Matthew Rayner

What is a TypeScript Engineer? I keep seeing this pop up in recruitment posts, which means clients are asking for it...right? Has this replaced the FullStack Engineer, which, lets be honest, meant a NodeJS developer. That was back in the good old days when it was only NodeJS. Now we have Bun, Deno, Hono and more. Or perhaps its asking for a Javascript developer...whatever that means in todays world of a thousand js frameworks and evolving ES standards. Or are they actually asking for a Java developer, because someones used Gen AI along the way and it got confused between Java and Javascript (*shudders*) Are they seriously in need of a type system engineer, thats kinda niche. It's hard enough trying to explain what you do as a job to "normal" folk as it is, without this level of obfuscation. How would you even explain this when asked "What do you do?". Do kids nowadays needs to consider themselves experts in everything inside package.json to land a job? When will the industry move beyond this fixation on specific languages? I get it, it's an important consideration, but asking for Typescript Engineers...it's not going to help you find the devs you actually need.

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7 Comments

My break wasn’t really a break because we had our biggest December ever. So now in January and with the team coming back on board for a new year I’ll be finding some space for myself. We had record sales, and the stuff we’ve been preparing for all year happened. Our Anti-fraud software for WooCommerce exploded with 176% income growth in December YoY and we started bursting at the seams a little bit. This is a mature product. While I have my own separate political thoughts, from a business perspective the injection of business confidence that the Trump result has had is immediate and clear in our sales. Like, next day kind of clear. It wasn’t the new feature we launched yesterday that catapulted this. It was because of what we did the past 12 months that made it happen. Now we enter new territory with this software, where what worked in the past 12 months does not work for the next 12 months. In fact we need an almost completely different approach to this next phase of growth and, so yeah, no holiday for me. As with any new big changes, I need to be there at the start to ensure the direction is set well. After that, I can back off and let the team do their thing.

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Linkedinians! Whilst I’m organising my next big freelance thing I will likely have scope to pick up a few bits and pieces of work here and there. Preference for people I’ve worked with before, and I’m likely to have up to a month starting Monday 13th (ominous) - so if your website needs a bit of loving hit me up! Services: Consultancy - if your website isn’t performing how you’d like it to or if you have other issues or merely want a second opinion, I can do this :) Development - Need a super slick app-like web experience creating from your designs? I’m ex-agency and used to delivering high quality microsites at speed Team building - Probably not going to have enough time for this one but I love growing front end tech teams and working with others to build solid development foundations. Common tech I specialise in: NextJS, React, HTML, CSS, (Type|Java)script. Less common tech I specialise in: Canvas, using images/video in presentation layer, web audio, SVG and some SVG animation Tech I specialise in whilst holding my nose: Wordpress, Drupal, AEM. If you’re a recruiter contacting me about freelance work, please be aware I’m Architect/Principal engineer level and not particularly interested in the gruntwork. Also please include hour/day rate in your info. If you do not, I will assume you’re after the cheapest people, not the best people. (Because the algorithms love video, here’s a screen capture of something fun I built one of my favourite clients ;))

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Code readability: prefixes. If you've got a method which checks if a status is true or false, instead of calling it 'status', why not try 'isStatus' or 'isPending'? If you've got a method which checks if someone has replied, don't call it 'replied', call it 'hasReplied'. In my opinion, it's better to hint at whats being returned. Lots of micro-improvements like this make your code easier to read.

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4 Comments

I thought it might be fun to start a bit of a LinkedIn Challenge - to meet 100 Developers in 100 Days I've been a C#/.NET software developer for over 2 decades. I've actually been coding with the .NET Framework since one of its beta releases Post a comment of what your primary coding language is and how long you've been mastering your craft #softwaredevelopers #coders #100devsin100days #linkedinchallenge

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The state of terrible website design on major websites never surprises. This is a new feature on Royal Mail's parcel tracking page, presumably to discourage bots. 'Please click on the entity...' - is that the best choice of words? What's the difference between the refresh icon and the 'Skip' button? They seem to do the same thing. What does the central hand icon mean? It's a link to the provider website, which is of no use. What does the search icon do? Nothing. It's a confusing mess, and this is a universal service for receiving something in the mail. For an accessible version I would need to select the 3-dot menu, go to Accessibility and then enter an email address to sign up for an 'Accessibility Cookie' that will be sent to my email address, a process that is anything but accessible.

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Is your coding challenge costing you the best developers? Picture this: A brilliant developer, perfect for your team, closes your coding test tab... and never looks back. Ouch. Feels like a missed opportunity, doesn't it? Here's the kicker: 58% of developers say they've abandoned an application due to an unfair coding challenge, according to a 2023 Stack Overflow survey. That's more than half of your potential dream team... gone. But why? Aren't coding challenges the gold standard for assessing tech talent? Not quite. Let's break it down: • Time constraints stress out even the best coders • Generic problems don't reflect real-world scenarios • Anxiety can cloud true abilities • One-size-fits-all approaches ignore diverse skill sets The result? You might be filtering out innovative problem-solvers who don't perform well under artificial pressure. So, what's the alternative? 🔹 Take-home projects that mimic real work 🔹 Pair programming sessions 🔹 Code review discussions 🔹 Portfolio assessments Remember: You're not just testing coding skills. You're evaluating a potential team member. How do you assess technical skills in your hiring process? Share your approach! Let's build better hiring practices together. #TechHiring #SoftwareDevelopment #RecruitmentStrategy #CodingChallenges #TalentAcquisition

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🚀 Calling All UK Software Developers! Are you a developer in the UK looking to connect, collaborate, and share insights with other like-minded professionals? Whether you're a full-time worker, freelancer, or contractor, this is for you! I created a small community of devs about 9 months ago and it's been growing slowly. I have recently decided to not silo the group to contractors but also include full-time dev workers or up and coming devs. The group is completely private and heavily vetted. No recruiters or employers, sorry! This is to reduce job posting spam although it's not against the rules for devs to share oppurtunitues with each other. 📱 Join Our WhatsApp Group 🧑‍💻 We've created a space for UK-based developers to - Network with others in the industry 🌐 - Share job opportunities and freelance gigs 💼 - Discuss the latest in tech, tools, and trends 🔧 - Get support and advice from a thriving dev community 💡 - This group is open to developers of all experience levels whether you're just starting out or you've been in the game for years. 👉 If you'd like to join send me a DM or comment below and I will contact you. Feel free to tag a dev friend who might be interested. Let’s grow together! #UKDevs #Developers #Freelancers #Contractors #Networking #TechCommunity #WhatsAppGroup

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Lunch time thought Whilst I love that git is a wonderful event sourced distributed ledger I also like that its criminal to rewrite commits because of this But I also hate that once again I committed something I wish I hadn't and now i have to go change the roles This to me smells of a design problem - how can we as an industry be exposing ourselves to this risk like this? There has to be a better way. There is a usability problem in here - I know better, but when going fast it is excruciatingly easy to miss something. I keep seeing console *commands* with *secure data* in them that should never be there. We have a system that has bad cohesion. The command changes as the API changes The secure data changes when the organisation changes But our API munge these to seperate reasons for change together into a single command. Should we start giving examples of things like that that depend upon env vars only? What do you think? #CI #ContinuousImprovement #XP #Security Sure pre-commit hooks are great - but when github actions are easy to edit inline we really need something to check for id like strings and really interrogate us wrt comitting them.

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When people ask me why I got into dev, I always say "well, it all started with a crazy idea". That's pretty much the ethos that I go by with everything I do; in fact the best projects I work on are the ones where the client says "well, I'm not even sure this is possible, but...". So yes, we do the standard stuff like eCommerce and databases, but we also do some really interesting stuff with connectivity, AI intergration, and interactive elements that people didn't even know were possible until they see it for the first time. No matter how big or small, it always starts with that one idea, that one feeling that gives you the urge to reach out and see what's possible. Now you've got that idea, let us help you put the rest of the pieces together to create something really cool: nathan@snookdigital.co.uk #TechSupport #WebDevelopment #webdev #plugins #customdev #anythingispossible

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It's really interesting how sometimes products get used for other things than their intended use case. For some closed beta testers I opened up my reasoning engine, just to show how auto recruit thinks. Well I got a fun Whatsapp message from a friend who copy pasted part of the answer regarding his CV vs a role he should be a good fit for. Afterwards he wrote to me that he knows that stakeholder management is very important for his role and that he actually agrees that it isn't really clear from his CV and he will improve it thanks to auto recruit. Not sure if I want to open the reasoning engine to the public yet, but love to see the creativity! #recruiting #ai

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I'm finally getting folks trickling on to https://lnkd.in/e_8nwVwX to check it out. That means it's time to start optimizing their onboarding funnel by reducing the # of screens & taps. But I'm trying to do that without sacrificing getting them to start feeling the habit they might want to start building using the app. #dydit #dyditlife

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There’s a fascinating ‘leaked’ PDF[1] doing the rounds at the moment. It, allegedly, was penned by Mr Beast, and in it, he outlines key factors for success at his production company. I’d recommend reading it as he speaks with great candour, and it’s packed with broadly applicable insights, but my personal favourite is this: === USE CONSULTANTS Consultants are literally cheat codes. Need to make the world’s largest slice of cake? Start off by calling the person who made the previous world’s largest slice of cake lol. He’s already done countless tests and can save you weeks worth of work. === Whenever I’ve mentored people who wanted to start out in consultancy, I’ve always said the same thing: a consultant is just someone who’s done something at least once more than their client. Consultants aren’t there to be smarter than their clients—they’re there because they’ve BEEN dumber. Consultants have already seen and made all of the right mistakes in all of the right permutations, and they’re there to stop their clients from doing the same. Your client CAN DO what you do—you’re not special. It’s just going to take them longer. You’re not hired because you know what to do—it’s because you also know what not to do. You’re not special; you’re a shortcut. 1. https://lnkd.in/eD6SYchZ

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Do you have a React Native app and want to extend your app into the land of Vision OS? Well look no further than this wonderful little package https://lnkd.in/eGrjCe2K (I have no affiliation). It definitely isn't ready for production use but it's a great step forward in bridging the gap and bringing React Native and VisionOS closer together. I will try it out and share some findings... I feel like I have to because I am doing literally nothing else with my Vision Pro. #ReactNative #VisionOS #Development

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Something that landed unnoticed: Playwright support in the Angular CLI 🚀 We've been collaborating with the Playwright team to land this community schematic by Jean-François Greffier and Cédric Exbrayat in the CLI Pick between Puppeteer, Playwright, Cypress, WebdriverIO, or NightWatch! #angular #typescript #programming #webdev #webdevelopment #javascript #webperformance #webtesting

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35 Comments

So my thoughts on remote working. I've seen a lot in the media recently about people getting back to the office. This is probably fine for a lot of people, but for those in my industry a day a week or fortnight is probably optimal. As long as there are the following things in place: 1. There are meetings actually booked with a definite agenda and expected outcomes also in a meeting room with a white board. 2. Someone is actually taking note of the inputs and outcomes of that meeting and action is seen to be taken. From a Team building point of view I think it's essential that the team come together occasionally. However, I have worked in places where the team came in for meetings that ended up with everyone at their desks for the meeting because a room had not been available, exactly like a remote meeting except more distractions as there's background noise from the rest of the office, after which no one talked, unless needed, because we all knew what we were doing and got on with it. People in my industry, in my opinion, work better remotely or let me know if I'm wrong and why :)