The five stages of AI tool adoption: a developer’s journey
Do you remember the first time you opened Excel and discovered pivot tables? Or perhaps that moment when you first held a digital camera after years of developing 35mm film? Maybe it was when you wrote your first SQL query and watched data magically arrange itself exactly as you needed it. These technological transitions in our lives often follow a strikingly similar emotional pattern. The initial rush of discovering something… Continue reading
Hybrid working: finding balance in flexibility
Recent years have shown that we no longer have to be chained to our offices. Particularly for those who do everything on a computer, remote working has brought welcome changes, and many people have adapted well to this new environment. Adopting hybrid arrangements, people can get the best of both worlds, and FreeAgent is an excellent showcase of workplace flexibility. Coming into my FreeAgent internship as a student accustomed to… Continue reading
Restructuring our analytics team
In late 2022, we restructured our analytics team by aligning each analyst to a different area of the business. In this blog post I’ll talk about what we changed, why we changed it, and how we feel the changes have gone so far. If you’ve been through a similar process (or even the opposite process!), are considering it, or have any other thoughts, we’d love to chat! Please drop us… Continue reading
How to survive imposter syndrome in your software engineering internship
Hi there! My name is Fiona, and I am an intern at FreeAgent. I got my offer and dodged returning to the monotony of bar work that I endured last summer. However, I was only in my second year of studying Computer Science. How was I chosen from what must have been a sea of applicants? They must have overlooked someone! Had I lucked out? In hindsight, this was a… Continue reading
Challenge Accepted: Our Weekly Looker Challenge
We wanted to improve our stakeholders’ Looker skills Here at FreeAgent we use Looker as our business intelligence tool. It’s used by over 150 stakeholders across the organisation, of which over 100 are active on a monthly basis. To unlock Looker’s full potential, we’d like those stakeholders to be better equipped to explore the data using Looker’s range of features, rather than simply viewing a chart that somebody else has… Continue reading
Meet our women in engineering (Part 2)
The second of an occasional series, where we ask some of our women in engineering to share their experiences of working at FreeAgent: What was your career journey like before coming to FreeAgent? My academic background is in the Humanities, but I spent years working in web publishing. This work wasn’t particularly techy, as I was using a CMS to publish content to sites. I was curious about the stuff… Continue reading
Meet our women in engineering
In the first of an occasional series, we asked some of our women in engineering to share their experiences of working at FreeAgent: What was your career journey like before coming to FreeAgent? I'm a career switcher, from children's book publishing to software development. My first tech job in 2015 was a junior-friendly place where I learned TSQL on the job. Then, my second dev job was back in publishing,… Continue reading
Hosting Women Who Code Edinburgh
Last week FreeAgent hosted Women Who Code Edinburgh. We welcomed more than 20 people from a range of backgrounds and locations - due to COVID restrictions we had to host online this time. After an introduction to Women Who Code, we gave three presentations. I gave a talk on Agile Estimation, explaining how Agile estimation works, estimating using relative rather than absolute measures such as time, and the benefits of… Continue reading
Being an Introvert in a Meeting
A toolbox to get your voice heard Introvert: a typically reserved or quiet person who tends to be introspective and more comfortable with a small group of people. Context This November, Lea [1], Lana [2] and myself went to the Women of Silicon Roundabout conference. There were a few talks around developing your soft skills to be better in the world of tech. One talk that particularly interested me was… Continue reading
Here’s to Thriday
The last eighteen months have been very hard. You know that, you’ve lived it. We’ve all done what we can in order to get by. A couple months ago FreeAgent decided to help us do that by giving us Fridays off for the months of July and August. I admit when it was first announced in our weekly Town Hall I didn’t listen to the rest of the meeting; I… Continue reading