie trailer BBC News: Charles met Queen two days before testing positive BBC News: Don't ask for a big pay rise, warns Bank of England boss Money Saving Expert: What is the Energy Price Cap? The Guardian: Bank of England boss urged to shadow care worker for a day amid low pay row The Guardian: The definition of levelling down: the Bank of England calling for wage 'restraint' Bloomberg: Boris Johnson Rebukes Bank of England’s Bailey Over Wages Remark LinkedIn: CEO of RSL Renewables covering staff energy bills
Building Behaviours Over Setting Goals
31-01-2022
Building Behaviours Over Setting Goals
It's that time of year where everybody's talking about goal-setting, but are goals the correct form of measurement? This week, the TTW crew are talking about goals and habits, and their experiences with how effective they are at modifying behaviours. Naturally, this leads to a number of conversational rabbit-holes (even in our new shortened format), so expect to hear tales of driving lessons, toothbrush etiquette and Ted Lasso. Plus we give our weekly workplace updates, which includes conference chat, one of the biggest first-world problems ever, and praise for one of Neil's favourite TV shows. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Start 01:23 The Stand-Up 06:57 This Week's Epic 23:33 The Wash-Up LINKS DISCUSSED THIS WEEK:  The Independent: Storm Malik: Met Office issues severe weather warning for Scotland and northern England Agile on the Beach LeadDev Together YouTube: Parasite Trailer YouTube: Mr Robot Season 1 Trailer IGN: Steam Deck Gets an Official Release Date, First Units to Ship in February Sticker Mule FS Blog: Habits vs Goals YouTube: Conquer Driving: Why smart goals don't work on driving lessons GoodToKnow: Can you exercise with Covid? Shawn Achor: The Happiness Advantage TED Talks: Shawn Achor - The happy secret to better work Freedom Netflix: The Social Dilemma The Times: Outcry over energy-sucking Facebook data centre that threatens Dutch green targets Get Money Rich: Robert Kiyosaki's "Pay Yourself First" idea MindTools: Daniel Pink's Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose Framework Entrepeneurial Operating System (EOS) James Clear: How Long Does it Actually Take to Form a New Habit? (Backed by Science) YouTube: Ted Lasso Season 1 Trailer
Ep 14 - The Long Stand Up!
29-11-2021
Ep 14 - The Long Stand Up!
As promised, this week we're showcasing all of the parts of our working lives that we normally have to rush through. It's the first (and probably not the last) Stand-Up Special! Gwen shares some exciting professional developments and hopes for 2022, while recovering from a sourdough-inflicted ailment. Sanj (or Super-Sanj as he is now known after his boosters) finally spends some time in the testing and documentation camp. And Neil finally shares his big news, though gets significantly distracted by ranting about his Pixel 6 annoyances. Plus, all three hosts reach quick agreement on their least favourite household appliance. Next week is our final episode of the year, where we'll be running a Season 1 retrospective: what's gone well, and what we might change for Season 2. We'd love to include your thoughts, so please get in touch via any of the usual channels! TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Start 01:40 Social Engineering 02:59 The Stand-Up 36:24 The Wash-Up LINKS MENTIONED THIS WEEK: Elucidat Rapid Software Testing Android Police: Notifications feeling sluggish? This popular Android game may be to blame The Verge: Google explains why the Pixel 6’s fingerprint scanner may be sluggish Digital Spy: Spider-Man: No Way Home is currently fighting a no-win battle Godot Engine LeadDev New York 2022 We Got This Covered: Can Optimus Prime save us from the Omicron variant? The Internet thinks so Rands Leadership Slack Pat Kua YouTube: Arcane trailer Squarespace Bubble.io YouTube: Mr Robot season 1 trailer YouTube: Futureman season 1 trailer M+ Museum
Ep 13 - Thriving in The Great Resignation!
22-11-2021
Ep 13 - Thriving in The Great Resignation!
We've spoken in recent episodes about the volatility of the current job market, and how "The Great Resignation" is offering great opportunities for those who choose to change companies. But what about those who choose to stay? This week, we talk about the challenges of remaining motivated and thriving when those around you are moving on.  Next week, we're doing an epic All Stand-Up episode, where we'll be focusing entirely on what's going on in our working lives - and we'd love to hear from you! Drop us a message/DM on Twitter, or leave us a voice message - we'll try to incorporate as many into our episode as possible! TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Start 02:33 The Stand-Up 10:29 Social Engineering 16:17 This Week's Epic 33:50 News Bytes 37:30 The Wash-Up LINKS DISCUSSED THIS WEEK:  Ministry of Testing Cambridge: How Testers Can Shape The Next Normal Gizmodo: Star Trek: Discovery Is Lost to Most of the World Days Before Its Season 4 Premiere 9to5Google: You can now pre-order the 2nd-gen Pixel Stand from Google, ships next month BBC Sport: English cricket 'institutionally' racist - Rafiq Fawcett Society: The Fawcett Society announces date of Equal Pay Day 2021 BBC News: The day Iceland's women went on strike The Guardian: Genshin Impact players say Chinese game censors "Taiwan" and "Hong Kong" chat YouTube: "Let's Go Brandon" video New York Post: Peloton accused of banning anti-Biden "Let’s Go Brandon" on platform EuroNews: Portugal makes it illegal for your boss to text you after work in 'game changer' remote work law Amazon: Michael C. Feathers - Working Effectively with Legacy Code Martin Fowler: The strangler pattern Arria careers page (or reach out to Maribel Ayala on LinkedIn) The Guardian: Staying power! How to thrive in the great resignation if you don’t want to quit The Register: Thousands of Firefox users accidentally commit login cookies on GitHub 9to5Mac: Apple secretly buying ads for their apps, say big developers – and they aren’t happy about it ArsTechnica: Apple will finally let devs tell users about non-App Store purchase options Wikipedia: Epic Games v Apple
Ep 11 - Climate Tech and COP26!
08-11-2021
Ep 11 - Climate Tech and COP26!
It's been a week dominated by COP26, so we're turning our attention to some of the latest developments in climate tech, looking at whether green tech startups could be the key to saving the planet, and discussing how an individual's contributions stack up against companies who aren't doing their bit.  We've also got our usual stand-up updates (although they're heavy on things that we can't talk about yet) and our News Bytes section, where we discuss the chip shortage and we ask an AI bot to solve some of the podcast's longest-running philosophical problems.  TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Start 01:57 The Stand-Up 11:16 Social Engineering 17:16 This Week's Epic 30:39 News Bytes 37:23 The Wash Up  LINKS MENTIONED THIS WEEK:  CNBC: Peloton shares collapse 35% as momentum for its at-home fitness equipment slows BBC News: First pill to treat Covid gets approval in UK   Jesper Ottosen: Using MTTR to Understand When to Test   LinkedIn: Senior Test Manager - easyJet Holidays vacancy   Gov.UK: World leaders join UK’s Glasgow Breakthroughs to speed up affordable clean tech worldwide   UK Tech News: These startups are fuelling London’s climate tech startup boom   The Engineer: Reaction Engines spin-out launches green ammonia solution   Fodors Travel: Blimp Travel Might Be Making a Comeback Soon. Seriously.   The Guardian: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed. Keep them on the hook   Wired: Stop Telling Kids They'll Die From Climate Change   Ars Technica: No end in sight for chip shortage as supply chain problems pile up   Allen Insitute for AI: Ask Delphi   The Verge: The AI oracle of Delphi uses the problems of Reddit to offer dubious moral advice   The Guardian: ‘Is it OK to …’: the bot that gives you an instant moral judgment   The Verge: Twitter taught Microsoft’s AI chatbot to be a racist asshole in less than a day
Ep 8 - Who's Watching Our Kids?
18-10-2021
Ep 8 - Who's Watching Our Kids?
In an episode which we promise is considerably more entertaining than the subject matter might suggest, the TWW crew take a look at the rise of digital monitoring software within schools and the workplace. We discuss the trade-offs between safety and snooping, the challenges of verifying the success of such tooling, and propose some possibly less alarming ways to help protect children online. Plus: Sanj finally manages to refuel, Neil shares how he almost lost his job because of Google Analytics, and we get to the bottom of what Gwen would be willing to sacrifice for quicker software updates. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Start 01:15 The Stand-Up 06:23 Social Engineering 09:38 This Week's Epic 28:13 News Bytes 34:46 The Wash Up LINKS MENTIONED THIS WEEK: YouTube: Postman livestream: A Busy Developer's Guide To Testing (Thursday 21st October, 7pm BST) Black Tech Fest (19th-21st October) State Of The Browser (30th October) The Guardian: A boy wrote about his suicide attempt. He didn’t realize his school’s Gaggle software was watching The 74: New Research: Most Parents and Teachers Have Accepted Student Surveillance As a Safety Tool — But See the Potential For Serious Harm Gaggle (PDF link): The State of Student Safety 2020/21 Electronic Frontier Foundation: Schools Are Spying on Students – But Students Can Fight Back Vox: The hidden racism of school discipline, in 7 charts TechCrunch: Aware raises $60M for tech that monitors internal messaging platforms for legal compliance, sentiment analysis and more UK Council for Internet Safety Internet Matters Peloton Reddit: Update on User Flair Pen Test Partners: Free BrewDog beer with a side order of shareholder PII? TechRadar: Tesla’s driver safety scoring system could be a game-changer for car insurance
Ep 6 - Buy Now, Pay Later!
04-10-2021
Ep 6 - Buy Now, Pay Later!
Faced with a tight deadline, the team finally manage to deliver an episode of about the desired length! This week, Gwen, Neil and Sanj are looking at the explosion of new digital players in the 'Buy Now Pay Later' market, looking at the ethics of building features which can generate profit from the vulnerable, and asking whether employers are doing enough to encourage discussions about prudent financial behaviour. There's also discussion about loot boxes and other forms of gambling, during which Gwen gets mad at a fake casino. There's still enough time for all three hosts to pick scarily similar stories in News Bytes - if you're interested in overpaying for novelty tech, this week is the episode for you (apart from Sanj's story, which could get you arrested if you're a careless Australian). TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Start   00:56 The Stand-Up   06:10 Social Engineering   09:54 This Week's Epic   25:13 News Bytes   34:12 The Wash Up LINKS MENTIONED THIS WEEK: YouTube: #LeadDev - Marco Rogers - Creating a career ladder for engineers YouTube: Postman - The Busy Developer's Guide to Testing (21st October livestream) CNBC: British fintechs are jumping into the booming buy now, pay later market Mastercard: Mastercard reinvents installments to give consumers more payment choices wherever they shop Money Saving Expert: First-ever financial education textbook lands in schools Polygon: EA calls its loot boxes "surprise mechanics", says they’re used ethically  Citizens Advice Bureau StepChange debt charity The Guardian: An0m - the inside story of the most daring surveillance sting in history Stack Overflow: No joke - you can buy our copy/paste keyboard right now Digital Undivided: supporting Black and Latinx women entrepreneurs The Independent: Amazon's new Astro robot is a "privacy nightmare" Twitter: @DimaKrotov - the stranded Roomba
Ep 5 - Talking Openly About Pay!
27-09-2021
Ep 5 - Talking Openly About Pay!
This week, our main story is the debate over whether companies (and employees) should be happy to disclose salaries, in an attempt to drive pay equality, a chat made somewhat harder by Neil's repeated inability to pronounce the word "equality". We get deep into discussion about our experiences with knowing (or not knowing) how our colleagues are paid, companies and countries who we've seen get the balance right, and the challenges of introducing salary negotiations in the job-hunting process. But there's more! We'll also be talking about a secret new privacy-shattering setting in Chrome which is enabled by default, and bemoaning the lack of accessibility options in some modern games (and championing others which lead the way). You'll also hear what we've all been up to this week, including a top quality J-Lo story from Sanj, unexpectedly relevant election news from Neil, and Gwen basically doing everything under the sun. Plus there's an awful lot of Diablo II discussion for a podcast which isn't from the year 2000. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Start   02:02 The Stand-Up   14:43 Social Engineering   21:46 This Week's Epic   44:00 News Bytes   52:22 Competition Time   53:09 The Wash-Up LINKS DISCUSSED THIS WEEK: Incident.io Ministry of Testing: Test.Bash() 2021 YouTube: Neil's Continuous Quality with Postman session Jamie Tanna: Providing a Public Salary History page GOV.UK: Equality Act 2010 Blind social network YouTube: Kevin Goldsmith: How does Salary Work? (LeadDev 2019) The Verge: Apple keeps shutting down employee-run survyes on pay equity - and labour lawyers say it's illegal The Register: Google emits Chrome 94 with 'Idle Detection' API to detect user inactivity amid opposition IGN: Deathloop's Lack of Accessibility Options Is Disappointing Players Tweet thread from Courtney Craven (Can I Play That) outlining Deathloop's issues
Ep 3 - When Testing In Public Goes Wrong!
13-09-2021
Ep 3 - When Testing In Public Goes Wrong!
On this week's episode, we look at the controversy behind an issue whereby planning applications were mistakenly modified in production by a junior engineer who thought that they were working in a test environment. We'll discuss whether we should lock-down our production environments more, whether we should protect our staff against being able to make critical mistakes on real data, and our general thoughts on testing in production.   Plus there's plenty of our usual life updates in The Stand-Up, where you can find out the result of Gwen's driving test, Neil's week one experiences with his Peloton, and Sanj rolling up his sleeves to work on some (awesome) new graphics for the show, and adding automation to our website!  Plus, courtesy of the kind folks at CookMyGrub.com we've got another opportunity to win a £20 Amazon voucher - tune in to find out how! TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Start 01:44 The Stand-Up 14:39 Social Engineering 22:56 This Week's Epic 35:14 News Bytes 45:48 Competition Time 50:12 The Wash-Up     STORIES FEATURED THIS WEEK:   ShlinkedIn Glean blog: How we discuss engineering improvements at Glean Sky News: 'Your proposal is whack': Council worker mistakenly rejects planning applications with sarcastic comments - but decisions are legally binding Statement from Swale Council Reddit thread: "Accidentally destroyed production database on first day of a job" LondonTechWatch: The August 2021 London Venture Capital Funding Report London Tech Week Mayor of London: Technology Design Lab OWASP Top Ten Wired: One Woman's Mission to Rewrite Nazi History on Wikipedia
Ep 2 - Why is it so hard to get a Software Engineering job?
06-09-2021
Ep 2 - Why is it so hard to get a Software Engineering job?
We're finding our stride in Episode 2, even though one of us is slightly under the weather. This week's discussion focuses on a recent trending article about modern challenges with hiring and technical interviews: we talk about technical tests, coding interviews, and how many rounds is too many. Plus there's loads of comments from our glorious listeners, we couldn't do this without all of you. If you're here for the off-the-cuff asides, we've got plenty of those: we mull over the idea of recording an episode from within a videogame, and Neil makes plans to hack his new Peloton bike for the benefit of the podcast. Also, by complete accident, we're completely swear-free this week! We're sponsored this week by CookMyGrub.com who have kindly offered to give away a £20 Amazon voucher to one lucky winner - tune in to the episode to find out how to enter! High-fives to our new Patreon supporters this week: Dan Billing and Gilles! TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Start 01:45 The Stand-Up 07:15 Social Engineering 16:24 This Week's Epic 42:08 News Bytes 50:47 Competition Time 52:59 The Wash-Up STORIES FEATURED THIS WEEK: Better Programming: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a software engineering job? Quora post: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a software engineering job? Docker: Updating and Extending Our Product Subscriptions BBC: Fake Banksy NFT sold through artist's website for £244k BBC: Banksy was warned about website flaw before NFT hack scam Better Programming: Bored of VS Code? Try Lite-XL CSS-Tricks: Introduction to the Solid JavaScript Library