We went down to the pub this lunchtime and there were a bunch of them there (they were doing a £5-towards-your-lunch-if-you-chat-to-us thing, too). We had a bit of a chat, but none of our company are really .NET/SQL types and their demographic also seems to be way young. That said, I know a few people at RedGate and they're all very happy, and people who use their tools seem to like them too.

Sure, it's a bit of a stunt but, as the guy we spoke to said, it's cheaper to hand out free iPads to a bunch of people (who pass your screener) than it is to pay a recruitment company, and it builds goodwill (amongst the kinds of people who are swayed by a free iPad, anyway).

We're looking for more Software Engineers and Test Engineers to help Red Gate grow into one of the greatest software companies in the world. We know there are lots of awesome people out there who may be bored or unhappy at work. We're going to make it easy for you to be happier - at Red Gate. It's easy to apply. Just leave your details for either our Software Engineer or Test Engineer role. We don't need your CV or a covering letter at this stage. Thank you

Thanks to Red Gate for attracting people with a free iPad.

While you are in the area, you might also want to have a look at the Cambridge office of Citrix. We are currently around 50 people and look to add ca 20 new employees this year.

We are working on virtualization, e.g. XenServer. So a background in operating systems helps, but is not necessary. (I did not have one.) The infrastructure is closely aligned with Unix systems, but the guest systems our customers run are mostly Windows machines.

We don't offer free iPads for interviewees, but the software we write in Cambridge is open-sourced and you'll have the opportunity to hack in functional languages. (C, Python and friends are also helpful. I only mention FP because that's what drew me here in the first place.)

Benefits and pay seem similar to Red Gate (though as far as I know the high end may go higher here), only our kitchen isn't equipped to prepare lunch.

Please drop me an email if you want to learn more. You can find my email address in my profile.

functional programming vs free lunch, free iPad and cool like this: http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2010/02/what-will-happen-...

:D (I upvoted you so)

You forgot about free software (as in speech) on our side of the versus. :D

And thanks to my efforts we have a nice stack of German style boardgames, now. We also play Diplomacy from time to time. If you want to join gaming, you can come over. Also you can participate on our pool or 9-ball or foosball ladder, and we will see who's better. ;o)

Good luck with your recruitment!

P.S. The projects you linked sound cool.

The greed inside me makes me feel like I want to pop up to the science park to interview for Red Gate right now (I'm about 15 minutes away), but what you've said about Citrix is very appealing to the good and holy part of me and that side generally wins with me! :)

Those are not mutually exclusive. Though just picking up the iPad is noct very good and holy.

Yeah, but I know that I don't want to work for Red Gate because they're Windows only -- so if I went to the interview I know it would only be for the iPad.

I have friends who work there and I've heard great things, but I just don't think what they work on would interest me.

If I'm not in UK and don't have the right to work in UK, will I still be considered?

Edited to Add: No I cannot. I wish it was made clear upfront. Anyway, no worries ;)

I just wonder if you have anyone at Red Gate who commutes from London? While I've heard a lot of good stuff about Red Gate and Cambridge is a very nice place I would be hesitant to give up the awesomeness of living in London. (I suppose I'm not alone with that).

If you're in London and don't want to leave or commute outside then we (labs.yell.com) are looking for 20 to 25 developers at the moment to help establish the newly formed labs.

We don't offer ipads but you will get an octo-core mac pro on your desk with 2 large monitors, an iphone, pension, bonuses, good pay, etc... and we'll give you work you will find challenging (whatever your level of challenging is).

Further more we are in the centre of London, cross-section of Grays Inn Road and Theobalds Road, so you'll still have access to whatever turns you on (hipster highway leads to Shoreditch, we're equidistant from both the city and West End).

I saw your background is C# from StackOverflow, but hope you'll find yourself comfortable with picking up whatever tool is required (Objective C, C, Java, C#, Python, etc). Training will of course be there and if this doesn't interest you specifically then please tell other devs in London (or willing to move to London) who you think would fit into a really creative, relaxed and passionate team.

Drop me an email on my personal email (on my profile page) to sidestep the HR obstacles and get yourself in front of the devs who work there.

We (that is Citrix) have some people who commute from London. And our office is just a few hundred metres away from Red Gate.

(We are also hiring. Drop me an email, if you are interested.)

Man, I'd love to rewrite the god-awful son-of-windows-3.1 UI on citrix.

Solid software, terrible UI.

Glad it's a good company though! "We're not the sort of company that tosses a man out because he's over 40. How old are you Reggie?"

You are right about the UI. (Of course the UI is not made at the Cambridge office, where we only produce nice software. :o)

I have heard that Citrix is looking into making better UIs. All our top managers have been converted into Apple fan boys for a start.

If you had a brompton I think it'd be fine (red gate hq is miles from station - literally)

There's also a bus. Or you can leave your bike locked at the train station overnight.

Here's a different perspective: this gimmick raised the profile of this round of recruitment to the front page of HN.

It's a marketing campaign to raise recruitment awareness and not the sum of RG or its potential employees.

Yes, and free food. Do you need a hug? I think you do.

I need a decent news site that's not treated as a spam dump by enterprise software companies. Give me a free one of those, and maybe I'll swing round for an interview.

Hacker News is actually quite good at containing the `spam'. E.g. this discussion is limited to the comment section of one article.

HN is good at containing spam, but only because it constantly polices for it. I shouldn't have been so rude about it in my opening comment on the thread, and I know that's why I'm being downvoted to oblivion, but I really do think this was a lame spam submission. I'm disappointed and a little dismayed that other people seem to disagree - I'd really hate for this site to pop up on corporate radars as a place they could drop FREE iPad! job offers without getting called out as completely lame for it.

I did not find Red Gates offer too bad. But I understand that you fear that it might lead onto a slippery slope.

I guess you should just flag the submission, if you feel it's bad for HN.

I learned something when hiring for my current employer: CV's are only really useful as a filter if you're hiring a huge number of people.

Better to chat to them on the phone first; then ask for a complete CV w references if they pass muster.

I'm not saying anything about the usefulness of a CV in the hiring process, I'm saying that it's pretty uninspiring to suggest that the need to put one together is a great hurdle for the kind of developers you're hoping to hire.

It just hits me the wrong way that the traits of the developers you're saying you want are: bored, unhappy, unable to afford an iPad, and too lazy to type up a short description of themselves.

Or, they're people who are really busy, aren't looking for a job right now but are open to new offers. Maybe people like myself who work in related disciplines and are considering a career change. The iPad is just a way of gaining publicity, and it seems to have worked pretty nicely.

Let's assume that person X applies because she heard about promotion, but wouldn't otherwise. Isn't there an adverse selection here that you would like to avoid?

You have to pass a 15 minute interview before being eligible for the iPad, by the looks of it. So I guess that'll cancel out all the builders and their dogs from walking away with an iPad.

I'm interested in if free stuff devalues the employee or the employer. Or is it just awesome?

They're hoping that the free publicity attracting _good_ developers who otherwise wouldn't have heard about Redgate, will outweigh having to sift through some extra chaff.

We think Redgate are awesome too and we don't have office there but sneak in whenever we can for lovely breakfast and lunch. Last time we were there we took some pictures http://thebln.com/2009/10/inspiring-workplaces-red-gate-soft...

stats.pluginseo.com is murdering the performance of that page, for me at least. Took 21 seconds to load, as measured by FireBug; download of http://stats.pluginseo.com/132108.js timed out:

http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/stats.pluginseo.com

Looks almost like DNS poisoning attack or something:

    $ nslookup

    Name:    pluginseo.com
    Address:  174.121.79.132

    Name:    stats.pluginseo.com.re.getclicky.com
    Address:  204.13.8.76
    Aliases:  stats.pluginseo.com

Thanks for the tip. Totally forgot to remove it after I tested it out once upon a time a long time ago.

Incidentally Red Gate has really great jobs pages [1], clear, concise and informative.

1. Example: http://jobs.red-gate.com/templates/redgate/jobdetail_zip/183...

The quick application page, on the other hand (the link at the bottom of that page) seems more interested in what degree you have and where you got it than who you actually are and what you've done.

I'm a Red Gate customer and I have to say that their customer service is some of the best I've ever gotten from a tech company.

Of course, that doesn't have anything to do with them hiring or iPads, but I like to say it every time I see them come up because I've been really impressed with every interaction I've ever had with them.

From the offer description: "Salaries range from £30,000 to £45,000."

That seems a little low? Is this typical for Cambridge? I'm not familiar with UK tax law, so what does this translate into in terms of take-home pay?

From my last round of job-hunting around Cambridge (about two years ago) I'd say that was pretty typical for the posts they're looking to fill. As with all things, you have to look at the whole package, and Redgate's is pretty good. I guess it's one of those cases where you trade off being amazingly-paid but working 80 hours a week in a job you hate against being less well-paid (but still frankly not badly paid in the grand scheme of things) but enjoying where you work more. It's not often you find somewhere that'll pay you £60k and still let you go home at 5:30pm.

That's about £23,000 to £33,000 take home.

A bit above average for a graduate CS job. Less than you'd expect for a 30-35 year old with degree plus experience.

(roughly anyway)

Thanks! That explains my reaction, as I'm closer to being in the later group than the former. This probably also explains the promotion. I imagine that the fresh-outta-college type is more likely to be impressed by a free iPad offer than a journeyman programmer would be.

Yep my thoughts entirely; this will be a swinger for graduates looking for a job.

When you pop above 45K here tax starts to get excruciating (40%) so that is probably why the upper limit is sat there (I get 8% year on year increase in my current job and it's barely noticeable due to tax...)

It's a bit of misconception that tax increases that much - as national insurance drops off.

E.g http://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php

(figures in GBP)

  30k -> 22.6k    (25% total employee tax burden)

  45k -> 32.8K    (27% total employee tax burden)

  90k -> 59.4K    (34% total employee tax burden)

 135k -> 86.0K    (36% total employee tax burden)

You missed a key figure though:

60K -> 41.7K (30% total employee tax burden)

There is a sudden big leap (of an extra 1%) in that particular range before it settles back down again.

£30,000 = £22,000 take home

£45,000 = £32,000 take home.

+ the benefit package yada.

I think Red Gate is about as awesome as one can get without being a startup. [we use their offices and are eternally thankful]

If anyone is interested in working for a game company on the Cambridge Science Park - Jagex Ltd is currently looking to recruit a Senior Software Tester. Details on the website - http://www.jagex.com/careers/

We cant promise a free ipad for those who we interview, but we can promise an uber cool place to work in the UK's biggest independent games dev studio :-)

Tacky.

What do you find tacky about this?

Think about it. A FREE iPad?

free stuff - its as if they're trying to get people through the door... :)

I doubt that capable programmers are going to be enticed by a FREE iPad. You would hire a programmer that came for the FREE iPad?

I'm a physicist, I'm thinking of applying. I am not currently looking for a job, but the positions they are looking to fill seem like a good fit, and I have been considering a career change for a while now.

Without the news-worthiness of the offer of an iPad (which I don't really want), it's unlikely that I would be spurred into even considering looking at their advertisement. Programmers may not come for the free iPad, but people may be enticed to consider the advert just from the noise it makes.

That these are the same people who had their incubator posted on here already gives me the impression that they're enthusiastic and trying to think in new ways. I like their enthusiasm. If you look at what they say, it seems like they're willing to chat to you for 15 minutes just to explore things - I like that they are willing to invest a little time looking for someone and don't require a CV, two references and a covering letter just for an informal enquiry. That's pretty awesome, actually.

Ah, but the iPad made it a news story. Look, this story has 26 points and is currently at the top of the front page. How many extra programmers are going to hear about the opportunity that wouldn't have if it weren't attached to a free iPad?

Honestly, I don't know. But I know a lot ignored it because it said "FREE iPad".

I imagine they won't interview anyone not "Up to scratch". i.e. purely there for the free iPad.