What kind of work do you do? Has the present economic situation affected you?

[Meng]

I work in IT too. Yep lots of interest in openai/chatgpt.

I've been doing courses in the side to upskill myself in a more AI dominated market. Doing some courses on machine learning.

Money is fine. I've fixed my interest rate when if was around 2.5% so interest rates haven't affected me much.

I have been doing more privates as the price gap between shops and privates are closing fast.

[andrewv]

The real challenge for us punters is similar to the problem of house prices. If 30 years ago the average house cost say 5 times the average wage, but today it might be 10 times, this is a crisis. The same with punting, if 30 years ago going to a massage place for NHJ was $60 and my salary was $6,000 per month (so it cost me 1% each time) but today NHJ cost say $130 and my salary per month is $12,500 then it is affordable as it remains as 1% of my gross salary per month. But if NHJ is higher than 1% of gross (pre-tax) then life is difficult.
Before you write to attack my numbers, I am using the above to illustrate the point. I do not have the actual data.

[Axeman123]

I'm the guy that takes the little oval stickers off Granny Smith n Royal Garden apples in Woolies to keep others in a job.

[Vader]

I'm in IT. Recently lost a contract for work, now on another contract, but it's a very short term one.

IMO, the situation is quite dire, at least in the tech sector. Job market is terrible, and everyday there's a news story about this or that major tech employer cutting jobs.

And of course it has affected my punting habits. Hardly go anymore. Maybe 1 punt per fortnight max, sometimes none at all.

Punting is a major cost. It's the most obvious and easiest thing to cut down on that would give you the greatest saving.

To those that are still in a good position to punt, keep on punting and tell us about it!

Thought you were an Architect?

[BDU]

Kinda work in ITC nowadays. Used to be an IT God and paid accordingly but now just work on the fringes of IT and Comms.
Got sick of working 11 hour days.

Very busy through the Covid years and now back to pre 2019 levels or a bit higher and only "working" 3-4 hrs most days.
Pay is nothing to write home about, clear between $110K and $120K depending on bonuses, which ain't changed for about 5 yrs.

[rooter]

Thought you were an Architect?

He's a Renaissance man

[GoldfishMan]

Thought you were an Architect?

Solutions architect. I design software solutions for business problems.

[Vader]

He's a Renaissance man

You nailed it...

[gco0307]

Another in the IT world but my side is more operational that in design.

Never been a big punter averaging monthly and that is still comfortably done at the moment.

[DawnX]

Im in IT too, work for a multinational IT solutions company.

We are getting a shit ton of AI automation projects....

Most of the top companies in Aus to try replace 30-40% of the customer service staff with AI, like a multilayered chatGPT/ openai/microsoft ai, google ai etc.
Most of my clients are in banking/finance institutions, service providers, tech companies.

also were doing what everyone else is doing, AI generated software design / prompt engineering.( leveraging AI to write code)

Umm in terms of the economy, everyone affected in some way but i dont feel itbtoo much, i dont have dept and work keeps giving me bonuses.

I’m in the process of finding myself a junior software engineer position. Somehow reading this makes me feel the future is so dark for any aspiring junior software engineer

[Jamit]

I’m in the process of finding myself a junior software engineer position. Somehow reading this makes me feel the future is so dark for any aspiring junior software engineer

I guess your approach might be to learn everything you can about AI technology so that you can be an enabler as many companies will want to be in on the action and need people to advise.

True though. It is all moving scarily fast. Definitely it is another revolution in the making comparable to the internet going ballistic in 95/96 and the smartphone wave after 2010.

Many white collars including managers will find themselves redundant in the next 5-10 years and only the most savvy will survive, unless companies can outsource your job (language will be less of a barrier so more offshoring). However new jobs will emerge in cybersecurity as the fraud will be so sophisticated that there will still need to be humans around to sort things out.

And of course the whole internet might come crashing down with a mega virus (possibly generated by AI) then we will all be doing things the old way for a while and might have a rethink.

PS inflation may not actually be a problem in a few years, more unemployment induced deflation.

In the end the WLs and the MLs will be the last left standing as sex bots are a joke.

[bistro]

Corporate Sales offering solutions and risk management. Making 200k per year on average, even during Covid i made more.
Doesnt matter though, once i got married, its jail time, i can only come to this forum once in a while when i have a chance. Thats the most fun i got these days

[Raybo]

Haha, this thread has confirmed what most MLs and WLs know, IT workers are probably their biggest client base.

I don't normally mention work, neither do the girls until after a few visits. almost always, when I tell them I work in IT they'll say they have so many customers in the same industry.

I will say though, that IT these days is a very broad term and covers a very wide range of roles and duties.

[Jamit]

Not even close.... 5-10 years before white collar managers redundant? AI created viruses? Internet crashing down?
Im assuming youre into sci-fi

I hope you're right that the timeframe for change is decades, not years. I have a vivid imagination yes.

Apparently, big-tech is trialling bot executives with some success and a Chinese listed company has an AI CEO that is surprisingly effective. However managers are safer than junior service employees for sure. I think the threat of mega computer viruses have been talked about for a while but we have been lucky so far. If they become self improving viruses learning loopholes as they go it could make it difficult to address them.

So if you are a manager in IT, especially in AI or cybersecurity, then you are pretty safe as there will always be good work around, or an ML or WL to service those IT managers.

To answer the original point, getting into IT now is not such a bad thing, just be strategic about where you go with it and you will have plenty of money to kill the stress with an occasional sexy massage.

[rooter]

Haha, this thread has confirmed what most MLs and WLs know, IT workers are probably their biggest client base.

Stereotypes don't just come out of nowhere. There is often a solid basis to them

[Meng]

Haha, this thread has confirmed what most MLs and WLs know, IT workers are probably their biggest client base.

I don't normally mention work, neither do the girls until after a few visits. almost always, when I tell them I work in IT they'll say they have so many customers in the same industry.

I will say though, that IT these days is a very broad term and covers a very wide range of roles and duties.

I think a few reasons why IT has such a large customer base.

- Pay is decent. Most IT workers would have base 6 figure salaries. Meaning more disposable income.
- Working from home means it's quite easy to pop out for a quick punt during lunch and be back for your afternoon meetings.

[GoldfishMan]

I hope you're right that the timeframe for change is decades, not years. I have a vivid imagination yes.

Apparently, big-tech is trialling bot executives with some success and a Chinese listed company has an AI CEO that is surprisingly effective. However managers are safer than junior service employees for sure. I think the threat of mega computer viruses have been talked about for a while but we have been lucky so far. If they become self improving viruses learning loopholes as they go it could make it difficult to address them.

So if you are a manager in IT, especially in AI or cybersecurity, then you are pretty safe as there will always be good work around, or an ML or WL to service those IT managers.

To answer the original point, getting into IT now is not such a bad thing, just be strategic about where you go with it and you will have plenty of money to kill the stress with an occasional sexy massage.

Yeah I read about that AI CEO. Not surprised at all.

Probably the hardest part about holding a high rank C-suite role is the human factor. The stress of trying not to screw up because your pay packet is huge, high expectations, politics, clash of egos, etc.

All are problems that would affect a human being, but if you put a machine in those roles, more than likely the machine would out perform the human because they would be immune to all these human problems.

[Soton]

I will say though, that IT these days is a very broad term and covers a very wide range of roles and duties.

True dat.
In the old days you had to be well above average smart with problem solving and analytical skills too.
Designing networks based on the theory alone and having to understand interrupts snd registers to make a computer work.
Not click and self configure like today or plug n pray.

The days b4 firewalls .....heaven

[Double_Adapter]

Yeah I read about that AI CEO. Not surprised at all.

Probably the hardest part about holding a high rank C-suite role is the human factor. The stress of trying not to screw up because your pay packet is huge, high expectations, politics, clash of egos, etc.

All are problems that would affect a human being, but if you put a machine in those roles, more than likely the machine would out perform the human because they would be immune to all these human problems.

Keep dreaming... everyone's been watching too many Terminator movies or reading too much shit on singularity and ASI.
An EMF/EMP bomb will take care of all that cloudy artificial horseshit.
Long live punting and the WLs and MLs that service the industry.

[Raybo]

I think a few reasons why IT has such a large customer base.

- Pay is decent. Most IT workers would have base 6 figure salaries. Meaning more disposable income.
- Working from home means it's quite easy to pop out for a quick punt during lunch and be back for your afternoon meetings.

Good coin, especially if you do a good job and it is recognised by the businesses you support.

I literally have other IT companies knocking on my door every day or throwing around nice entertainment budgets to keep me enthusiastic about their products. This ends up being a long lunch or dinner and quite often a punt afterwards, sometimes self-funded. 😁😁😁