Chris Harding

Privacy Policy

Sat, 03 May 2025 23:51:54 +0100

Who we are

I’m Chris Harding and this is my personal blog.

My website address is: https://chrisharding.io

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

We will only use your Personal Data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we use your Personal Data to:

process and manage your use of our website;
respond to your questions, comments and requests;
where you have opted-in to receive marketing from us, deliver communications that are relevant to your preferences / may be of interest to you;
improve our services and Website through analysis of information.

For the purposes of the EU General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679) (“GDPR”), we, chrisharding.io, are the “data controller”. If you have any questions about this policy or about how we use your Personal Data, please contact us via our contact details at the end of this policy.

About

Sat, 03 May 2025 23:04:56 +0100

I’m Chris Harding, a developer and tech leader based in London. My passion lies in enabling startups to scale and thrive. I am a big proponent of impact, pragmatism and innovation to get these results.

I have worked with companies across multiple industries, including real estate and finance. Using over a decade of experience, I have helped grow teams from ideation through to scale.

Outside of this, my other passions lie in exploring new countries and cultures, photography and sipping on a delicious glass of Barolo over a bowl of warm pasta.

Tips for getting hired as a developer

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 10:34:03 +0000

Given the uptick in people looking for roles right now, I thought I’d share some tips for getting hired as a developer. These tips are things I look for when hiring developers, honed over many years and countless interviews. My aim is to shed some light on what people over the other side of the desk are thinking. Perhaps armed with this perspective, you will think differently about your own approach.

Building a calendar in Swift

Mon, 18 May 2020 18:02:03 +0000

In this post, I wanted to walk through an approach I used when building a calendar view in Swift for an iOS app I’m working on. The requirements were as follows:

Should start from the current day, and then scroll backwards through time
Each month is it’s own section, with corresponding header
Days should be a selectable square cell, and we should have 3 days on each row
The grid should take up as much screen real estate as possible
It should be memory efficient

And with any luck, it will look something like this…

Performance Review 101

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 21:35:03 +0000

The intention of Performance Review 101 is to give engineering managers an understanding of why we have this process, and what’s involved. I’m sure you’ve all been in one of these meetings, and no doubt loathed having to prepare. But you only get out as much as you put in, and they’re a great way to develop your employees. Not convinced? Then read on…

Why do we need a Performance Review?

So first up, what is the point of this meeting and the hours of prep that go in prior? The key reason we have a performance review is to understand and improve your employees performance. This is with respect to both their personal needs and goals, but also the business needs. It’s not to say their performance has to be poor, but rather how can we help take it to the next level? To be clear, this is not an exercise in criticism and demoralisation. If there are performance expectation gaps, the review should aim to bridge them in a constructive manner.

Setting up Netlify forms with Gatsby

Sat, 22 Feb 2020 15:49:03 +0000

I recently built a website using Gatsby , choosing to host it on the Netlify free tier. One of the features I wanted to try was form handling. Typically, handling form posts requires wiring up and hosting a backend to process requests. Netlify forms allows me deploy a simple static site with zero backend, letting them handle the rest for me. You can read more about the functionality here .

What are the differences between Enterprise and Startups?

Wed, 05 Feb 2020 13:10:03 +0000

Having moved between these two types of company, I wanted to capture my thoughts on the differences between enterprise and startups. Why would you work for one over the other? Is one option the clear winner?

Firstly, when I talk about enterprise and startups, what do I actually mean? For the context of this post, I’m talking about tech-enabled companies rather than tech-led. These are companies whose main source of revenue is not from the sale of tech per se, but is enhanced by it. Think banks or insurance companies rather than FAANG .

The First 90 Days

Sat, 04 Jan 2020 12:15:03 +0000

The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins is a must read for anyone looking to change role in their career. This means not only moving to a new company, but being promoted or even changing career. It details a set of methodologies which, if used, will ensure you succeed by contributing value as fast as possible. The book is a healthy mixture of commentary and practical tools.

Early wins … for the win

After reading the book, my main takeaway was making early wins. Intuitively, this makes sense but it was useful to see written down. When entering a new role, your boss and team will want to see results and validate their decision to hire. The main way to achieve this will be in your early wins.

Time hacking with the Trello API

Sat, 05 Oct 2019 17:16:03 +0000

Following on from my post about using time effectively , I thought I would deep dive into a tool I created using the Trello API. The reason behind this work was that I had multiple Trello boards and projects in flight, each using a Kanban column layout. I needed a way to see all of the tickets I had in Ready or Progress states and there didn’t seem to be an obvious solution using Trello itself. I also just fancied having a play with their API.

How to effectively use your time

Sun, 25 Nov 2018 19:26:03 +0000

Effective use of your time can make a real difference to the impact you have. By employing good organisational techniques, you can achieve much more in those valuable hours than otherwise. Following the lessons I learned as a manager , I wanted to run through a couple of methods I use to structure my day both personally and at work.

Note that these are methods which work for me. I am not writing this as a golden bullet for all time management. It’s important to understand what works for you and tailor a system accordingly.

The Five Dysfunctions

Sat, 22 Sep 2018 14:06:03 +0000

The next book in my series of reviews is called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni . The book focuses on what the author describes as the five dysfunctions which cause teams to underperform. Whilst the book is written from a board level, it’s clear to see how each of these dysfunctions could apply to any level or size of team. In fact as I was reading this book, I often spent time contemplating examples in my day job. The book is written predominantly as a fable meaning there is a narrative to follow. I enjoyed this aspect as it really brought the dysfunctions to life and enabled me to imagine them at work.

What I Found Playing With Azure Functions

Fri, 31 Aug 2018 11:13:03 +0000

As promised all the way back in my NDC Wrap-up , I wanted to share my findings using Azure Functions on a recent project. As always, the story begins with a user requirement. The use case was to build a news monitor which would check a given list of sites and email through any new stories over the last day. My immediate thoughts turned to Azure Functions as a solution. Amongst other reasons, they are quick to spin up/code, would cost little-to-nothing to run and have built in support for timers, file monitors etc…

The Lean Startup

Sat, 16 Jun 2018 13:23:03 +0000

Following in the same vein as The Hard Thing About Hard Things , I am going to discuss The Lean Startup by Eric Ries . Devised in 2008 by Ries, the Lean methodology aims to put science around becoming an entrepreneur along with fostering an innovation environment. Ries demonstrates his model predominantly through examples of the company he helped to build, IMVU . One of the core tenants of Lean is maximising the value delivered to customers. By achieving maximum value, Lean states you will cut out wastage and ultimately thrive against competition. In order to achieve this, the concept of Validated Learning is introduced. Validated Learning is a process whereby you make assumptions, test and then measure their impact. This process allows you to obtain empirical evidence that your assumptions were indeed correct.

Domain Knowledge is King

Sat, 12 May 2018 11:32:03 +0000

There was once a King named Harold who ruled over a glorious Kingdom. His lands stretched from the highest mountains in the North, to the whitest beaches in the South. His people were a pleasant, happy bunch and this was driven from the top. Harold was a kind, generous king who served his people true and fair. He had grown his Kingdom through assimilation and was always keen to promote integration of cultures. Whenever he came knocking at the door of a new land, the locals would be happy to join Harold knowing they would lead a better life.

The Chimp Paradox

Sat, 21 Apr 2018 11:21:03 +0000

Following my review of The Hard Thing About Hard Things , I wanted to discuss The Chimp Paradox by Professor Steve Peters . The book focuses on how to change your way of thinking in order to achieve greater confidence, success and general happiness. Although it can sound a bit pop science throughout, the author does have extensive qualifications across various branches of science and medicine. Along with this, he has also worked with some impressive names such as Liverpool FC and the Sky Cycling team.

Lessons Learned as a Manager

Sun, 01 Apr 2018 15:34:03 +0000

We all know the story. One minute you’re a junior developer learning your first regular expression. A few years and promotions later, you’re put in charge of a team of developers. Simple right? Just keep on cranking out the code, review the teams work and everything should fall into place. Except it doesn’t. It turns out being a manager is a completely different job to be being a developer and most people feel the pain as they make this transition. So having been through this myself, I thought I would share some of my personal lessons learned as a manager.

What’s the deal with Hackathons?

Sat, 17 Mar 2018 10:48:03 +0000

We’ve all heard the term Hackathon and some of us have likely been to one. They are the stuff of legend – 48 hour coding sessions fuelled by pizza and energy drinks. Events which have spawned long lists of multi-million dollar success stories such as Carousell and GroupME . But what are they, and how do you get your manager to agree to running one?

Let’s think about Jeff

Jeff? Let me introduce you to Jeff. Jeff has been working at BigCorp now for several years. He’s a talented mid-level engineer working on a long running piece of enterprise software. You know the kind of software we’re talking about here. The kind of software that was designed by a plethora of contractors who have long since left. The kind of software that started life as a Winforms app, spun out as a Service, switched to MVVM, implemented several different UX frameworks and now resembles Sloth from The Goonies. As you can imagine, Jeff is fairly dissatisfied at work. If you were to ask him why, well he’d have a list longer than his arm. The tech is archaic – all his friends are playing with the latest .js library and he’s merely keeping the life support running. This means he is not getting opportunity to learn, develop and challenge himself. He also works alone and feels abandoned on this project. This has led to him no longer believing in the mission of the team or the values of BigCorp.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Sat, 03 Mar 2018 19:15:23 +0100

The Hard Thing About Hard Things, written by Ben Horowitz, is a tale about his personal career and lessons learnt. For those that haven’t heard of him, Ben Horowitz is a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur who was somewhat ahead of his time and is much revered within the community. He now spends most of his time working and investing in tech companies. The book guides you through how he started his career, set up and sold Opsware , and went on to become a venture capitalist.

NDC Wrap-Up

Sat, 17 Feb 2018 19:51:56 +0100

I thought my first post, having been the inspiration for me to start this blog, should be a wrap up of NDC London. This is the second time I have now attended NDC and having moved to Westminster, the setting itself was a lot more majestic than last year’s industrial backdrop of East London. If you’ve not been before, picture 3 days of talks by some of the coding world’s rock stars interspersed with coffee, beer and the occasional Brainfuck .

Hello World

Sat, 10 Feb 2018 19:15:23 +0100

Inspired by my recent trip to NDC London, I have decided to create a foothold on the web in an attempt to build out and control my “personal brand”. Although the software developer in me is scared by this term, the leader and entrepreneur realises it’s an essential marketing tool and chance to show where my passion lies.

This blog will focus on how to use technology to deliver business value, rather than technology for the sake of technology. I will explore new trends and how these can be utilised to deliver faster results and ultimately more value to end users. In the meantime, head over to my about page to discover a little more.