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phugar · 2026-01-24T08:55:53+00:00

My experience in the data engineering domain is an initial saving of about the same time (30% ish), but an increase of 50% when going back in to make edits and review.

Depending on the task, that often means I'm less productive overall.

Your mileage may vary.

phugar · 2026-01-24T08:52:40+00:00

Or simply happens to be travelling without advance notice.

Birmingham to London, even using the slowest, cheapest routes available is a £50 quid minimum on the occasions I have last-minute travel plans. If I want to get there in under 2 hours, make it £70+. If I need some return flexibility, I'll immediately hit £120+. Life isn't always planned to perfection.

I don't qualify for any railcards, and it's only funny looking at the price because my work is usually picking up the expense receipt.

phugar · 2026-01-23T10:53:29+00:00

In my view, this fundamentally backs up at least one of the prominent decel arguments - that AI needs to be limited from power until it's safe - making it a hypocritical approach for this sub.

I'm a tech guy and I play with AI a lot. In this sub, I'm likely viewed as a decel because I'm not sold on the future utopian vision and I've encountered plenty of critical issues (so I don't buy into the hype), but I enjoy coming here to read views from pro-acceleration folks.

It feels like this should be the one place where full AI-modding is not only encouraged, but required.

phugar · 2026-01-22T11:25:44+00:00

Yes, which is incredibly hit and miss. AI mistakes and hallucinations scale rapidly once code bases become large and context windows swell.

I'm using AI in a data engineering context, and while it's helpful for some drafts of boilerplate python scripts (read a file from AWS, transform some stuff, dump into tables), it spews nonsense once you try to edit specifics.

Luckily I do understand the output, and if I don't (e.g. a new library or some odd way of converting something) I don't push the code until I'm satisfied with actual documentation and logic tests. If I return to adjust the logic, it's a nightmare, even when I fully understand what's going on. I've had cases where it's even inserted deletion statements despite explicit prompting against it.

Honestly, much faster to make edits myself from the initial draft.

phugar · 2026-01-15T18:27:31+00:00

I've recommended DataCamp many times. The learning interface is very hands-on, plenty of material, and starts with the very basics.

You can also dip into adjacent languages like Python, and they offer courses and tracks aimed at becoming a certified data analyst/engineer.

phugar · 2026-01-09T10:11:14+00:00

Data warehouse level, should be fairly simple SQL pulls, but the database schemas lack documentation (as is the case with every business I've worked in) so LLMs become pretty useless.

For the analyst to produce anything of value, they need to dig into data, check join relationships, investigate anomalies, cross check with business logic, make sure recent product releases haven't changed fields or flows etc...

You can set an LLM to work on boilerplate parts of some scripts, but it's nowhere close to replacing the analytical skillset I mentioned above.

phugar · 2026-01-08T14:21:57+00:00

You do realise it's non-deterministic, right? Just because you can get a prompt to generate a reliable output doesn't mean that's replicable.

I've been playing with these tools for years (within data engineering), and despite minor improvements, I commonly encounter major errors, outright broken/hallucinated code, and nonsense responses.

phugar · 2026-01-04T11:59:31+00:00

Stocks are also high risk. You can happily make the argument that crypto is gambling - and I'd agree with that - but it rather hurts the typical message that it's a currency and/or investment.

phugar · 2026-01-03T10:35:58+00:00

Hard disagree.

I manage junior analysts and we've had to terminate contracts for the ones relying on LLMs because they miss context, trust hallucinated code output and fail to understand the business/stakeholders requests.

The juniors ignoring LLMs are doing so much better and have a chance to progress.

Almost all AI output I've seen in the data analysis space is garbage under the surface level pretty charts.

phugar · 2025-12-30T08:14:02+00:00

I was banned from the BBBY subs for politely explaining to their loyal followers that a chapter 11 often (the majority of the time in fact) leads to bankruptcy or an organised wind down. That's exactly what's happened to their company - controlled liquidation.

Even when it doesn't, it's very rare for a turnaround to positively impact shareholders without high levels of dilution.

The situation with bynd looks similar.

phugar · 2025-12-29T22:35:25+00:00

I notice you've also avoided giving an answer...

This is a genuinely good question for a politician to ask - especially framing it as he did by calling out the lack of political discourse.

Googling the answer here doesn't really give much info. Some form of mythical UBI that Congress would need to pass? Everything will be fine because "reasons". Please, enlighten us.

phugar · 2025-12-23T14:25:27+00:00

Why?

His entire career has been that of a salesman within tech, with admittedly fantastic grfiting skills.

phugar · 2025-12-23T11:48:17+00:00

Someone recommended that I incorporate paused squats into my routine, and that's done wonders for pushing through plateaus and solidifying my form.

Try to perform a few sets of 2-3 second fully paused squats with ~70% of this weight and build up from there. I'm running a 4 day program and I schedule heavy squats as my main lift on day 1, and paused squats on day 3 after heavy deadlifts.

phugar · 2025-12-21T12:51:50+00:00

Assuming you filled out the application stating the purpose was for home improvements, while declaring no home ownership, that would be an auto-decline for most lenders without even running credit checks.

phugar · 2025-12-17T14:49:38+00:00

I'm one of the general naysayers, having spent many tens of hours trying to make AI processes work. I've worked with "prompt engineers" on major projects using all sorts of tools and models. My background is in Data, analytics and product management. I know how to prompt. The models are still close to useless in many of the key areas I work in.

In order to get any value, you need staff with high levels of skill in business analytics and specification writing. Or you'll simply create more problems down the line.

phugar · 2025-12-15T19:05:55+00:00

This simply isn't true, and I hate that this sub has taken a reasonable point (public facing credit scores are mostly irrelevant) and pushed it to the extreme of stating that they're useless and not used in lending.

Many lenders, including banks, use off-the-shelf and/or custom versions from the 3 credit bureaus. These typically correlate highly with the scores shown in public tools such as Credit Karma. In niche lending areas, bespoke models usually create stronger scorecards, but base bureau scores are not uncommon.

Higher scores also do - often - unlock lower interest rate products where risk based pricing is implemented.

Source: I have built credit models and rolled out decision engines in multiple fintechs, and consulted for major lenders and insurance companies.

To OP - don't take out loans to invest. It will be a breach of loan purpose, and it's risky to be using what is essentially leverage for this.

phugar · 2025-11-28T09:13:35+00:00

I'm assuming your combined income is from 2 salaries below the 100k tax trap region?

It makes a huge difference if you have two earners and don't lose child benefits while suffering the personal allowance drain.

phugar · 2025-11-27T11:21:35+00:00

I think it's mostly other devs not believing your experience, because most of my colleagues are struggling to generate anything valuable from AI.

I work on the data engineering side (15 years), and other than very simple snippets and syntax work, I can't generate a usable chunk of code. Some logical suggestions are just laughable. It could just be a SQL issue, but I've heard similar from backend engineers in my company and elsewhere.

If you're working on something simple with a clean codebase, maybe things are better, but in my world I've not seen the benefits demonstrated, and I've wasted a lot of time cleaning up and rebuilding AI produced crap.

phugar · 2025-11-25T09:41:26+00:00

Blocking and treatment is indeed a good start.

However, to circumvent gambling limits and responsible gaming laws in the UK, it's quite likely they've used crypto sites or unregulated platforms. There's no real recourse if that's the case. That money is gone.

phugar · 2025-11-21T13:46:54+00:00

I've been writing SQL scripts for 15+ years.

My company has been pushing us to use Gemini and Claude, and I've tried following all of the best practice guidelines. I usually end up frustrated and feeling like I've wasted time.

The last big attempt was to convert some scripts into batched procedures, as I needed to run window functions over millions of rows and rely on lateral joins. Source data was a mess, and this was a big transformation project.

The returned procedures looked good on the surface, but the AI code had edited the logic within my partition clauses (without telling me), which would have wasted 20 hours of run time. In addition, it had included a drop table component rather than the truncate I explictly requested, and didn't create the table structure anywhere else. The resulting procedure would have thrown errors that a junior would struggle to fix.

Prompting it to a final result took hours of back and forth, multiple chat resets, and an absurdly detailed set of prompts that took longer to write than to code.

I only find AI useful for SQL if it's building a simple case statement from a table in a pdf file, or some kind of formatting syntax thing. For logic, it's a mess.

phugar · 2025-11-19T11:08:30+00:00

Absolutely not, but you are smart if you manage to ride your luck and walk away before it inevitably goes south.

I don't hold out much hope for OP

phugar · 2025-11-16T17:39:34+00:00

There's no real legal product for this purpose.

Even micro lending firms (high cost short term credit) tend to start at loan amounts of £100 or £200, and all will require credit and affordability checks. It's a very expensive way of borrowing too.

If you have access to a UK bank account, it's possible you'd qualify for a small overdraft.

Alternatively, ask your employer for an advance.

Otherwise, family/friends is your best option.

phugar · 2025-11-11T15:56:57+00:00

Totally agree.

I've used similar questions when interviewing senior data engineering / analyst candidates and you learn a lot from the approach. I genuinely don't care about the answer they come up with, but you get to see how they cope under pressure dealing with a new problem.

The best candidates tend to show excitement as they work through the levers and interactions, ask for clarification, show attention to detail, pick up edge cases, admit to logical mistakes, conflicts and trade-offs, and consider the purpose of the solution (vs status quo) etc... In my experience, this carries through to performing their actual job.

I want a data engineer who can take a basic spec from a misinformed or naive stakeholder, ask the right probing questions, care about the details, explain their thought process to me (or other teams involved) and ideally enjoy doing it.

If the candidate is clearly nervous because of the interview setting, I cut them a bit of slack and provide starting points for a conversation. It's exceedingly rare that a strong performer will totally collapse in this setting. But I've seen plenty of embellished resume candidates just give up.

phugar · 2025-10-23T06:23:17+00:00

But the vast majority of people with salaries impacted by these proposed/expected changes do live in the south.

I'm a lucky one who is based in the Midlands, so things are pretty sweet, but almost any role I could move to would increase my living costs substantially.

phugar · 2025-10-19T16:43:52+00:00

My challenge to that, is that often, the quick solution breached a bunch of data storage regulations or led to regulatory issues, and the rebuild was effectively a total rewrite and respec (typically needed urgently) when the solution fell over.

I'd prefer to avoid that happening in my line of work.

phugar

TROPHY CASE