Patterns we keep noticing in UK technology careers.
POST is a trusted lens through which people interpret technology careers. The pages elsewhere on this site, the perspectives, the role pages, the field guides, the hiring reports, are how the lens gets applied. This page is where the lens gets named.
Each observation here is a recurring pattern we have watched play out across briefs, careers and conversations. Three or more live instances on the site, or it does not have an entry. These are not definitions. We are not trying to coin terms. We are trying to give shape to the things you start recognising after a few years of looking.
Currently named
Expectation Compression
Essay in progressCareer changers, returners and late starters keep trying to compress a six year career arc into eighteen months, then quit in month fourteen when the maths stops working.
3 live instances·Across PerspectiveReadThe Second Beginner Problem
Essay in progressPeople who were senior in their first career arrive in their second one unwilling to be juniors again, then spend a year proving that the work does not care about the previous title.
3 live instances·Across PerspectiveReadWrong Pool
Essay in progressHiring briefs and job hunts keep failing because they are aimed at a candidate pool that does not produce the work the seat actually needs done, and the people who could do the work are reading a different job title.
4 live instances·Across Perspective, Hiring Reality Report, AtlasReadCert Stacking
Candidates keep adding the next cert in a vendor ladder instead of doing the work the previous cert implied, then walk into interviews where the gap between paper progression and operational evidence is the first thing the panel tests.
6 live instances·Across Perspective, Verdict, AtlasRead
Why so few
The list grows slowly on purpose. An observation only earns a slot here once it has shown up in at least three live places on the site and started to do real work in how readers think about something. Most candidate patterns sit in a notebook for months before they make it onto this page. If a pattern stops earning its keep, it comes off.