Have you ever walked into a supermarket, pharmacy, or department store looking to buy a specific item, only to find the layout confusing? Perhaps you ended up aimlessly strolling around, purchasing other items? This is deliberate, and known as the Gruen Transfer.

The 'Transfer' part is the moment that you, as a consumer surrounded by a deliberately confusing layout, lose track of your original intentions.

We've all experienced it, and now it's starting to consume the internet. It first appeared on Facebook, with the introduction of the feed. Originally intended as a way to simplify updates from your friends, and hold your attention captive for longer. However somewhere along the line, the feed became more than that. Facebook now feels more confusing than my local department store, and my original reason for visiting (keeping up to date with friends & family) is quickly forgotten. The last time I checked Facebook, maybe 10% of my feed was updates from friends. The rest was a combination of ads, memes, and influencer marketing videos, leaving me doom scrolling endlessly.

This isn't relegated to Facebook though, or even social media. So many websites are now designed to disorient you upon visiting, so that you start acting impulsively. This can even happen in a relatively benign way - who hasn't looked up something on Wikipedia and fell down a rabbit hole that ended looking at a list of animals awarded human credentials?

It pops up in other areas as well, closely associated with several UX dark patterns. If you've tried to permanently delete your account from any major social network, you’ll know what I mean. It is utterly confusing to find and navigate to the page you need, and the site will desperately conjole you into doing something other than deleting your account. It's the same for trying to alter your insurance policy, cancel subscriptions, spend frequent flyer miles, and so on...

I wonder where all this will end? There must be a point at which the friction generated by needless complexity has a detrimental effect. A kind of Laffer Curve of web design.

In the EU, it is a legal requirement to allow your customers the same method, with the same number of steps and complexity, for canceling as for subscribing. So if it takes 10 seconds to fill in a form online to get subscribed, they need to offer the same ease of use for canceling.

I like this idea of ‘complexity’ as a measure for legislation. Now if only they could apply the same thing to my local Boots when I'm trying to buy toothpaste.

Phones have displaced paper money and credit cards as the preferred way to pay for a bill at the end of a meal. The trouble is, how does the waiter know when you're ready to pay?

The meal was delicious. The service, excellent. The waiter asks if you want dessert, but you decline... and feeling somewhat guilty you hurriedly justify this rebuke by explaining how you over-ordered one too many sides, are ready to burst, and couldn't possibly have room for sticky toffee pudding, but honestly, the food was delicious. The waiter brings over the bill, in a black rectangular wallet, and walks away.

We're now faced with a dilemma. How does the waiter know when we're ready to pay? For generations, the accepted signal was a banknote, and then a credit card, poking out of that said rectangular black wallet. In the age of Apple Pay, this vital signal has been lost. I've tried laying my phone over the receipt, but it just doesn't work.

This mutually agreed upon non-verbal signal is for the waiter's benefit as much as our own. People can be funny about restaurant bills - everyone has their own way of doing it, and it can be awkward to walk up to a table when Dave is still arguing with Sally & Val over whether that bottle of Pinot Noir should be split equally when Dave only drank a pint of Guiness.

So how do we solve the problem? I propose the most low-tech solution possible (please save us from another app or QR code). The bill should arrive with a card, red on one side, green on the other. The bill arrives with red facing upwards. When you want to signal that you're ready to pay, you turn it over. A solution so simple it almost guarantees that it won't be implemented. So for now I will resort to rather limply trying to catch a passing waiter's eye.

from dateutil.easter import easter  
print(easter(2010))  
2010-04-04  

The function also has an argument, where you can specify the type of Easter calculation you would like:

1 = Easter Julian
2 = Easter Orthodox
3 = Easter Western

print(easter(2010, 1))
2010-03-22  
print(easter(2010, 2))
2010-04-04  
print(easter(2010, 3))  
2010-04-04    

You're welcome. Happy Easter. 🐰🐰🐰

Bend tech to my will,
They think I’m a genius.
I just Google stuff.

Two minds intertwine,
Code flows as one hand guides hands,
Ideas take flight.

Tests run while we sleep,
Errors caught before they grow,
Code safe, calm, and strong.

Plans change every week,
Sprints end with no code to ship,
"Agile" sounds so false.

We gather to talk,
Blame circles, coffee runs dry,
Next sprint more of the same.

Lines twist, bugs hide deep,
Cursor blinks, patience runs thin,
"Why do I do this?"

Daily standups drone,
No blockers, no goals are set,
Just coffee and talk.

Loops twist, branches merge,
Unraveling feels futile,
Lost in tangled strings.

Forgot to branch off,
Now the fucker doesn’t work.
Wish I could revert

A missing comma,
That took me two days to find.
I hate this language.

Navigating the world of contracting has always been a balancing act, but for IT contractors in the UK, IR35 has introduced a whole new level of complexity. Designed to curb tax avoidance of individuals working as self-employed contractors while effectively operating as employees, the IR35 legislation, introduced in 2000 (but only given teeth in 2019) has left IT contractors in something on a limbo state.

I believe the legislation is a product of a bureaucracy in its purest form. We now have a situation where contractors working 'inside IR35' pay the same tax and national insurance contributions as regular employees, but have absolutely zero rights. No notice period, no sick pay, no holiday pay. Nothing.

However, this article is not to a debate of the legislation (there are already scores of articles online and there is nothing new to cover). What I'd like suggest is a new structure for IT contractors to work - one that has been used by accountants and solicitors for decades - the LLP.

I feel there is a real opportunity, in the wake of the new legislation, for IT contractors to change their relationship with clients - who for the most part view them a 'bums on seats' for a project. IT contractors banding together in LLCs to create bespoke IT firms gives them the potential to be truly self employed. The LLP (as opposed to the standard LTD company structure) is a hybrid between a traditional partnership and a limited company. It gives individual members legal protection, as it is still a separate legal entity from its partners, and offers them limited liability.

LLPs also comfortably resolve the IR35 tax issue, as LLPs benefit from "pass-through" taxation, meaning that profits are not taxed at the LLP level but are distributed to members annually, who then pay income tax on their share of the profits. LLPs also offer the benefit of less stringent reporting requirements than LTD companies, which reduces the administrative burden.

But the real genius of the LLP structure lies in its partnership system. The partnership is managed by the members, who typically have equal rights unless otherwise agreed upon in an LLP agreement. This means there is no 'equity' as such - if a partner leaves (or is voted out), they surrender their equity. As IT contractors are essentially a 'pay for time and skills' industry, this resolves the tricky situation where one contractor may leave, or not be pulling their weight, yet still own equity in the firm.

I really think there's huge potential here.. I would love small IT partnerships to become as common as accountants, solicitors, or architects - a structure in which reputation is built on the work and name brand of their partners, is flexible enough for partners to come and go, is tax compliant, and where IT contractors truly have the scope to be fully independent.

One of the challenges working as a software developer is that friends and family tend to view 'tech' as an amorphous blob. Since I work 'with computers' I become the go-to person for anything remotely technical - including building websites, providing tech support, fixing hardware (the assumption being that I also know how to fix televisions and other consumer products). I even once had a friend ask me for help with his electric toothbrush. This has led to frustration and feeling like I'm trapped providing free labour. 95% of the time, all I am doing is Googling the problem, and following advice on a blog or YouTube video. People can do this - they just don't want to.

If you're like me, and find it hard to say no to people, these 'quick favours' quickly turn into nightmares. Evenings and weekends fill up, and people expect more and more from you. After many years of saying yes, I've learnt that the only solution is to get comfortable saying no. Friends and family don't like it in the short term, but it saves arguments or worse down the road.

I've often wondered why people don't expect free labour from other trades. My family doesn't expect my decorator uncle to come and paint their house for free, my friends don't expect our accountant friend to file their taxes pro bono, so why am I expected to provide my skills for free? I think a lot of it has to do with a poor understanding of tech roles - people underestimate just how much work goes into building a website, creating an MVP, or producing graphic design. Maybe this is Hollywood's fault? after all they tend to present coding as the rapid hammering of keys and a flurry of green characters across a screen to the sound of techno music. If only the reality was as exciting (and quick).

Over the years, I've noticed there seems to be an invisible hierarchy to 'quick favours': -> Family will expect free tech support -> Friends will expect free web / graphic design for their lifestyle business -> Colleagues will expect a free MVP built for their 'amazing idea'.

Unfortunately, these types of favour rarely have an end date - once I make the commitment, it's open ended and ongoing. If I provide tech support, I become the go to tech support person forever. The absolute worst are those who tell me 'what I did last time must have caused the new problem'. For websites, I will be constantly amending them, maintaining them, sorting out hosting... and of course if the site ever goes down, it's my fault, and I will get an urgent call from you. For MVPs, I will get trapped in an endless cycle of adding 'just one more feature', as the reality slowly dawns that their amazing idea may not be so amazing after all.

Over the years the years I developed coping strategies that avoided me having to say no directly. Here's a few of them:

• Doing such a bad job of it that family members think I'm incompetent and don't ask again.
• Responding quickly with 'sure, as a favour I'll give you 25% off my normal fee'.
• Politely trying to explain the differences between software development and TV repair.
• Hiding / not responding to requests.

... all of these tactics have been met with limited success, and often result in more stress than just doing the favour in the first place. The only thing I've found that works, is a simple no, the less explanation given, the better.

• Sorry no, I don't know how to do that.
• Sorry no, that will take too much time.
• Sorry no, I will have to charge you for that.

I will not do you a quick favour.

Background: In 1946 George Orwell wrote his short essay ‘The Moon Under Water’, describing what his dream pub would look like. Heavily influenced by this (in fact, some paragraphs are nearly identical), I have decided to write a modern version of Orwell’s essay, describing my dream startup incubator.

The startup incubator I was accepted to, Fat Tony’s, is only two minutes from a tube station in central London, but it is on a side-street, and neither noisy traffic nor bearded hipster seem to find their way there, even at rush hour. You can always get a seat on the train, and despite being central, the commute never feels that long.

The incubator itself is above a pub, named Fat Tony’s, and next door to a gym, also named Fat Tony’s, for you see, they are one and the same.

If you were asked what you look for in an incubator, it would seem natural to say things like VC connections, reputation, investment, and unicorn alumni, but the thing that most appeals to me about the Fat Tony’s is what people call its ‘atmosphere’.

To begin with, its whole architecture and fittings are uncompromisingly old-fashioned. It has no white shiny desks, ping pong tables or other startup clichés. The offices are many but small, not open plan, allowing for the deep focus of uninterrupted work that is required to be creative. The dark wood grain desks, the patterned carpet, the photos of family that adorn many desks (replacing infantile figurines and ‘hacker’ stickers) — everything has the homely, comfortable, pastiche that modern offices lack.

The pub below (of the same name) is open to the public, but also acts as an informal break-out area and discussion space. In fact, all residents are encouraged to spend at least one day a week working from the pub. The same goes for the gym next door. By being open to the public, Fat Tony’s has a semi-permeable membrane, and encourages serendipitous, real world encounters in its communal areas, unlike the closed campuses of big tech, which lead to monoculture.

All residents of the incubator spend half a day a week working at the pub or the gym, collectively operating them. They learn customer service, accounts, sales, operations, and teamwork. Transferable skills that can be applied to any real world business.

In Fat Tony’s it is always quiet enough to talk, and gossip. Headphones are banned, and people are encouraged to get up and physically talk to people as much as possible.

Everyone knows everyone by name, and takes a personal interest in each other. The residents are not all coders in their twenties — there is a broad range of age, gender, background, and business ideas.

Unlike most office environments, having a lunchtime pint is allowed, as is working your own hours. Traditional meeting culture is almost non-existent. The email servers are rigged to only operate for a few hours a day.

Perhaps the most peculiar thing about Fat Tony’s is the investment model. Its founders understand ergodicity — and encourage residents to take small, ‘low cost’ bets, to tinker, and do not rely on a handful of unicorns to offset heavy casualties. The founders care about the success of the incubator at an individual level, not just an ensemble one.

Another great surprise of Fat Tony’s is its amphitheatre. You go through a narrow passage leading out of the back of the pub, and find yourself in a fairly large garden with a traditional, small, open air Romanesque amphitheatre.

On summer evenings there are talks and performances, and you sit under the summer sky having a beer and listening to incubator residents speak, sing, perform… any topic that takes their fancy. Not a PowerPoint slide in sight. It is pure oratory with the occasional prop. Many as are the virtues of Fat Tony’s, I think that the amphitheatre is my favourite.

Fat Tony’s is my ideal of what a startup incubator should be — at any rate, in the London area. (The qualities one expects of an American incubator are probably different).

But now is the time to reveal something which the discerning and disillusioned reader will probably have guessed already. There is no such place as Fat Tony’s.

That is to say, there may well be an incubator of that name, but I don’t know of it, nor do I know any incubator with just that combination of qualities, but, to be fair, I do know of a few incubators that almost come up to Fat Tony’s. I would very much like to realise my dream of creating Fat Tony’s one day, though its name may end up being something as prosaic as Accel or Matrix.

Good poetry allows us to see into the soul of another person. Great poetry allows us to see into our own.

Over the course of its lifetime, the Fat Tony’s Discord server received thousands of posts in it’s Anti-library channel. In the first of series of articles, I’m going to group the best of these book recommendations by genre and present them here for posterity. This month, poetry.

Good poetry allows us to see into the soul of another person. Great poetry allows us to see into our own soul. It offers us a rare, soothing glimpse of ways of thinking about the world outside of our conventional experience. Like all great art forms, it is both therapeutic for reader and listener, and can be a soothing antidote against the stress of modernity.

To help calm your soul, Here are five of the best Fat Tony recommendations…

Summoned by Bells

What is it?

Summoned by Bells, the blank verse autobiography by John Betjeman is split into nine chapters, and describes the author’s life from his early memories of a middle-class home in Edwardian Hampstead, London, to his premature departure from Magdalen College, Oxford. The book ends in disaster, with Betjeman sent down from Oxford and enrolling in desperation as a cricket master at a private prep school. When asked why the biography only covers his younger years, Betjeman famously replied “I think people’s lives are interesting only up until they’re 21”.

Why should I read it?

Themes of memory, a yearning for the lost recent past, and self reflection on events (both fair and unfair), and episodes of failure that make us who we are. Summoned by Bells is full of nostalgia; the good kind. Betjeman’s verse simply feels soothing to read — like being wrapped in a warm blanket. Commentary on an Edwardian privileged childhood, with an Oxford setting partway through — If you are a fan of Brideshead Revisited, you will love this.

Notable Poem

The whole book is written in blank verse, as one piece. A particular favourite excerpt, lamenting a father’s hopes that his son will carry on the family firm:

To all my father’s hopes. In later years, Now old and ill, he asked me once again To carry on the firm, I still refused. And now when I behold, fresh-published, new, A further volume of my verse, I see His kind grey eyes look woundedly at mine, I see his workmen seeking other jobs, And that red granite obelisk that marks The family grave in Highgate cemetery Points an accusing finger to the sky.

Five Tang Poets

What is it?

A collection of poetry from five of the great poets of the T’ang dynasty (eighth and ninth centuries A.D.) are represented in this collection: Wang Wei, Li Po, Tu Fu, Li Ho, and Li Shang-Yin. Each poet is introduced by the translator and represented by a curated selection that showcases the poet’s development and career.

Why should I read it?

The poems in this collection constitute some of the greatest lyric poems ever written. Obviously some context is lost in translation, BUT, the collection is still remarkable and introduces the reader to some of China’s greatest poets; it is considered a ‘classic’ in the field of translated Chinese poetry. The collection comprises of arguably the most ‘beautiful’ poetry on this list.

Not only are the poems hauntingly beautiful, but as an added bonus, the author’s introductions allow for greater understanding and offer a lot of helpful insight into each poet’s work.

Notable Poem

White Horse.

Zoom!

What is it?

His debut collection, Zoom!, appeared in 1989 when Simon Armitage was still in his mid-twenties. He was a parole officer at the time, and had taken up poetry as a hobby. His raw, northern style fit perfectly with the punk (alternative) period in which it was released. Simon displays breathtaking mastery of the medium for a debut poet, which took the literary world by storm upon its release.

The voice employed by Simon is edgy, uncompromising, and tackles issues as diverse as lost love, death, and violence. Simon doesn’t shy away from addressing disturbing topics, and his years working as a probation officer gave him plenty of contact with people down on their luck, or at the end of their tether.

Simon’s poetry is good. Very good. So good that he was appointed Poet Laureate in May 2019.

Why should I read it?

Firstly because it is a seminal work. Very few modern poets garner this much attention with their first collection; especially ones from unconventional backgrounds.

In length, this is a short, concise collection, however it is densely packed with a northern English vernacular; much of which you just don’t hear anymore, and perfectly captures the time and place in which it was written. Anglophiles will enjoy picking apart (and discovering) the rich, delicious use of colloquialisms employed throughout.

Notable Poem

Zoom! — self-titled and the last in the collection, is especially memorable for its dizzying pace and scope. The free verse poem takes the reader on a journey from a house on a typical, British street, across the universe, through a black hole, and back again, all the while questioning the scope of our knowledge, and our place in the world.

A Glass Half Full

What is it?

Felix Denis built a publishing empire, starting in the 1960’s and 70’s, when he was put on trial for his involvement in OZ magazine, an underground magazine started in London. After acquittal, and a bit of luck with Kung Fu magazines in the 1970’s, Felix went on to build a publishing empire, and was valued at $750m before his death in 2014.

However, Felix was not your conventional entrepreneur. Known for his extreme lifestyle (he was once quoted as saying that he had spent £120m on crack cocaine and hookers throughout his life), Felix lived his life like a debauched Roman emperor. He had mansions and harems scattered across the world. The stories about him are legion, and have now passed into legend.

A serious illness in 1999 saw him bedridden in hospital, and it was during this time he started writing poetry. It quickly turned into an obsession, taking over his life.

A Glass Half Full is Felix’s first published collection of poetry, released in 2004.

Why should I read it?

Raw, witty, and unexpectedly moving. Felix’s poetry is unpretentious and easy to read, being written almost entirely in contemporary free verse.

The collection is a fascinating insight into the mind of one of the 20th century’s most notorious entrepreneurs.

Notable Poem

The Better Man is the stand-out poem in this collection; an elegy to a dear friend (or should that be rival). The poem is moving in its juxtaposition of anger, regret, and respect. You can watch a video of Felix reciting this poem at his Ted talk, here.

100 Love Sonnets

What is it?

Pablo Neruda needs no introduction. The Chilean Poet-Diplomat won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971, This collection was first published first in 1959 in Spanish. The poems are dedicated to his third wife Matilde Urrutia. In the book poems are kept in four sections — Morning, Afternoon, Evening and Night.

Why should I read it?

The most structured of the entries on this list, this collection of poetry is written in strict sonnet format. Romantics, and fans of Shakespeare will immediately take to it. Constraints are a well spring for creativity, in this case giving rise to exquisite poetry…

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”

Notable Poem

“If you forget me” is a masterpiece. Trust us, this poem hits hard. Have tissues at the ready.

Navigating modernity can be tough. Luckily philosophers, poets, and great thinkers over the centuries has developed a number of mental shortcuts, in the form of heuristics, razors, guillotines, and other aphorisms. We’ve collected the most important ones here in a ‘cheat sheet’ of sorts. Memorize these, and you may never look at the world in the same way again…

Alder’s Razor

If something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, then it is not worthy of debate.

Chesterton’s Fence

Reforms should not be made until the reasons behind the existing state of affairs is understood.

Duck Test

The duck test is a form of abductive reasoning, usually expressed as “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”

Grice’s razor (also known as Giume’s razor)

As a principle of parsimony, conversational implications are to be preferred over semantic context for linguistic explanations. AKA Address what the speaker actually meant, instead of addressing the literal meaning of what they actually said

Hanlon’s Razor

Never Attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Hitchen’s Razor

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

Hobson’s Choice

A free choice where only one choice is offered

Hume’s Guillotine

If the cause, assigned for any effect, be not sufficient to produce it, we must either reject that cause or add to it such qualities as will give it a just proportion to the effect.

Occam’s Razor

When confronted with competing explanations, often the explanation with the fewest assumptions is the correct explanation.

Maslow’s Hammer

To treat everything as if it were a nail, If the only tool you have is a hammer.

Popper’s Falsifiability Principle

For a theory to be considered scientific, it must be falsifiable.

Sagan Standard

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Shirky Principle

Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.

The other day I received bittersweet news that the Gardeners Arms in Oxford had closed; bitter because it’s my favourite pub in the world. Sweet, because I know long time custodians David and Jenny are now enjoying a well deserved retirement after 30 years behind the bar.

My experience of the Gardeners Arms is very personal… almost supernatural — I will attempt to recount my first visit…

The first night I arrived in Oxford as night fell; a postgraduate student alone in the city. I dumped my bags and decided to head for a walk, not knowing my way.

After walking for an hour, taking in the sheer beauty of the place, and getting thoroughly lost I found myself about half a mile outside the city centre. Annoyingly my phone battery had died at the worst possible time, and so I tried to navigate my way back from memory. Suddenly, I saw a small side street. The whole street had a warm glow emanating from it, due to bunting and warm fairy lights strewn across the buildings on opposite sides. It looked inviting, So I walked down…

A side street beckons

As soon as a walked onto the side street, I had an overwhelming feeling of being out of time and place. I saw a pub; and ready for a rest, I entered.

I can only describe walking into the Gardeners Arms that night as crossing some interdimensional portal to another time and place. It’s no exaggeration to say that the pub WAS the 1970’s. It’s vital to point out, that I don’t just mean a pub with ‘outdated’ decor. The whole atmosphere of the pub was from decades past. The narrow main room was quiet and peaceful, the air felt heavy and respectful and a handful of regulars held court. An old boxy TV, mounted on the wall above the entrance, was showing the 9 o’clock news. It’s two custodians (who I later learnt were named David and Jenny), an elderly married couple, dressed smartly, Dave in shirt and tie, and Jenny in an immaculate dress and pearls, presenting themselves in a way that pub landlords just don’t anymore.

The seating was perimeter style — long cushioned benches attached to, and hugging the walls, upholstered in a beautiful dark green. David and Jenny sat at ‘their’ table watching television, doing a crossword, or talking to regulars. This gave the impression that you were in David and Jenny’s sitting room, making the atmosphere intimate and warm. They would take turns to jump behind the bar every time a customer needed serving. The rear of the pub, almost deserted, was an odd clutter of chairs and a piano, with notice boards plastered with flyers and cards of long forgotten student shows.

I only stayed for a couple, just soaking up the feeling of being transported back in time. It was magical.

I left the pub, exited the street and was suddenly back in the 2010’s. I returned to the Gardeners Arms many times over the next few years, and whilst never quite recapturing the supernatural element of that first encounter, it remains the best pub I have ever visited.

I wish David and Jenny all the best, but I mourn the loss of one of Oxford’s finest pubs, and one of the last of a dying breed of traditional British pubs; pubs which are now critically endangered. The Pub’s owner, Greene King, have announced plans to ‘refurbish’ the pub, I implore them to keep it exactly as is.

“No public institution or agency should be created without an expiration date.” - Nassim Taleb.

After two wonderful years of Happy Hours, Book Klubs, and thousands of conversations, we will be closing down the Fat Tony’s Discord server on November 13th.

When I sent a Tweet out on election night of 2020, asking if anybody wanted to discuss the election, I had no plans in mind about building a community. The Discord server was meant to be a one night only thing, but then a little magic happened. The small group of people who responded to my tweet were eclectic, entertaining and maybe a little crazy. I wanted to see more of them…

On that day, Fat Tony’s was born, and gradually evolved over the next couple of months into a virtual bar… A place where people could hang out during the global COVID lockdowns, have a drink on a Friday night and chat to people, attend live Q&As with guests, and get some sense of escape from the madness that was happening around them. It acted as a social life raft during a difficult time for many many people. What followed were dozens of Happy hours, book klubs, and real life meet ups. Fat Tony’s had become a ‘thing’. In my mind, this was the golden age of the Discord Server.

The Discord server continued to grow, peaking at around 900 members. However, once lockdowns began to lift around the world, people understandably returned to their normal lives, and attendance on Discord started to drop. A small core community remained, but it was clear that the server was in decline.

I’m a big believer that there is a time and a place for everything, and have decided to shut the Discord server down. The attendance no longer justified the admin work / overhead required to run it, and to be honest, I’m ready to move onto new things, and continue to grow the Fat Tony’s YouTube channel / Twitter community in a new direction. In fact, I’m super excited about having the time freed up by this move to create more content.

For people who wish to continue to run the “klubs” that have developed over the last few years, They are yours to continue however you wish (Twitter Spaces / Zoom etc...). Just tag Fat Tony’s on Twitter and we will retweet any announcements to the community.

Not the end of Fat Tony’s… just the next step in its evolution! I see Fat Tony’s turning into a YouTube channel, with videos on navigating modernity… And we will still be organising the Happy Hours and Book Klubs through Twitter.

Thanks to everyone for being such great community members on Discord over the last couple of years. I will always think of the time fondly (especially the early days, which were magical). It was great while it lasted, and I think it’s best to end on a high… to move onto new projects and to new things.

See you out there!

Seb

Last week I received great news — The Lamb and Flag in Oxford has reopened.

This historic Oxford pub operated continuously for over 450 years, but ceased trading in 2021, a casualty of the COVID lockdowns.

Established in 1566, and moved to its current site in 1613, the Lamb & Flag is an institution for generations of Oxford residents and students, including myself. It’s panelled walls, wonky layout, and stone floors offered a soothing antidote to the modern, sometimes soulless gastropub chains. To quote Evelyn Waugh, the pub “exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth”.

It was home to The Inklings (although the pub across the road gets all the credit), a writing group consisting of Tolkein and C.S. Lewis amongst others, who would meet regularly to read and discuss chapters from their latest books. More recently it saw Tony Blair pulling pints behind the bar in his student days.

It’s a pub you can feel good drinking in for reasons beyond historical aesthetic — profits are used to fund scholarships at a nearby Oxford college.

My favourite memory of the place was slipping away at midday, to partake in the now lost ritual of the lunchtime pint. What I love about the place is its egalitarianism. A brotherhood of lunchtime drinkers convene at the bar to discuss events far and wide. Members include Oxford dons, security guards, students, lawyers, and of course the barman. The place is Moe’s Tavern — Oxford Style. I will always fondly remember the eclectic conversation I had sat at the bar in-between lectures.

I look forward to revisiting the newly reopened pub on my next trip to Oxford — may it endure for another 450 years!

Working from home sucks for a lot of people. Conversely, people are in no rush to return to long commutes to soulless city centres offices. A decentralised network of micro-hubs would allow people to work locally, inject accountability into communities and help regenerate the high-street. Micro-hubs are the future of office working.

What the hell is a micro-hub?

I propose the micro-hub as a small office (6–30 people), located in a suburban or commuter area, ideally on a local high-street. For larger corporations, a network of these hubs would be spread across large parts of the country. Micro-hubs are the corporate HQ reimagined; fractal, distributed, and local.

For some types of business (banking, retail), the infrastructure is already in place — micro-hubs could be incorporated into existing branches and stores, removing the need for a corporate HQ. For smaller companies, desk space at micro-hubs could be rented out, depending on need.

This is not a new idea

The 20th century saw a trend from localism to globalism. Beside the material benefits globalisation bought, it also exposed us to a new category of risk. Our drive towards centralisation and interconnectedness has led us to wider, systemic, cascade failures, of which Covid-19 is an example.

It’s easy to forget that centralised commerce was not the norm for most of human history, and is in fact a recent phenomenon. The modern, open plan office would appear as a form of collective madness to anyone born before 1900. Before this time, it was the norm that legal, insurance, advertising, journalism, and other white collar professions were smaller local offices. I see a shift from globalism back to localism, driven by advances in telecommunications, 3d printing, and other technologies.

Moving corporations from HQs to micro-hubs presents a large upside for both employees and organisations. Lifestyle changes for most people as they age. It’s not uncommon for younger people to seek a dynamic, big city lifestyle, whilst retreating into the suburbs, market towns, or further afield as they get older.

People are often held hostage to big cities longer than they would like due to work. A network of micro-hubs at a regional or national level would allow people the flexibility to change lifestyle, without having to worry about finding a new job. It would also boost employee retention.

From a recruitment perspective, employers would no longer be bound by geography. Micro-hubs would allow a much wider candidate pool, resulting in a more competitive and higher overall standard of candidate.

Customer service would improve also, but perhaps not in the way people think. There is often a disconnect between corporate, and employees who work on the ‘shop floor’. It creates a parallel universe for those in corporate, where eccentric jargon and woke-ism reign supreme. I see a future where I can walk into my local Greggs and order a vegan sausage roll knowing a slither of corporate management is working in the back office. An office environment where they have skin in the game with regards to the local community, and are exposed to receiving a good bollocking from irate customers, rather than powerless souls that are often used as customer service cannon-fodder.

Forget big corporations paying low taxes as a source of evil. They do far more damage in the way they destroy local communities. A localist approach is a fair and equitable approach. In a decentralised workplace, people can still get personal tasks done (e.g. dropping off kids at school). It can also help rejuvenate local high streets and bring familiar faces back into the community — a place to live AND work. A workplace that fosters a sense of community and accountability at a local level.

Learning lessons from Al-Qaeda

Large offices don’t scale. Here we can learn a lesson from Al-Qaeda. The terrorist group operates as a collection of cells, distributed geographically, with no distinct specialisation between them. This clandestine cell system has made it notoriously difficult to eliminate them — you cannot cut the head off of the proverbial snake. It is a great irony that the key preventing another 9/11 may be for organisations to mimic the structure of Al-Qeada.

Not only are decentralised office environments robust to terrorist attacks, they are also robust to power failures, water leaks, earthquakes, traffic jams, protests, riots, and a whole host of other ‘long tail’ effects that are catastrophic to corporate headquarters. From a business continuity point of view, micro-hubs make sense.

Final Thoughts

Maybe one day micro-hubs will all become a reality — it’s certainly something I would like companies to experiment with. We need to be brave to try it though, otherwise I fear a future of working from the dining table, or even worse, a lazy return to the failure of the open plan office.

1. The code you will find most jarring to review is your own, six months from now.

2. There are two types of code review, short blocks of code, which you will analyse and critique, and large blocks of code, to which you will give a cursory glance and say ‘looks good’.

3. Always refuse to review large chunks of code. Anything over 50 lines sees rapidly diminishing returns.

4. The more a developer is obsessed with displaying deep knowledge of a language, framework, or philosophy, the less likely he is to be a good developer.

5. The importance of testing is understated. The belief in testing is overzealous.

6. Prioritise testing the parts of the codebase that never fail, over the parts that fail frequently. That is where the tail risk hides.

7. Great code and great software are not the same thing.

8. Customers / stakeholders will always change their minds. Always. Always. Always. Accept this as a fundamental fact of life.

9. Don’t over optimise your code, unless your product is extremely mature, or solves a single, specific problem — and even then, don’t over optimise your code.

10. All developers need to learn the basics of UI and UX — even backend developers

11. You should always be thinking about the user.

12. Good UI design isn’t always about making things simple and shiny. Expert users may want complexity.

13. A steep learning curve is not necessarily a bad thing, if it allows an expert user to get things done quickly when learnt.

14. Instead of learning the latest library or language, most developers would be better served learning sales.

15. Think a good developer is expensive? They are an order of magnitude cheaper than a bad one.

16. It amazes me how many software developers I see take a shitty or superior attitude with stakeholders in other parts of an organisation. If you are a developer, you are in the customer service business first and foremost.

17. To a user, time has an elasticity. The first few seconds of a loading screen go by quickly, the new few seconds take an eternity.

18. No new page or view should take longer than five seconds to load.

19. Have a conversation with a fellow developer in which you both pause for five seconds each time you give a response. You will discover a new appreciation for the frustration of loading times.

20. Coding tests during interviews are pointless. Far better to give candidates a stakeholder test. Offer competing and conflicting requirements for a piece of software and watch closely how they respond.

21. People who say ‘just read the documentation’, haven’t read the documentation.

22. The number of bugs a user encounters vs. how irritated they become, is not linear. The first couple of bugs will be met with mild annoyance, the third and fourth with utter contempt.

23. Good developers never complain to the end client. Great developers never complain.

24. If a requirement is intractable, or impossible to deliver, always have an alternative suggestion lined up before communicating it to the client.

25. Any challenges you encounter are more convincing to the client when you DON’T use technical language to explain them.

26. Wait until a language, library or framework has been around for at least five years before learning it. If you have to use it before then, just learn enough to get by.

27. The vast majority of a software developer’s career is learning just enough to get the job done. The myth of the all-knowing developer is just that, a myth.

28. Depending on what type of person you are, time constraints will either kill creativity or enhance it.

29. Every developer thinks the code they inherit is shitty code. The developer who comes after you will think your code is shitty too.

30. Software development is one of the most cult-ish industries around. Avoid fads in methodology, language, or design like the plague.

31. Every organisation has their own definition of ‘agile’. None of them are correct.

32. Over time, technical jargon seems to morph into management jargon. Be careful not to conflate the two.

33. 99% of software projects do not need a CI pipeline.

34. Don’t waste time trying to create the perfect deployment process, it is a form of technical masturbation.

35. Your users don’t care what programming language you use.

36. It is more important to understand different programming paradigms, than a large number of languages.

37. Keep your functions and class methods short. Under 50 lines, and in most cases far less.

38. Requirements gathering should be like sculpting a statue. Start with a rough outline, and use iteration and feedback to refine and polish.

39. Don’t be afraid to recycle code.

40. Do not bother to deliberately memorise large amounts of syntax that is easily available as an online resource. Save that capacity for more abstract concepts.

41. During requirements gathering, what is not said can be more important than what is said. Politics, Organisation culture, and other intangibles matter. Account for them when creating your product.

42. The more developers that are assigned to a delayed project, the longer that project will take to deliver.

43. Functionality and aesthetics are more closely related than may think.

44. 95% of SaaS businesses can be replaced with a spreadsheet.

45. If you only have enough time to make the design great or the architecture great, choose the former. Users are much more forgiving when they love the look and feel of a product.

46. Under promise and over-deliver.

47. Decentralise your architecture as much as possible, even at the expense of efficiency

48. The only start-up you should be working for is your own.

49. The meaning of the word start-up has become so diluted as to become meaningless. If you’re not worried if you’re going to go bankrupt next month, you’re not working for a start-up.

50. If you’re a developer, It is better to work for managers who are non-technical. Technical managers will concentrate on what they know best (technology), vs. outcomes. This lends itself to endless (pointless) debates over the tech stack and architecture.

51. An average developer who is a great communicator will be far more successful than a great developer who is an average communicator.

52. The last ten years have been about big data, AI, processing power, and storage. The next ten years will be about perfecting human computer interaction to enable users to generate insight from it.

53. It takes far more effort to write simple code, than it does to write complex code.

54. Context switching is cancer to productivity.

55. Have the courage to keep your daily stand-up comments brief. Resist the urge to ‘pad out’ what you are doing.

56. Most of the team aren’t listening to your daily stand-up, they’re thinking about what they are going to say, or have already said.

57. Most of your career will be spent developing CRUD apps, in one form or another.

58. If you’re writing a feature that has to interact with another system within your organisation, increase your time estimate by a factor of four. If you work in the financial sector, increase it by a factor of eight.

59. For every database table you create, add ‘created’ and ‘updated’ timestamp fields. This will future proof the queries you make.

60. Reduce database tables to the smallest atomic unit possible. If you’re re-using a selector frequently, create a new table for it and use a foreignkey.

61. It is better to store irrelevant data in a table, than it is to prune data you don’t think is relevant, only to add it later. Data storage is cheap. Development time is not.

62. 100% of projects need version control. Develop the discipline to use it well.

63. You are a truly great developer when you remove more lines of code than you write.

64. Software is easy. People are hard.

65. Never disable Copy / Paste in your app.

66. Debugging code is twice as hard as writing it. Therefore, don’t try to make your code too clever.

67. UX is the art of misdirection. And a beautiful UX will misdirect beautifully.

68. Not every developer is a designer, but every developer should treat the user as their compass.