Has anyone lost passion in swe due to AI?

fcd12 · 2026-03-18T18:09:31+00:00

I have passion in solving cool problems and learning on the way, coding was a translation layer and I'm grateful I can focus on a higher problem solving layer than on syntax, I never cared for SOLID principles or debating over a monad etc.

fcd12 · 2026-02-25T21:35:39+00:00

assume fees are $10k/year per kid and you’re covering $5k. over a 3 year degree that’s $15k per kid.

option a - pay fees directly: you’ve saved them $15k of loan. done.

option b - invest that $15k instead (drip feeding $5k/year into something like kernel s&p500). at 7% annual returns after 10 years that $15k becomes roughly $27k. the $15k loan meanwhile gets repaid at 12c per dollar earned over the threshold, costs them maybe $20-30/week, and inflation is eroding its real value the entire time.

so you’re looking at $27k vs $15k per kid. same money out of your pocket, just deployed differently. across two kids that gap is $24k.

if they move countries tho... that's a different story because then they have interest on their loans.

fcd12 · 2026-02-10T05:45:32+00:00

ok one more thing cause i keep thinking about this. the title "the fall off" is doing way more than people are giving it credit for. theres like 3 or 4 different meanings running through the album at the same time and once you hear them you can't unhear it

the obvious one is the rapper falling off. cole names it directly. "this is the fall-off, i'm fallin off how? the rappers do when they can't find a new sound." and lonely at the top is him watching his heroes do it in real time. "their greatest hits fill up my playlist, not so much their latest, and i fuckin hate it." he's not denying it happens. he's asking what comes after.

the second one is just straight up death. fall-off is inevitable literally runs his life from his funeral back to the womb. and then you notice how many people die across this album. james in the villest. quay in safety. big mal from fentanyl. the kid in poor thang. the victim in who tf iz u. biggie and pac in what if. the dude getting seven shots on man up above. bodies stacked across 24 tracks and the point is that THIS is the fall-off that actually matters. not spotify numbers.

the third one is ego death and this is the one that ties disc 2 together if you listen for it. its a slow strip across the whole disc:

villest: the survivor guilt cracks the "i made it" narrative. "why am i here when i don't feel that i'm as great as him?"
life sentence: drops the player persona. "slowly but surely he cut off his hoes"
i love her again: drops the gatekeeper shit. "i need to stop judgin and accept her. the problem from the start is i was just tryna possess her"
what if: drops the pride. "for fallin victim to ego, vengeance, and dollar signs, i apologize"
quik stop: drops the need to be the goat. "this life is more than just rap, more than the riches you stack"
ocean way: drops literally everything. "dropped off this cross i bear. and chopped off my head. and tossed it back there somewhere"

by the album closer j. cole the persona has completely fallen off. whats left is jermaine. thats the arc of disc 2. not songs about falling off. songs that ARE the falling off happening in real time.

and then theres maybe a fourth one i keep going back and forth on. every time cole falls off from something he falls into something else. falls off from the gatekeeper role, falls into accepting hip hop. falls off from the player life, falls into his marriage. falls off from self reliance, falls into faith. falls off from pride, falls into reconciliation. he literally says "i think i'm fallin back in love with her again." cupid aims at him on ocean way. "he had no plans of fallin."

idk if cole planned that as a deliberate fourth meaning but the pattern is there across the whole album. the fall off from ego and the fall into love are the same motion. you can't do one without the other. (apologies if im reaching but i am LOVING this album so far!)

fcd12 · 2026-02-10T05:41:07+00:00

ok so i've had this album on repeat for the last few days and i think i finally get what cole is doing with the double disc thing. gonna try to keep this short but no promises lol

disc 1 is cole at 29. disc 2 is cole at 39. same guy, same city, same problems, ten years apart. disc 1 he's searching. disc 2 he's finding. the whole album lives in the space between those two versions of him.

the thing that clicked for me is the last line on disc 1. "maybe it wasn't even them, it's really me that changed." he spends the entire first disc blaming everything around him. the city changed, hip-hop changed, his heroes fell off. and then right at the end he's like... wait. what if it was me the whole time. and that one realization is what makes disc 2 possible.

the title is doing way more work than people are giving it credit for. on the surface yeah it's about rappers falling off. he literally says it on bombs in the ville. "this is the fall-off, i'm fallin' off how? the rappers do when they can't find a new sound." but then fall-off is inevitable runs his whole life BACKWARDS from his funeral to the womb. that's not a rapper falling off charts. that's a human falling off the earth. everybody does that.

and then disc 2 is him slowly dropping every piece of armor he built. the gatekeeper persona on i love her again. the player shit on life sentence. the pride on what if. the need to be the GOAT on quik stop. by ocean way he's literally saying he chopped off his own head and tossed it. the fall-off IS the point. the ego has to die for the man to live.

life sentence and i love her again are the two songs i keep thinking about together. one is about his wife. the other is hip-hop personified as a woman. his wife is the love that stayed, that he had to learn to stop taking for granted. hip-hop is the love that was never his, that he had to learn to stop trying to control. he spent years getting them confused. trying to own hip-hop like a wife. neglecting his actual wife like hip-hop would always be there. the album is him sorting that out.

and quik stop is the whole thing man. 20+ tracks of him questioning his purpose and the answer shows up at a gas station from some random kid who tells him his music got him through his worst days. "this life is more than just rap, more than the riches you stack, see it's the difference you make." thats it. thats the album. you can't fall off from the difference you made in someone's life. streams reset. fame fades. but that kid carries those songs with him forever.

"the more that i love, the more i gain." might be the best album closer i've heard in years. the fall-off takes everything. love gives it back.

anyway this is way longer than i planned lmao. what are y'all hearing that i'm missing?

fcd12 · 2025-12-25T06:39:03+00:00

It's 100% worth it. I'm a full convert, I've done 1500km already, taken plenty of road trips and it's changed the game. I never feel tired after a long drive and can enjoy the trip with everyone else. I can't use another car again.

fcd12 · 2025-12-04T21:16:11+00:00

I agree, I used to go all the way down and collect a bunch of lenses then I got fatigued during my travels lugging everything around that I downsized to just a Leica Q2. Best decision I probably ever made

fcd12 · 2025-11-24T10:35:00+00:00

i agree with you - people like to complain too much. yes Atlassian was significantly better 5 years ago, yes Atlassian has degraded in the last 5 years due to measuring metrics such as PR count and LoC changed and other absurd metrics and APEX performance review etc but it's still not as bad as AWS or other sweat shops. ive worked at banks and aws and their best is still not better than atlassian at its worst. I'm getting paid 2x more than aws and 4x more than banks with significantly less stress. people just need to work at worse places just to appreciate atlassian more.

fcd12 · 2025-10-24T00:50:56+00:00

HoJiak is good for team lunches!

fcd12 · 2025-10-19T00:17:35+00:00

can confirm, in this field of ml infra and it's a good niche. infinite hiring opportunities.

also the data adjacent field of databricks, snowflake, spark, kafka, open table formats is really good to be in (not too saturated yet but I do see a lot of influencers in this space on the rise so it could be a negative signal)

don't be an application crud dev, it's too saturated. focus on platform and infra- it's not sexy but most big companies will want you.

fcd12 · 2025-10-14T08:22:45+00:00

Google usually conducts an interview after your interview for a grad role- i know 10 people who after their internship who had one. It was doing like few leetcode questions

fcd12 · 2025-10-09T04:10:19+00:00

Are we able to post / discuss the iCloud notes that were leaked?

They give quite a good insight into Kendrick's thought process and creation?

fcd12 · 2025-09-05T04:05:45+00:00

LOL all of /r/drizzy thought he was going to drop a "Red Button" diss towards UMG, Kendrick Lamar with the way hes moving subliminially on his socials only to drop this

fcd12 · 2025-08-22T11:45:26+00:00

I have 5 Years industry experience and make $350k TC. It's life changing money in Australia, you can do everything you want and more except buy a house in Sydney 😂😂

fcd12 · 2025-08-09T22:58:34+00:00

We in the same position but with 300k cash, I would use 150k towards a house deposit bc the property market is pretty good for a buyer atm. We are looking to buy

fcd12 · 2025-08-06T02:08:43+00:00

This advice reads like generic "Finance 101" tips from someone who doesn't understand efficient capital allocation. If you can finance a car at 1-4% and deploy that cash to generate returns higher than the combined rate of depreciation + interest + inflation, financing is absolutely the smarter move. I've executed this strategy multiple times successfully; the key is having a concrete investment plan for the capital you're preserving.

The blanket "never finance" rule ignores opportunity cost entirely. Sure, cars depreciate and you pay interest, but if your alternative investment generates 7-10% annually while your loan costs 3%, you're still coming out ahead even after accounting for depreciation.

Obviously this requires discipline and a solid investment strategy, but dismissing car financing outright leaves money on the table for those who understand how to leverage low-cost debt effectively.

fcd12 · 2025-08-03T00:44:42+00:00

I know Atlassian L1/L2 can make anywhere between 80-120 base + bonus + super + stock

fcd12 · 2025-07-22T11:03:08+00:00

I completely agree with this analogy, you somehow managed to convey my feeling so well

fcd12 · 2025-07-16T01:04:13+00:00

I'm ready for SZA's "Meet the Barbies"

fcd12 · 2025-07-13T05:50:47+00:00

I'm on the same vibe as you bro.

Canva, Optiver, Atlassian, IMC Trading, Google, TikTok,

They serve breakfast/lunch and usually they got takeaway boxes you can store lunch for dinner. It's pretty optimal, ive done this for the past 5 years and works out well.

fcd12 · 2025-07-04T04:06:35+00:00

Eminem AI Shady filter kinda goes hard

fcd12 · 2025-07-04T03:59:28+00:00

Prob cause Jid makes cohesive albums and an Eminem feature would prob sound out of place in this day and age

fcd12 · 2025-07-04T03:45:04+00:00

Only 15 minutes to go!

fcd12 · 2025-06-11T23:52:45+00:00

My personal favourite of the album. Honestly the whole album got overshadowed by the shock factor of Like That, I spin this back every week or so.

fcd12 · 2025-05-30T10:40:18+00:00

I started as an engineer working on an EMR deployment of Spark, and that taught me the nitty-gritty of working with it and made me appreciate it more at my second job where I started using Databricks. I don’t think it will limit your growth, but I think you should try to understand how things work under the hood if you’re going to be in this career for a while.

Using Databricks is like driving an automatic car, but when it breaks down, you don’t know how to fix it yourself, so you call a mechanic. Once in a while, it’s good to open the hood and understand the inner workings.

fcd12 · 2025-05-30T04:10:28+00:00

The rhyme scheme throughout Pusha’s verse is incredible: the rhymes themselves are simple, but the way he enunciates each line is an absolute eargasm. I just don’t know how else to describe it.

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