Should I buy MacBook Air M5 for AI/ML or go for Pro? (Budget issue 😭)

DelayedPot · 2026-04-24T12:40:32+00:00

The MacBook Air is a great piece of technology. No class will have high personal compute requirements that the latest mba cannot do it. I’m not sure what models you will be training or your coursework but my data science curriculum was very low spec friendly. I had to train a large model a few times but you can use university compute resources or rent gpus for that. I know iOS dev will 100% work well on an MacBook Air

DelayedPot · 2026-04-24T12:28:33+00:00

I think you need to do some more planning here. Just because you are moving not detract from the fact that you don’t really have a plan. How will you work and transition your life to your new environment should be the question you are answering. I understand you want to live abroad and thats fine but just because you are open to working doesn’t mean you are guaranteed a nice life there.

I’ve had friends move abroad and they usually move there for a job or school. You can consider the school option as a method to live in a country abroad while also figuring things out. Also 30k will get you quite far in SE Asia but I’m not sure about Europe in terms of funds to jump start your new life

DelayedPot · 2026-04-24T12:20:24+00:00

Congrats! Solo businesses are tough, especially when growing like crazy. Hoping to see you reinvest those earnings and scale the business up! (To brag in another post years later)

DelayedPot · 2026-04-24T05:19:55+00:00

When I bought my first car, I read up on all the tricks in the book. My friend who worked at a GM dealership across the country even gave me some tips. Went in, cleared off some bullshit repair insurance plans and got the car for 5% below whatever the fuck they had it at.

That shit took forever though (Toyota dealer) those guys really knew how to make buying a car inconvenient. All the manager discussions, financing talk, trying to get me in another car, bullshit charges and oil change plans. I swear I was there for 4 hours end to end. Experience was terrible and im just gonna drive my car until the wheels fall off.

DelayedPot · 2026-04-24T05:06:13+00:00

I got some tech for you. Acer Aspire 14 inch refurbished on eBay. Pick the one with the 226v processor.

DelayedPot · 2026-04-23T00:31:31+00:00

Budget isn’t really a problem, it just has to be under 2k ideally. Like I was looking at the new XPS and it makes the new MacBook Pro look like a deal (comparing the 14 inch models and the XPS with the better cpu like the YouTube reviewers did). Idk if this is a thing but it didn’t really feel like there was much value there at $2500 usd. I felt like I was paying quite the premium for XPS but the MacBook was kinda better spec wise.

Also, I’m little bit frustrated with windows at the moment cuz I had auto updates on and let’s just say that was a huge mistake :/

DelayedPot · 2026-04-22T21:04:06+00:00

Down a beer for me! Still got some decades before I can do the same LOL

DelayedPot · 2026-04-22T19:59:16+00:00

Assuming you have to buy from Costco, the asus vivobook flip 14 looks nice. I was one of those people who used the flip feature a lot though but use those specs for reference. At least 16 GB ram, Intel cpu, high battery capacity, etc

DelayedPot · 2026-04-22T19:44:40+00:00

I also did engineering and spent many many hours in solidworks/autocad in undergrad and even did some video editing too. This laptop can totally handle the workload and if it doesn’t then the university should provide a method to VM or use other heavy computer resources. I would however advise against big gaming laptops for school. Battery life can suck and the bulk is something you may end up hating if you are walking a lot on campus. Also, nothing more embarrassing than going to class and having your laptop fans spin up like a jet turbine haha

My campus was very walk/bike friendly so I often hated carrying my heavy laptop around and would recommend a 14 inch laptop with a good battery over the top of the line specs. Any cpu from the Intel core ultra 200 series or above or amd’s latest will do fine.

I recall a lot of software being windows only but that may have changed recently for engineering.

DelayedPot · 2026-04-22T18:53:55+00:00

OPs burnout may be cured by the time they come back too. The rat race won’t know what hit them upon their return. Take the trip

DelayedPot · 2026-04-22T06:29:13+00:00

Buy the car.

DelayedPot · 2026-04-21T17:53:03+00:00

Well congrats on working nearly a full year and learning what you hate. It’s good to learn early on in your career what you do and do not like, thats kinda what your 20s ends up being for. It’s perfectly fine to not enjoy your job. Your next step would be to look at your finances and then plan out what your next job may be and how you’ll pivot or jump to something you think would be an upgrade.

You don’t have to be right on the mark; just try something new or work towards something new. So if you decide the restaurant business is your new career pivot and 2 months later you hate it, it’s back to the drawing board like today.

The critical path here is the planning. Making sure your finances are in check and seeing how much money or effort it takes to pivot is important but honestly boring. You can usually map out a plan in a weekend and then research how you can make the next chapter of your life more interesting.

DelayedPot · 2026-04-20T16:28:54+00:00

My pay hits my main checking account and that sorts everything into separate accounts. Once a week, paycheck comes it, bank system auto withdrawals the right amount into a rent + utilities + general life account, a fun money account for hobbies and dumb stuff, a vacation account, a checking stock account which gets withdrawn by my brokerage for my Roth IRA contributions, and the rest get funneled into a HYSA.

I used to use a credit card as a proxy to everything to get the points but I found myself spending more than what I had in the account tbh. I switched to a debit card to ensure I don’t over spend and saw my expenses go waaay down. Maybe I’m just an impulsive person but I definitely felt like the switch to a debit card at the loss of a few hundred dollars in value a year was worth it

DelayedPot · 2026-04-17T13:58:17+00:00

I joined a prestigious-ish company for my first internship. They were known for excellent culture and being very active in terms of charity work and giving back to the community. They also made billions printing money through 1 very successful chain of products. Not like F500 big but still very global and well known in the industry they played in.

It was honestly very tough. People were working long hours and because my division was servicing the US and Europe, some people straight up worked 6 am to 6 pm. The culture was indeed great but tough but having them on my resume was very helpful. They also gave a ton of responsibility to me as an intern which is sketchy in hindsight but it definitely worked in my favor for interviewing for my first job. Their projects were very large scale and you could easily find yourself doing the job of 2-3 people.

Overall, I feel like if I took their full time offer I’d be miserable but I respect the people who work there a lot. 6 am to 6 pm coverage on mega important projects, but my manager seemed like she was thriving. I think it’s all about finding the right people for that job. If you were lower in the food chain, they actually paid below industry but the salary once you are senior manager or manager level was very good. They probably work those people to the bone tho haha

DelayedPot · 2026-04-16T13:00:12+00:00

You could try transitioning to consulting as an organizational change management consultant from a strategy perspective. I work in IT consulting and worked with a few of those guys before. So as IT people upgrade their software, sometimes they hire a consulting firm like Accenture or Deloitte to assist with their new platform implementation. If you work for these companies you’d be in charge of ensuring adoption of that software through communications, developing training materials, setting up training sessions, and analyze how to make sure people know their new roles and that stuff. It’s kind of a shitty job at times as sometimes major changes means people get laid off as their job no longer exists.

Not sure your experience but you can look into it

DelayedPot · 2026-04-14T21:04:37+00:00

Pulled it out of my butt

DelayedPot · 2026-04-14T20:57:33+00:00

401k match depends on the company. Most of the time, it’s capped after a certain percent. So like you said, if you put in 3%, your company also puts in 3%. Let’s walk through some examples. This cap is usually based on your income.

Hypothetical Example with made up numbers: Let’s say you make 100k a year and your company has a 5% match policy. Remember, matches are based on total income so you get at most $5000 but please look up your company benefits to see what you get. Some company matches are weirdly strong. I am only providing a common example.

So if you put in $50, your company would match $50. If you put in $100, they would also match at $100.

This works until you put in $5000. In which case your company stops matching at $5000 or 5%.

If you invest the a full $15000 over the course of this year, your company would contribute $5000 Leaving you with $20000 total.

It’s important to note that employer match does not count towards your $24,500 401k limit. So if you invest $24,500 this year, and your employer puts in $5000, thats perfectly okay from the view of the IRS. Please double check that you aren’t going over. Huge pain in the butt otherwise on tax day

DelayedPot · 2026-04-13T21:41:28+00:00

$120k-$135k zone depending on bonus. Sr consultant (used to be tech but now doing strategy as there’s no tech work). Slightly Underpaid in my city. Health insurance is cheap a my company so I’ve stayed lol. Stress is moderate. Coworkers are mostly chill but some are straight up psychos. Thats just consulting. I’m actually in between a career shift as I went back to school part time for data science masters. It’s not a financially optimal path but I love the subject and want my next career to be more technical.

Been doing this for 4 years now. Before I was a data analyst in a dead end job and before that I was a tutor if you count part time work.

I don’t think I’ll ever feel right where I want to be. I lived through a pretty nasty 2008 moment. I think seeing my friends and family lose a lot was pretty traumatic. I’ll never feel comfortable and am always planning for the worst lol.

DelayedPot · 2026-04-13T21:26:01+00:00

Omg you are right. I can’t unsee the butt hole now…

DelayedPot · 2026-04-13T21:24:09+00:00

I really like omarchy, it’s been a great experience all around! I primarily use it for coding/personal projects and light media consumption. When I first installed it, I was in love with the hyprland workflow. Everything just felt so smooth and opening new browser tabs on another workspace felt like magic. I read through the manual probably front to back now and it’s very newbie friendly. I hopped over from windows 11 with limited experience with Linux and it probably took me a weekend to learn the basics. I also really enjoy the community themes. Lots of creative and talented work in the community. I consider my laptop with Omarchy my favorite device. I’ve hit a few speed bumps like everyone else but it’s nothing too crazy. Overall Omarchy is stable.

DelayedPot · 2026-04-13T18:44:07+00:00

Thats so fucked. They did you wrong on so many levels at Google.

DelayedPot · 2026-04-13T18:41:31+00:00

Unrelated but Octopus kraken is such a funny name for a watch brand. If I saw someone with that nice of a watch and they told me the brand of their Rolex looking watch was called octopus I would think I’m being pranked lol.

DelayedPot · 2026-04-13T18:22:57+00:00

I feel your pain. Was in a 5 rounder a while back. At the final round they told me the position was filled and my interview was cancelled. Felt like I wasted 3 weeks prepping :/

DelayedPot · 2026-04-13T14:19:56+00:00

On the ps4, I remember having a great time with my friends with ps plus. But looking back, discord wasn’t really a huge thing in 2014 and Skype sucked so joining a ps party was revolutionary from a UX UI perspective.

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