Repositories of job descriptions - I can't help wondering if I inadvertently invented this in 2009 ;)

A repository of job descriptions can serve different purposes for different audiences. They can help organisations benchmark their own jobs and salaries to keep things harmonious and, if visible to the public, also help future jobseekers see the range of jobs available and the skills and experience required.

I created my first unstructured version in 2009 but recently discovered others have made a bit more of an effort to organise their similar databases (mine aren't technically databases, just WordPress blogs!).

These are the repositories of job descriptions that I know of, what else can I add here? Those marked with a red book 📕 are internal-focused, ones with orange diamonds 🔶 are aimed internally for benchmarking but open to anyone to view and ones with green plants 🌿 are for a public audience.

🔶 LOTI's Job Description Library
The London Office of Technology and Innovation is "London local government's collaborative innovation team. We help London borough councils and the GLA use innovation, data and technology."
JD library | Job descriptions with salary - at the time of writing there are 2,057 jobs and job descriptions archived there (e.g. there are 25 examples of the 'Solutions Architect' role in different boroughs with the salary increasing over the years).

🔶 National Children & Young People's Diabetes Network
Their Example Job Descriptions repository lists the range of jobs needed to run a paediatric diabetes service. It includes the banding information but not specific salaries. 

🔶 NHS Employers
National Job Profiles - this is aimed at NHS HR folk and is quite detailed on the difference between job profiles, job labels (I've never heard of this) and job descriptions. There's a whole NHS Job Evaluation Scheme - it's a massive organisation to be fair - so that the jobs can be "matched to nationally evaluated profiles, based on information from job descriptions, person specifications and additional information." The content is informative about the different types of roles but it's fairly generic and not a job description. From a potential job-seeker point of view it's a bit incomplete (but that's not its purpose of course).

🔶 Society of Research Software Engineering (RSE)
The society has an Evidence Bank of job descriptions organised by level of seniority. I couldn't get one of the files to open ('bad PDF') but managed to download a couple of other things. It's on GitHub which I (personally) find a bit of a confusing interface.

📕 University of Bristol
https://www.bristol.ac.uk/hr/grading/job-descriptions.html "We’ve created a job description repository to share the variety of roles at the University. This helps staff understand the skills needed to develop their career."

🌿 Jobs in Computer Science and related tech jobs. A repository of job ads and job descriptions, stored here (so that they can still be viewed after the vacancy has closed.
https://techdevjobs.wordpress.com/ - by me
I began this site shortly after coming across the Shadbolt Review which found that university students were largely unaware of the roles available in either computer science or any of the many allied digital roles. It is a non-systematic database of job packs as I come across them whereas the ones like LOTI above have some structure. I have had a go with structuring here.

🌿 ScicommJobs
https://scicommjobs.wordpress.com/
I began this one on Posterous in October 2009 (much missed, closed down) and transferred it to WordPress. It's full of job packs relating to science communication and public engagement with science. 

Bonus material
A Reddit post, from October 2024, by someone looking for tools to help create one of these repositories: Looking for a way to store and manage job description (inventory / repository), and a website which sells software for same, AI-powered to help you 'build a job description repository in minutes'.

Imaginary Angine de Poitrine Festival - music / tech / arts nerdiness

I'd really enjoy an Angine de Poitrine-based Music HackSpace-adjacent event which is aimed at a general public audience that touches on a variety of things such as 

• different musical styles
• time signatures
• psychology of music (tension-release etc)
• the electronic engineering involved in creating effects pedals and things that let you create and replay loops.

Something like the creative tech festivals such as Maker Faire / EMF / Wuthering Bytes etc) with talks on all the above plus stalls where you can try things out, playing with ring modulators, looper demos and also stuff like circuit-bending. Polka dot face-painting for the kiddies, hotdogs for lunch and merch tables selling t-shirts but also water bottles with long straws attached ('la paille!!').

Musicologist Prof Milton Mermikides is giving a series of free in-person and YouTube live-streamed talks for a general public audience about music, through Gresham College (London). These are really interesting and entertaining. Scroll to the bottom of this page to see future events as well as past videos to watch (e.g. "The Maths of Music (and the Music of Maths)" with Milton and Prof Sarah Hart).

Also 'How Music Works' and 'The Story of Music' by Howard Goodall are excellent UK television series and available to watch on YouTube.

More Imaginary festivals

• The Imaginary Maritime Science Festival - what would you have in your perfect science festival? (3 April 2017) ⚓️
• The Imaginary Paddington 2 Science Festival (30 March 2021) 🐻

More 'you've been hacked / Carnival Cruise' spam - posted in hope of reassuring anyone googling

I think the age of people worrying when they get an email like this may have passed as it seems pretty much everyone knows it's baloney. But I suppose they wouldn't keep trying if it didn't occasionally work (and perhaps the people it works on aren't going to be googling and finding this anyway so ultimately this may be pointless of course...).

Carnival Cruises is the parent company for a lot of cruise operators and had their database hacke, so if you've ever been on a cruise your data has likely been stolen resulting in rather a lot of spam emails. I've not noticed any other problem though, just spam.

The email below is exactly as it was sent (they may have managed to spoof someone's real email address so I have left that out).

Edit: I've reported the bitcoin wallet to ChainAbuse https://chainabuse.com/report/9cb50f02-bbe0-4a0a-b0ad-da961eba0532

You've been HACKED
<XXXXX@rinku.zaq.ne.jp> 

Hello,

We wrote you an email some time ago, but you seem to have ignored it, so we resent it to you.
We are the ShinyHunters hacking group.
A few months ago, we gained access to your devices and started monitoring your online activities.

What happened:
We gained access to the Carnivalcorp.com database where you have an account and easily accessed your email.
You weren't very careful about the links you opened.
A week later, we installed an exploit on your devices, including your phone, giving us access to your microphone,
camera, keyboard, and all your data.
We have your documents, photos, browsing history, conversations, and contact list.

Among other things, we discovered that you visit adult websites and watch explicit videos.
We managed to record you and created videos of you pleasuring yourself.
With a few clicks, we can share these videos with your friends,
colleagues, and family or even make them public.

Proposal:
Send us $2000 in Litecoin (search online how to buy) to the following wallet:   ltc1qua85znuqqqgfwrc5cwudp0wyk32078xzwt2xk0

We'll delete everything immediately.
You have 48 hours from the moment you open this email.
Once the payment is received, we'll remove the malware from your devices.
We'll also remove all your personal information from darkweb for you to be safe from now on.

What you should NOT do:
Do not reply (email was sent from a hacked account).
Do not contact the police or anyone else—we'll release the videos along with other stuff all over the internet.
Do not try to reset your devices—everything is stored on remote servers.

What you don’t need to worry about:
We will see your payment immediately—the wallet is generated specifically for you.
We will not share your videos or other things after payment—there is no reason to continue causing problems.

You're not the only one in this situation.
Be smart and cooperate; otherwise, you're going to regret it.

 

A very nice short 4-day stay at The Clermont, Charing Cross

I decided last week that the hot weather would once again propel me towards a hotel with air conditioning. I couldn't count the number of times I've passed by The Clermont right by Charing Cross* station over the years and it had never really occurred to me to stay there before (given I live about half an hour away in Blackheath) but this was the week I did. (There's also a Clermont hotel in Victoria).

Loved it. Really nice hotel. To be fair I was staying in a nice room as I think everyone else had the same idea so rooms were at a bit of a premium. Strongly recommending it to anyone considering it. Lovely cool room (17˚C though I slept at 22˚C), room service, and possibly my favourite small delight was a little fluted glass jar filled with biscuits and sweets. If you read my disappointing experience of avoiding the last heatwave in a different hotel you'll know that the apparent lack of a biscuit anywhere within it nearly sent me doolally ;)

 
There's a lovely staircase to sweep down, admittedly not as dramatic when you're wearing jeans. Very nice restaurant where I had my breakfast (self-service) and I had a go of their rigatoni on two nights as room service. Unbelievably delicious (there were toasted pistachio nuts and artichokes in there, all in a lovely sauce). Everyone was friendly, helpful and amiable. Every time I rang reception or room service the phone was answered promptly and I'm sad to have left and come home again, though it is going to be much cooler^ for the next few days.

You don't have to be a hotel guest to dine there so I definitely recommend finding a way to try out the rigatoni when it's available. Also you are right next to a 24 hour Co-op (I didn't test this out later than 10pm but if you need an emergency snack...). The room I was in also had a bag of crisps, popcorn and some minibar stuff plus coffee / tea stuff.

Even the shower was easy to use! Free wifi.

100% thumbs up from me. I could have done without the (not awful just could do without it) music in the reception and restaurant areas but it wasn't loud or intrusive. They'll also look after your bag for you after checkout if you want to wander around London (too hot today).

*I've lived in London all my life bar university, initially zone 5 so I'd arrive at Charing Cross via the Jubilee Line (until 1999) or via the 176 bus from Camberwell, and now via Blackheath (train) or Greenwich (to Embankment Pier by ferry). 

^My flat is currently 32˚C but it will soon start to get a bit more tolerable as it's actually quite a bit cooler outside now.

More photos

 

Interesting essay from Cory Doctorow: Zuckerberg's increasingly bizarre war on whistleblowers

Via his thread on Bluesky.

Read the whole thing at

Zuckerberg's increasingly bizarre war on whistleblowers

Doctorow, Cory. (2026). Pluralistic: Zuckerberg's increasingly bizarre war on whistleblowers (27 Jun 2026). Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow. https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/27/zuckerstreisand-2/ (Accessed on June 27, 2026 at 05:17)

You may have heard that Meta (Facebook's parent company) has legally silenced Sarah Wynn-Williams, forbidding her to utter another word about her book or promote it it any way ('Careless People', a whistleblowing memoir of her time there between 2011 and 2017). This has resulted in a slightly horrifying / bizarre / almost comical series of situations in which Sarah is a panellist at events but is not able to speak and her book cannot be on sale after her events. Meta has now told her that her sitting mutely on panels is also against their wishes so she's now suing them to try and get herself released from the contract.

I remember back in 2006/7 (soon after Facebook permitted 'the public' to have accounts) logging in to discover that I could see other people's accounts, as if I was logged in as them. I remember emailing Facebook (which was possible back then!) to let them know, and they wrote back that there had been a short term glitch which was now fixed. I remember writing back 'Good save ;)' with a sarcastic winking face - but presumably sent it from my work account as I can't find any mention of it on Gmail (which I got in 2005 I think). 

While I didn't find a news report specifically about that event they did plenty of daft things in 2006 and 2007.

Facebook founder apologises for 'messing up' (8 September 2006) The Guardian

Facebook dismisses privacy fears (12 September 2007) BBC News