Octopus overtakes British Gas as Britain's largest household energy supplier

I did an interview for a Senior Backend role with them. I’m very happy with how they managed the process. The interviews were technical, but in a practical way, not in the “let’s see if you can solve some leet code” way. Loved the guys I interviewed with. Loved the technical challenges they told me I’d be working on. I’m a little bit sad I wasn’t able to join them (despite them offering me the position) because they had a ridiculously restrictive contract (wasn’t allowed to have side projects, not even contribute to open source). I had to reject it :(

Not really sure why companies hurt themselves in this way.

Tech angle: They have an API customers can use to monitor prices and usage https://developer.octopus.energy/

This is weird, I understand 6 companies drill and run the pipes in UK and government forces these middlemen to do the billing.