London Hacker News February Meetup

[danmaz74]

OT: I'm thinking about moving from Rome to London in a couple of months. During the first months there I'd like to work part time as a programmer: I'm very experienced with Ruby on Rails and Javascript/CoffeeScript and I would like to see from the inside how it works in the London startup scene, while I also work on my side project for which later I'll be looking for investors.

Any suggestions about how to start looking for contract or temporary work while not residing in London? Of course I'm willing to travel to interview and/or make arrangements, but I can't leave my current job immediately.

[CWIZO]

I'm in a similar boat as you :) I'm from Slovenia and I've been searching for a full-time job from here. It really isn't a problem since most companies are doing phone/skype interviews these days. I'm actually coming to London today to do a couple of face-to-face interviews and I already have one offer. So really, the fact that you are in Italy shouldn't be a problem.

Look here for jobs: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/ https://jobs.github.com/positions?description=&location=... http://workinstartups.com/job-board http://www.3-beards.com/jobs http://www.cwjobs.co.uk/ http://jobstractor.com/ linkedin ...

Also check out the monthly hiring thread here on HN (and you can use my bookmarklet to make it a bit easier :P https://github.com/janhancic/hnHiringFilter)

I can also hook you up with a good recruiter if you want (my email is in the profile).

[ayers]

You could start with checking out what London companies are hiring and contacting them. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5150834

[Peroni]

Hey Dan. Drop me an email (address in my profile). I'm looking for contract ruby folk at the moment and know quite a few others looking for contractors.

[Peroni]

Here's a longshot: PG, when are you going to grace us with your presence and come give a talk? (we have pizza & booze)

[lifeisstillgood]

+1 for sheer chutzpah :-)

[dmitri1981]

In case people are interested, the talks from previous events are online at https://vimeo.com/hnlondon

[alinajaf]

I was at this event (the 'freelancer' in the front row getting picked on by Sanderson), it was brilliant. Big thank you to yourself and Steve for putting on such a good show.

[buro9]

Hey Dmitri, a couple of questions...

Will you be reducing the involvement of sponsors now you're raising £3k per event?

What are the additional events and projects now in the pipeline as a result of the extra funds?

Having just got back from San Francisco and seeing a lot of the pay-it-forward culture in action, I'm glad there is a fee at it means that we're able to contribute to something that can help build something larger and be part of a difference in the London startup culture. So I'm really keen to hear about how those funds are now going to be invested to make that change happen.

[rvkennedy]

I enjoyed the last one of these I went to, but it's not much of a networking event. You can get a bit of meet-and-greet in between the speaker talks, but everyone pretty much left after the last one, as the venue closed down. Anyone who wanted to network had to move on to a nearby pub, and few people made the effort, or knew where to go.

[dmitri1981]

Several people have made the same comment and it's especially important for people who are new to the scene and don't know many people. It's something that I would definitely like to improve and welcome all suggestions. I'll post an update with pub details on the event page too.

[ayers]

I have always found the best time for networking was at the start of the event but that might be because I usually get there early.

[easytiger]

it's london... we need excuses to talk to strangers.

[lifeisstillgood]

And conflicts with the other decent grassroots event in London - find-a-tech-job-in-London meetup - aaargh

I am sponsoring that one ! :-)

Slightly weird coincidence.

[ig1]

There's absolutely no-way to run a tech/startup event in London without clashes now. There's multiple events running pretty much every single day.

[throwawayx3]

See above chain about £££.

[EnderMB]

Out of interest, how many people from outside London go to these meetups?

I'm in Bristol, so a bit far to travel.

[maxer]

I went to london specifically for the last- i live in northern ireland

[dmitri1981]

There are typically quite a few people from Brighton and Cambridge who come along. We usually finish at around 10pm so there is scope for getting the train home after.

The furthest that people have traveled just for the event (that I am aware of) is from Paris.

[ig1]

Not sure numbers but there's definitely people who travel a couple of hours from outside London to get to it.

Alternatively why not setup a local HN meetup for Bristol and the south west ?

[IanOzsvald]

I used to travel up from Brighton (1 hour on the train, about 1.5 hours each way all in), now I live in London (and work a 5 min walk from the event).

[phatbyte]

I'm going to miss this by a week =(