After what seemed like a short afternoon presenting at Silicon Milk Roundabout I am left with a few feelings I would like to share: Again I was impressed by the organisation of the team running the event. It is a really great event. This was my first time attending as a potential employer. It is quite a different expirienc on the other side of the stand.
While my feed ache from standing for five hours the more lasting feeling is that it was well worth the effort attending. There seems to be no shortage of talent in the London tech scene. From technology advocates trying to leave the corporate offices of financial institutions to third year graduates seeking their first taste of gainful employment: there is a great mix of interest and experience.
One slightly surprising thing that grabbed me and a number of people I talked to was that there seemed to be a strong bias for back end developers. I should say that for most people back end seems to mean their art is executed by the server rather than the browser. This left me with a few questions. Are there just more back end developers? Are the back end officianado’s just more likely to work in a startup or: Are the more aesthetic front end developers already working for the start up of their dreams?
At the same time that there seemed to be a relative shortage of front end developers; I should say, for me front end is anyting involved in presentation and includes the web server; it seemed like everyone I talked to today was trying to hire a front end developer. While I tried to talk to everyone I saw wearing a frontend badge I am sure I didn’t meet them all. Having said that I estimate there can only have been a few tens of front end developers at the event and seemingly hundreds of jobs for them.
Design work seems to have taken on life of it’s own in the last few years as we have seen the shift via a pervasive Internet to a more aesthetic web including ever more design. This leads to another question: are you a web developer if you don’t include design aspects in your portfolio of skills?
Finally I would like to share a few things we learned from this even:
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Make sure you have a nice poster that explains your start-up. We had lots of interest because of ours.
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Make sure you invite a few friends to give you a break when you start loosing your voice.
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For a small stand you can probably only hand out about 100 leaflets in five hours per presenter. Yes that is one every 3 minutes.
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Take a table and chair and put them at the back for the tiny moments you can take a breather.
I am positive that we have found some great candidates. Hope to see everyone again at the next event.
