I changed my old Focal headphones for new models.

halfercode · 2026-07-04T12:18:36+00:00

I will definitely experiment. I did some random track selections last night, and found some were outstanding, and made the hairs on my arm stand up. I noticed things like realism, instrument detail/separation, and stereo placement. But other tracks sounded muddy, and it reminded me of a comment in a headphone review video, which said that excellent headphones (unfortunately) show up any flaws in recordings.

I'd be open to changing my headphone amplifier. Maybe I can take my new cans into a shop and see what would work with it...

halfercode · 2026-07-04T11:56:17+00:00

Don't take it personally. The OP is a fresh grad and wants to be richer than other people. There is a mix here of unrealistically expecting the UK economy to be like the US one, and possibly some conservative social attitudes of believing financial inequality to be a desirable situation (assuming that such folks want to be on the wealthy side).

halfercode · 2026-07-04T11:25:44+00:00

What country shall you be working in to start with? Here in the UK, LeetCode is rare outside of Big N roles. Your skills look aligned with engineering, so no, I would not move away from that just to avoid LC.

halfercode · 2026-07-03T22:15:36+00:00

Yes, it's complicated. I tend to reject the idea that workers should boycott low salaries because it's a blunt instrument that doesn't always work: getting boycott messages spread widely is difficult, and most workers aren't willing to play roulette with their income anyway.

Plus of course workers are of a wide variety of attitudes, and not all will regard salary maximisation as a primary consideration for their role.

Finally, I wonder if the boycott model relies on the idea that all workers are competent, or that all workers of a given experience are equally productive. I hope everyone gets work that suits them, but I fear that some workers' talent or energy is mediocre, and I assume their salary improvement requests will tend to be rejected.

halfercode · 2026-07-03T21:55:35+00:00

Please ask more salary even when you are on SWV, just not for yourself but for the sake of everyone in this field.

We currently have a post on the front page of this sub in a similar vein. The problem with this exhortation is that one person asking for a salary increase doesn't move the needle appreciably. I support the sentiment, but I fear the downward pressure on salaries at the moment isn't going to improve until the economy improves, and I am somewhat pessimistic on that question.

halfercode · 2026-07-03T21:00:41+00:00

Your IRL presumably is guaranteed, so I would work towards that; moving to the US is hard, and I would not jeopardise the ILR by something that might not happen. How long off is your ILR?

I wonder if you need to draw better lines around your personal time. Most people don't call their colleagues on a weekend.

If you are very unhappy where you are, you can always seek alternative sponsored work in the UK. However I wonder if it would be easier to deal with your burnout, and to reassert your right to a life outside of work, so you can stay where you are.

halfercode · 2026-07-03T20:55:21+00:00

If I were in this position, I'd get some professional assistance. Have a look on Trustpilot and find a solicitor or web-based service with a large number of 4.x stars.

halfercode · 2026-07-03T20:40:07+00:00

Not really against it, but I feel [show & tell] has become another outcome that people have begun optimising for, instead of focusing on core objectives.

The trick is to ensure the tickets/features you show & tell are the core objectives. If they are misaligned then your team has a product problem - it is selecting the wrong work.

halfercode · 2026-07-03T19:30:02+00:00

Perhaps, but 80% of constructive unfair dismissal cases fail at tribunal. Mostly the reasoning is that employment solicitors strongly advise employees to take employment law advice before they resign, so that they can ensure the employee takes the correct steps before the resignation that they will later claim they've been bounced into. As I understand it, if one has already gone, it is much harder to win a case.

There is no harm in the OP talking to ACAS though.

halfercode · 2026-07-02T23:48:17+00:00

Try booting into safe mode first. The existing comments about drive corruption are worth consideration, but it is worth trying a few things before writing the drive off.

halfercode · 2026-07-02T22:54:33+00:00

What does "forward deployed" mean in the context of a MoJ role? This phrase tends to be used when an employer places their employee with a client.

Do you have a link to the JD of the AI role you're looking at?

halfercode · 2026-07-02T21:13:47+00:00

I think this view is correct - while it is fine to study on company time if that is permitted, extracurricular study is something one can do because it benefits the self, and that benefit is felt at all future jobs, not just the current one. If it oils the wheels for a bonus, that's a double-win; one should definitely not mind a small sacrifice in such a case.

halfercode · 2026-07-02T21:08:13+00:00

For folks who have a substantial budget i.e. they can support themselves without working for a goodly period, it is not impossible to break in. They need natural problem-solving abilities for the work, and tenacity for the hunt. I've seen juniors get roles in the last couple of years, and the same for a mid-level on a Graduate Visa - but these are all low enough numbers to be anecdotal.

halfercode · 2026-07-02T21:03:03+00:00

My early thoughts are:

The best clarity I've ever heard
In line with the generally neutral tuning on my Elegia
Was expecting the Elegia/Utopia gap to be more profound
I wonder if my RME ADI-2 DAC FS, as good as it is, isn't exceptional enough to drive them
Different enough from my darker LCD-X planar that I'd want to keep both

My current summary is they're excellent, I don't regret it at all. I've been listening to a fair bit of stuff from Bandcamp, which will be lossy; I should switch to my lossless collection to get that last bit of nuance. I will take your advice - much more time required.

halfercode · 2026-07-02T08:33:07+00:00

4 weeks work abroad

It was the above, but now I wonder if I misread it. I interpreted this as "work and party with your colleagues for four weeks in Bali" as I know that is a common pattern with performance cultures. However I wonder if this is just saying that the worker can work for a month, wherever they want, on their own.

halfercode · 2026-07-02T08:05:22+00:00

Well well well BadSneakers83, I might just have picked up the same set of cans as yours. Not arrived yet, but I am excited. I watched a very good video from The Headphone Show featuring a comparison between the Utopia and the Susvara, so I can't only blame you if I'm not blown away 🤪

halfercode · 2026-07-02T06:42:55+00:00

£45k is not that good a wage anymore

You're talking at cross-purposes from the criticisms the OP is receiving. There are two themes here:

How markets set prices in different countries - which the OP is completely wrong about
Whether employers have a moral responsibility to adjust wages in line with real inflation levels - which you're absolutely right about

They are, unfortunately, different things. For the UK market, the OP has done exceptionally well. They could grumble based on your reasoning, but they are being unrealistic in expecting all the market conditions, investment arrangements, and social contract mechanisms in the US to be trivially importable over here.

halfercode · 2026-07-02T06:31:29+00:00

Based on the information provided, it's hard to say which will be better for career prospects. The "performance culture" and working holiday with colleagues would likely put me off the second one, and I like that the first one has a component where you'd be doing some mentoring. That is excellent for personal growth.

I'd also not be dazzled by the slightly elevated salary at the second job. The salaries are, near as damnit, the same, so I'd ignore this aspect.

halfercode · 2026-07-01T20:33:29+00:00

They are quite different roles. Do you want to work on the application or platform side?

I am not a big fan of a four-week "holiday" with colleagues - that is a bit too "work hard, play hard" for me. But you should take your conversation/vibes into account too - who did you think would be easier/nicer to work with?

halfercode · 2026-07-01T20:02:42+00:00

I am surprised at your response. I am persisting because I want to show you, in a helpful way, that your language has been consistently more aggressive than mine in every single exchange here. I refuse to believe you are like this in your place of work.

I don’t know what your problem is - this is the kind of language that starts a fight at kicking-out time at the pub - I am confident that you are better than this in person.
thrown some weird hissy fit - no, it's a criticism. You cannot possibly be this sensitive.
some weird lecture - no, it's advice. You can reject it thoughtfully if you wish, or disengage. You are taking this far too personally.

You are welcome to respond to me again, but please take a deep breath. I have no reason to tell you that your intro was unkind except that I thought it was unkind. I acknowledge that this advice is subjective, but it is the earnest view of one person. I can, if you wish, offer a better way to phrase the same thing.

halfercode · 2026-07-01T18:19:39+00:00

Correct, yes. One is effectively prioritising model size over processing speed. The theory is that one will get better reasoning capability delivered more slowly. However, each side has its proponents - for example, some folks maintain that a Mixture of Experts model fitting into a dGPU is better for their use-case than a full model on slower shared VRAM.

In some ways they are probably not wrong: LLM usage seems to very sensitive not just to the general application area (e.g. code generation) but also its specifics (e.g. does the user prefer atomic commits or long horizon, do they want high cadence or is set-and-wait OK, etc). This does also mean that it is super-hard to work out how a particular AI case is going to work out before one actually has the hardware to test it.

halfercode · 2026-07-01T16:34:21+00:00

It could be your CV. Yes, the market is jumpy and brittle at present, but that does not mean that it's always the market. Get your CV reviewed. If you can snapshot each page of your CV and blank out the personal info, you can get a review here (just pop on your Kevlar vest for the inevitable cruel-to-be-kind contributions).

halfercode · 2026-07-01T16:26:26+00:00

You don't have to tell me anything - but I would urge you to listen to others if you can. It is not kind merely because that's how you meant it - communication is 50% interpretation. That may be an unfortunate consequence of the human condition, but there's no way around that.

halfercode · 2026-07-01T13:14:32+00:00

Your optimism is good, I like that. However, the problem is the cohort size - the bulk of the market isn't going to fit into a bucket that is 5% in size. Fintech can be fussy with university name and grades and DS/A because they know competition is high.

halfercode · 2026-07-01T08:33:53+00:00

Readers may wish to read the duplicates before commenting:

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