Skip to main content
Tech Team Weekly

Tech Team Weekly

By 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.
Available on
Apple Podcasts Logo
Google Podcasts Logo
Pocket Casts Logo
RadioPublic Logo
Spotify Logo
Currently playing episode

Ep 14 - The Long Stand Up!

Tech Team WeeklyNov 29, 2021

00:00
37:57
Season 2 wrap-up, going on hiatus!

Season 2 wrap-up, going on hiatus!

Hello dear audience!  In the wrap-up to a shorter season 2 we explain what's been going on and why we haven't been able to meet up and record as frequently.  We're going on hiatus for a while and hope to be back later in the year!

Mar 21, 202209:10
Thinking about quitting Tech?
Feb 28, 202225:16
Not Asking For Pay Rises?

Not Asking For Pay Rises?

Feb 14, 202224:02
Handling Incidents and Outages
Feb 07, 202226:38
Building Behaviours Over Setting Goals

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

Jan 31, 202224:19
When Open Source Goes Wrong
Jan 24, 202226:17
Ep 15 - Series Finale: The Retro!

Ep 15 - Series Finale: The Retro!

It's the end of our first season, so Gwen, Sanj and Neil are having a podcast retrospective. We chat about what's worked (and what hasn't), sharing some behind-the-scenes nuggets along the way, and propose some subtle but potentially exciting changes for season two, with Gwen deciding that we need a higher "threat level".

There's all of the usual stand-up discussions, this week featuring musicals, overpriced energy drinks, and rowdy pensioners. Plus, as 'tis the season, there's a six-way exchange of Secret Santa gifts which is sure to make this the best episode so far for ASMR fans.

We'll be back for season two on 24th January 2022! We wish you all the best for a peaceful festive season and new year, and we'll see you all again in the year which is sure to go down in history as "not as bad as the previous two".

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Start
01:19 The Stand-Up
07:08 Social Engineering
11:27 The Retro
26:52 Secret Santa
34:08 The Wash-Up

Dec 06, 202135:27
Ep 14 - The Long Stand Up!

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

Nov 29, 202137:57
Ep 13 - Thriving in The Great Resignation!

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

Nov 22, 202138:42
Ep 12 - Complexity is Killing Software Developers!
Nov 15, 202132:02
Ep 11 - Climate Tech and COP26!

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 

Nov 08, 202138:18
Ep 10 - Are Stand Ups Dead!?
Nov 01, 202139:32
Ep 9 - 4-Day Work Weeks!
Oct 25, 202136:00
Ep 8 - Who's Watching Our Kids?

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

Oct 18, 202135:39
Ep 7 - Disaster at Facebook!
Oct 11, 202138:48
Ep 6 - Buy Now, Pay Later!

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

Oct 04, 202135:17
Ep 5 - Talking Openly About Pay!

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

Sep 27, 202154:18
Ep 4 - Frustration and time-wasting on Slack!
Sep 20, 202148:53
Ep 3 - When Testing In Public Goes Wrong!

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

Sep 13, 202151:40
Ep 2 - Why is it so hard to get a Software Engineering job?

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


Sep 06, 202153:56
Ep 1 - Remote Pay, The Great Resignation, GitHub Copilot and Codespaces

Ep 1 - Remote Pay, The Great Resignation, GitHub Copilot and Codespaces

Welcome to the debut episode of Tech Team Weekly! As is always the case with software development, our first attempt at a 30-minute podcast turns out to be just over an hour long. We look at the ongoing saga of working during the pandemic and "The Great Resignation"; plus recent innovations at GitHub, including Copilot and Codespaces.

We introduce a few of our regular segments, including our workplace updates in The Standup, views from listeners in the Social Engineering section, and our "building in public" section entitled Podcast Driven Development.

Plus, learn more about Gwen's ongoing bathroom quest, the mystery of our missing debut tweet, and everyone takes the time to gush about Neil's current employer.

For everything related to the show, visit www.techteamweekly.com


TIMESTAMPS:

00:02:50 The Standup

00:12:15 Social Engineering

00:17:44 Epic - Salary cuts for remote workers?

00:31:05 Epic - The Great Resignation

00:47:10 Epic - GitHub Copilot & Codespaces

00:58:52 The Wash-Up


STORIES FEATURED THIS WEEK:

Reuters: "Google employees who work from home could lose money"

RTE: "Would you take a pay cut to stay working from home?"

New York Post: "Google rolls out ‘pay calculator’ explaining work-from-home salary cuts"

Wired: "The Great Resignation is here and no one is prepared"

BBC Worklife: "The Great Resignation: How employers drove workers to quit"

The Independent: "This is how a boss should react when employees quit, expert says"

The Register: "GitHub's Copilot may steer you into dangerous waters about 40% of the time – study"

The Register: "After 15 months in preview, GitHub releases Codespaces – probably the fanciest new shiny since Actions"

YouTube: Visual Studio Code: "The Dot"


Aug 30, 202101:01:22
Trailer - Introducing Tech Team Weekly!
Aug 26, 202101:09