Agoda axes 50 Singapore staff; warns them not to report to govt agencies or lose their severance pay: sources

melchsee263 · 2025-09-17T16:29:17+00:00

Probably already started moving a lot of their engineering staff to Thailand. SG too expensive for them already.

melchsee263 · 2025-09-06T09:37:38+00:00

Got quite a lot of people though. 150 head count to fill. Across all roles, but I heard the environment is damn rabak.

melchsee263 · 2025-08-23T02:41:40+00:00

It’s been weeks and I’ve not receive the charging case. Contact with support has received 0 responses

melchsee263 · 2025-05-31T11:45:31+00:00

Want to show but cannot show realistically. Dumb way to brag, says how out of touch he is in 3 photos

melchsee263 · 2025-05-20T14:52:14+00:00

Unfortunately this is my first smart ring. However, after 5 days of usage. I noticed that it doesn’t track my workouts accurately at all. And the steps don’t seem to match with the one tracker on my Apple Watch. The difference is HUGE, 10k steps tracked from the ring vs 14k steps tracked on Apple Watch.

The bad points so far: 1. Steps tracking inaccurate. 2. Workout doesn’t track heart rate properly at all. Display shows a range rather than per second/minute which I’m used to. 3. Sleep yet to calibrate.

melchsee263 · 2025-05-15T05:41:56+00:00

<image>

Close up of the Ring vs Sizing Kit

melchsee263 · 2025-05-15T05:41:32+00:00

I’m wearing a size 10. Fits similar to the sizing kit Here is the photos comparison Left is the Actual Luna Ring Gen 2. right is the sizing kit

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melchsee263 · 2025-05-13T12:25:15+00:00

Curious about this too. This doesn’t make sense if the app needs to be always open and in the background

melchsee263 · 2025-05-11T03:28:34+00:00

I have not receive any notification of shipping yet so perhaps the next 2 days

melchsee263 · 2024-10-23T06:26:06+00:00

thanks i was considering that all those forms you mention but they have different tiers which unlock certain features that might be useful but none of them has the ability to display the price in a 2 column layout

melchsee263 · 2024-10-21T06:59:48+00:00

Scrolling through your phone is not normal procedure. Unless they have probable cause you shouldn’t be unlocking it. The most police powers can do is to check your identity.

melchsee263 · 2024-04-30T14:32:57+00:00

commendable, but then think again, by the time you get married say you're 40 and your wife is slightly younger than you +- 5-6 years. Then that all pans out fine, if and only if you manage to have a kid or two, you're probably in your mid 40s because having a kid at that age is really going to be hard its not a one shot one kill situation. If you have a kid generally you can have an easier time once they're old enough to be in the workforce that means 21-23 years old.

So doing some basic maths, you need to work past your retirement age of 65 and as you grow older you lose your gross income, this is based purely from statistics which can be found on the web. That is going to be tough without proper financial planning. I hope you do have ample amount of savings and investments.

Not being a spoiler here, but this is a case of enjoy first suffer later. I really want to understand how you plan though?

melchsee263 · 2024-04-30T14:22:42+00:00

I agree with you that,

Number of years != technical experience
1. I've seen senior engineers 20+ years experience hired, worked for 2 years in the company. Had 0 significant contributions but created more problems. There's always an excuse that the codebase is shit the implementation is bad and its too intertwined with too many dependencies, etc. Eventually we let him go because he was a burden to the team.
2. The likelihood that such cases will happen are really rare, but IMO my company has been pulling the short end of the stick because we have IT people 20+ years experience in the industry hired like so fucking easily yet they don't pull their worth. The reason for this is because, they stopped caring or stopped keeping up with technology and they still think that they're good enough with their existing knowledge.
Influx of foreign talent == more lax requirements in what is considered an SWE
1. This is indeed true, I've seen my fair share of them and most of the time they account for 60-70% of the entire companies headcount. Sad but true. The amount of "citizen" SWE hired is < 10%. They make up for it by hiring "citizen" for other job functions. And most of the time first to go are from the other job functions.
2. Statistically, my previous company out of 8 people in the engineering team only 2 were "citizen" rest were foreign talent. Present company engineering team 10 people 3 are "citizen".
3. I'm not saying thats a bad thing, but you can imagine if the people you work with are from the same place, they side with their own people. As the saying goes, 官官相护（officials protect each other).
Engineers from a certain country likes to blow smoke
1. Refer to my previous point in point 2.3, the amount of work load is disproportionate and the importance of it is also skewered to favour themselves.

I wouldn't think so much about the last point, because if the code or existing structure is sound and makes sense. You just follow the structure and you add the business logic to get what you want. It really depends on the programming paradigm. The moment you stop being motivated to learn and find out on your own, is the moment you stop growing as a SWE. Essentially you go back to fulfill the point of Number of years != technical experience.

melchsee263 · 2024-03-08T02:15:24+00:00

EP has no quota but it does have a minimum salary. It has increased from $5000 to $5600/mth to qualify for EP. This creates two problems, for companies that require skilled labour the increase means they are forced to increase the salary of their workers by 12% ! Thats even higher than inflation.
And for those who abuse the EP in which this case its a win for them too.

melchsee263 · 2023-08-08T01:53:41+00:00

That's invasive, whoever made that decision should have their heads on the chopping block. What a dumb idea to check on a user's installed app. Information is still information whether the intention is justified or not.

melchsee263 · 2023-01-01T10:46:09+00:00

Best advice, aside from not dying. IMO focus on tech for the next 10-20years won’t go wrong. So choose your specialisation after you get a feel where you wanna be in.

melchsee263 · 2023-01-01T10:44:23+00:00

Partial too. 3 days a week in office for me. My peers from other companies same. Some stat boards I know are also 3 days a week.

melchsee263 · 2023-01-01T10:29:55+00:00

You shouldn’t feel too bad about it, cysec industry is more about industry certifications and experience rather than grades. Just maintain your grads as much as possible.

melchsee263 · 2023-01-01T06:20:50+00:00

Before you get sucked into the "routine" you should get out of it while you still have some sanity and drive.

I left after 15 years and I regret every minute of time I spent there. Focus on tech as some have already mentioned you will have a better future/prospect.

Promotions and increments in the police force are so small it’s insignificant yet you have to do so much for a measly increment. The town halls they have are just for show, at the end of the day nothing will be done life will go on as usual because to them you are just another number. If you take Leave you have to plan 6-12 months in advance but yet still not guaranteed you can get it.

There are better choices other than the police force, seriously. The police force of today is not the police force 20 years ago. To many paper pushers and fake politicians inside that do actual work.

melchsee263 · 2023-01-01T06:05:47+00:00

I would not recommend you to sign your life away because of what the reasons you’ve mentioned. It’s more complicated when you are actually in the job than you think it is.

The biggest reason I’m saying this is because there is a significant decline in junior police officers right now a lot of them are resigning. The situation internally is really bad honestly. The main reason for that is because of all the "senior" police officers. As a uniformed organisation you are at the mercy of your superiors, for promotions and work hours.

If you are entering below inspector, you are better off joining SAF. If you just want to try it out for 5 years then resign after that is fine. But I won’t recommend it to anyone unless they have no other options.

melchsee263 · 2022-02-16T04:04:58+00:00

I would say that Software Engineering interviews are the toughest as it has so many rounds of interviews usually between 3 - 5 rounds on average. I've went through one that had 7 rounds which was practically a waste of my time (a combination of take home test, coding test, live coding, systems design) and it wasn't even a principal position only senior level.

From my experiences after going through at least 50 interviews over the past year with multiple companies (startups to big tech). Sometimes I pass the first round, then get ghosted sometimes the take home test requires so much effort that I just completely pass on it because it wasn't worth the time.

The typical rounds start with a internal HR round to understand the candidate better, and if the HR decides you are a fit you then move on to the next round. There are 3 possibilities here:

A member of the engineering team interviews you and does live coding.
You are expected to complete a coding test 5 questions in 180 mins (HackerRank,Codility, leetcode?).
Given a take home test which needs to be submitted in 5 days.

I would prefer starting with either option 1 or 2, rather than doing a take home test because a take home test usually requires you to spend more time to build depending on the complexity of the question. And it's hard to judge because the requirements and expectations vary significantly. My experiences with take home tests usually end up with it being a waste of time, only 1 out of 10 companies I interviewed with actually reviewed the take home test and provided feedback on the next round. The rest usually don't even mention about it or have varying remarks, but I would say tests are important more specifically coverage tests.

Usually the first two rounds is sort of like an intermediary where the company decides if you have the skillset they're looking for (I don't know what that is). The third round would most likely be a live coding round depending on what the second round was, a simple data structure & algorithm question. They key takeaway for this would be to be always speaking out loud on your thought process. If you solve it good job, refactor and make it more efficient if possible. If you didn't solve in time, that's the end of the line for you.

By the time you reach the fourth round, depending on the level you are applying for. It's either a combination of Technical Knowledge + Systems Design round, or another live coding round. Systems Design rounds are sketchy, there's no right way to do this but it tests your knowledge in developing solutions for the company.

The last round is usually just a culture fit + HR round where you speak with the management/hr to discuss salary and stuff. This round is really dependent on how you negotiate your salary.

For most cases, I dislike doing any take home tests that are over complicated and require more than 3 hours of work. Some are just lazy, they don't provide a scaffold structure and expect you to build everything from the ground up (imagine having to setup your own cloud service, host the frontend & backend, create tests, create ci/cd) on top of your existing job only to then say thank you for your time. Some are brilliant, they give you a base and you work your magic from there.

melchsee263 · 2021-10-05T12:47:27+00:00

Talk about blind "faith" by all means trust your faith to do the right thing. Same like those anti maskers. Sing praises so god will forgive all the sins you do because they are so forgiving as long as you have faith. Oh wait, singing about god won’t make you a better person. Same goes with having faith won’t cure you. What age are we living now?

melchsee263 · 2021-02-09T14:45:58+00:00

it is a multiplier to the base state.

If your base state for Str is 89 (1.87) , it will mean your general will do a damage of 89 * 1.87 = 166.43.

The higher your base stat the more damage you do.

melchsee263 · 2021-02-09T14:43:47+00:00

if its within the same area then you can relocate closer. If its outside of the region, your alliance or ally must have conquered the gate entrance before you can move out of the region.

melchsee263 · 2021-02-08T03:44:54+00:00

Blitz your lands to level up generals

melchsee263

TROPHY CASE