Trading the lab coat for the computer – my journey to data science
I became a data scientist just over two years ago. Itās not that long since I traded my lab coat for a computer job, and a few people have asked me how I made the transition, if I could help someone get into data or if I could just answer some questions about what itās like to work in data. So I figured I would put it all together in… Continue reading
Training Hugging Face models in parallel with SageMaker
In this post I'll describe how we train our Hugging Face models in a fraction of the time with a data parallel approach. Continue reading
Our data science hiring process
In this blog post, Iām going to describe our hiring process for data science roles, starting from an advertised role. Hopefully this post will be of some use if youāre thinking about hiring in data science! Continue reading
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Hiding Elements on the Web
For many of us the word hiding has visual connotations. But remember that the web is perceived both visually and non-visually.Ā In this talk, Laurence Hughes from our Design System team explains that hiding is a tricky front-end development technique, used for both user interface experiences and accessibility-related purposes. He also provides some tips on how we can avoid doing DIY hiding completely. https://youtu.be/AZ6uw4KCOQA Continue reading
How I prepare for a tech job interview
Youāve updated your CV, applied for a job in tech and been offered an interview. Fantastic! But what next? Preparing for interviews is time consuming and can feel daunting, particularly in the earlier stages of your career. Iāve found that having a regimented process for this preparation can reduce stress and save valuable time. In this post Iām going to outline my own process and provide some examples of what… 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
Using data to understand the effects of a four day working week
As you may have already heard, FreeAgent implemented a four-day week throughout the summer this year as a āthank youā for the employeesā contributions during the pandemic and a year of working from home.Ā Whilst Pat Georgeās blog post talks about measuring the success of the four-day week with ājob satisfaction, business objectives and personal stress levelsā, as an analyst, I wanted to see if I could find less anecdotal… Continue reading
Here’s to Thriday
The last eighteen months have been very hard. You know that, youāve lived it. Weāve 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 didnāt listen to the rest of the meeting; I… Continue reading
Fine-Tuning BERT for multiclass categorisation with Amazon SageMaker
This post describes our approach to fine-tuning a BERT model for multiclass categorisation with Hugging Face and Amazon SageMaker. Continue reading
Software engineering: 5 things they donāt teach you at university
Introduction Over the past couple of months, Iāve been working as an intern software engineer in the Banking Integrations team here at FreeAgent. Before I started, I had just finished the second year of my Computer Science degree at the University of Birmingham. Whilst university taught me a multitude of skills, there are many that can only be truly gained from working in a company. Iād like to share some… Continue reading