Ask HN: Red Gate giving away iPad to developers who show up for interviews

I was up at the Cambridge university computing department the other day, and it became clear that this offer is really targeting the students there (it's advertised directly on their notice boards, for example).

The average quality of their graduates is pretty high, and as Red Gate are already in Cambridge, they need just a little kick to get the best people to come talk to them, rather than one of the investment banks (at the moment, only about half of the CS grads actually go and work in IT). It's not intended to get people to travel the globe to work for them, nor do they really want that hassle.

See if you can get a tier-1 work visa, you don't have to get an employer to sponsor it, you just have to get a certain amount of points (based on education, current job, age, etc.) to qualify.

Once you have one you can work for pretty much any employer in the UK (their is a minimum salary threshold I believe, but most software dev jobs should be comfortably above it).