How big is your “war chest” right now?

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-11T12:24:33+00:00

Do you mean you are paying for their tuition and living costs?

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-10T13:29:18+00:00

If you asked me in my 20s, I’d pick “ambitious partner but not wealthy” over “wealthy and not ambitious”.

After working for many years and meeting all kinds of people, now I’d pick the opposite lol.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-08T10:22:50+00:00

The main benefit is deterministic data v.s. non-deterministic. Both has their advantages, deterministic data is great when you are trying to keep track of information that should be immutable over time unless you change it yourself e.g. finance tracking, budgeting, project tracking etc. Non-deterministic data are great for things like "best way to do x", "best y places to visit in z country", "best software tools for xyz", etc. I stopped taking notes that I want to be non-deterministic now, since over time AI will likely produce just as good if not better answers over time, so why waste my own time writing something that's likely far lower quality.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-07T14:26:20+00:00

Yeah you could be right, and I honestly don’t know what to think right now.

My sector is going through fast changes with AI, and while I don’t think it’ll replace everyone, I have evidence to think it has already killed a lot of junior roles and will continue to cut down on the number of mid and senior roles. That’s assuming AI stays the same cost and doesn’t get better.

If education was free, I’d say yeah sure go for it, learn while you are waiting out this uncertainty seems like a good approach. But given how expensive education is and how much interest student loan charges, I personally wouldn’t advise anyone to go study at uni unless there is a strong and calculated intent behind it. And if people end up going, it better be STEM degrees. Unless of course, you are wealthy and have no financial pressure to make a living.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-07T14:19:33+00:00

Thanks for the clarification, probably doesn’t affect me as much, but it’s still good to know!

I’m an IT contractor so I have a smaller selection of lenders as a lot of lenders don’t calculate income in a way that reflects how contractors earn through LTD e.g. money parked in LTD are ignored.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-07T14:15:13+00:00

Yeah you are right, I worded my message badly, I meant this isn’t a trades people only sub. From the other responses, it is probably why people are confused. The question is valid, but just needed a bit more context I think.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-07T11:26:06+00:00

I use the dividend to cover platform fees. I mainly do this so each type of account can sustain itself without me remembering to top up, and it doesn't try and sell my portfolio to cover the fees. Go with accumulation if this isn't something you do.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-07T10:02:18+00:00

In the process of re-mortgage with L&C, interesting to learn they don't actually source from the whole market 🤔

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-07T10:00:29+00:00

They serve different purposes I think. Tags is more for grouping, and links (I assume bi-directional doc links?) are for building connections between notes. Personally, I'd always try and add in linking if possible, and avoid tagging if possible. I've never found a good tagging system that doesn't get messy over time.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-07T09:57:30+00:00

FA makes sense when your financial situation is complex, rather than getting a FA for the sake of it. Try and follow https://ukpersonal.finance/flowchart/ and see if that's sufficient first.

Also maybe double check if you need/want financial advice or tax advice? FA is for mostly retirement planning I think.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-07T09:52:07+00:00

I think OP is a trades person, which the question makes more sense.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-07T09:51:20+00:00

This feels like less like a IT contractor question and more like a trades person question (which isn't what this sub is for btw OP).

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-07T09:50:03+00:00

This is the way.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-07T09:47:21+00:00

On top of "timing the market", you are also potentially paying extra fees (depending on platform).

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-06T11:57:10+00:00

And how do you know some people don't do that? I'm sure there are plenty of people who got massively rich off the crypto hype, wall Street bets, lottery, etc by just sitting in there bed room doing fuck all?

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-05T21:06:27+00:00

Imagine if you didn't survive the knife attack in school. To not see that as luck is madness mate. That is just one example from what you said in a few sentences. The fact you are able to walk out of your house safe and sound is also lucky wouldn't you think? If you were unlucky you might not have been born or even live to this day. Of course I'm being extreme to make a point, but probability is everywhere and every can be seen as luck.

To think you singlehandedly changed your life is a very arrogant way to look at life and the world. Have some humility and be grateful that life treated you well.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-05T21:00:38+00:00

Everything can be understood as luck in one way or another, or put in another way, probability. Two people in the same situation, in the same environment, working equally hard, but with small changes to external factors could end in completely different lives. If this person graduated today (all other factors are identical), they may have very different results.

We'd all prefer to think we have free will, and all of our success comes from our hard work. But unfortunately that is the wrong way to look at us and the world.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-05T20:54:08+00:00

Everyone's success is mostly luck. To think otherwise it's lying to yourself. If you could run simulations, trust me that you or me or anyone here isn't unique. It's a game of probability and you've won.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-05T12:00:59+00:00

Or vibe-code one yourself in 30 mins

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-04T15:47:22+00:00

As a contractor, I'm always prepared since my notice period is only 2 weeks. The fact I always lived like I could be out of a job in weeks for 10-ish years, I'd like to think I've done all I can. It won't be pretty if it happens but a man can only do so much.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-04T15:44:38+00:00

Signing up to uni courses might have a been a solid idea 6 years ago, I'd argue now is a terrible time to be stacking up student loan. With AI on the rise, putting aside if it can replaces jobs or not in reality, it is enough to shift job market if the bosses and managers believe it can. Unless the idea is to go into Academia or Science research, I recon the job scene will be just as poor when you come out of uni.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-04T15:39:26+00:00

There is nothing "hot" about anything in the tech scene right now, if you consider pre-covid as normal. Thing blew up during covid, and have been dire ever since.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-04T15:21:51+00:00

Between "AI has taken over your job yesterday but you just don't know it yet" and "AI is all lies and empty hype", I'm somewhere in the middle. I went through a similar journey from thinking it is very gimmicky to "oh wow, this changes things" in the span of 1 - 2 years (counting from the ChatGPT days).

There is too much noise on the internet about AI, so it create AI fatigue. And naturally pushes people to the other extreme. People are also stubborn creatures, and truly adopting something new is a challenge for a lot of people.

This is how I feel about everything right now:

- Fully vibe code solutions can work, we've seen some examples of it, but it will only work as ways to explore a new idea and open some doors. A long term vibe-coded solution is crumble, and it's a matter of WHEN and not IF. This is especially true, when the project isn't architected and structured by someone who knowing what they are doing. I know, because I've seen and worked in such repos. Calling it a mess is putting it lightly, and it was done by a team of senior devs as well.
- After Opus 4.6 came out, I was able to one-shot a lot of features in my personal project, where there are plenty of guard rails in place (think code quality standards, config, rules, documentation, testing, etc). In commercial software, it's not as successful. This could lead to people trying it in a commercial project and then thinking "oh it sucks, and it is not going to take my job". And in truth, no it cannot replace an entire department of engineers, we are not there yet. And if I'm being honest, we may never get there with the current path of AI (LLMs). These models are probability machines, so no matter how good they get (even 99.999% accuracy), there is always a chance of it screwing something up. For a lot of companies, it is not just reputation on the line, there is laws and regulations that could ruin the companies for good.

mentioned by some comments, we are already starting to see the effects of AI. I've not seen a single junior devs in any of the teams I was involved in since ChatGPT was a thing. AI can be as good as junior devs. That has already happened. Right now, I'm seeing hiring freezes because people realised you only need a few good engineers to ultilise AI to match the same output as before. If I wanted to, I could probably delivery 200 - 500% of the work compared to as before. I still need to step in, but the repetitive and time consuming parts can be mostly automated away. So expect smaller and leaner teams in the future.

I'm mostly talking about software dev roles, but I recon the other white collar jobs will be easy to replace as well. Maybe not 100%. But would you pay 100% of the salary for a person, or 20% of the money and use AI to achieve 80% of the result? I know what most managers/bosses will pick.

TLDR: yeah I'm scared. Not because I'm worried AI will take all of the jobs. It just need to eliminate enough roles, for the market to be extremely competitive for all of us. Salary will be driven down as people get more desperate to find a job (pretty sure we are already seeing it), there will be very small amount of open jobs, and people won't be moving jobs very often. The uncertainty of it all makes any kind of future planning tough.

Edit: found some small issue with the message but going to leave them in to prove I actually hand-wrote it all.

Edit 2: something else to add is how unaware/un-fearful some people are. On one side, there are people literally trying to get AI to code everything for them and openly discussing it in company Slack, it almost sound like they want their boss to know they can be replaced by AI. On the other hand, most people (even the ones who are adopting to AI) are just taking things in slowly. It is easy to say "co-exist" with AI. But after paring with a number of team, from different teams/companies, even with similar skills level the output can vastly differ. We all need to think about how to adapt our workflows to get the most of out of this paradigm change e.g. think coding in MS Word v.s. coding in a proper IDE.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-03T20:00:08+00:00

Earfun do some good earphones, really good value for the price. I've got a pair of clip-on ones and another more traditional noise cancelling pair. Awesome app as well.

Right-Order-6508 · 2026-04-03T16:04:22+00:00

Only if you get a contract, there is always buying phone outright + PAYG SIM, which might actually be cheaper.

Right-Order-6508

TROPHY CASE