partial_accumen

The worst of it hasn’t happened yet. The point where consumers can no longer afford to consume is coming.

Its mostly already arrived.

“As of June 30, the top 20% of earners accounted for more than 63% of all spending”

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This means that the other 80% of Americans represent only 37% of the spending done today. If a company is looking to maximize profits the typical path is to do so by marketing to the group where they could earn the most money. That is less and less the bottom 80% of Americans.

The creator in that video seems to think the Chips Act subsidies were to benefit consumers by having affordable memory produced domestically. That wasn’t the goal. The goal was to derive drive GDP by having another source of domestic production, and drive job growth/tax revenue from workers working at the domestic facility. Lastly, it was to have strategic domestic production decoupled from other nations so we, as a nation, could not be held hostage by another nation (like we do to so many other nations) for crucial (pun very much intended) resources we need.

Nothing about that is about making RAM cheaper for retail consumers.

When Discovery merged with WB/HBOMAX most (all?) of the Discovery content (previously only on the Discovery+ paid streaming service) showed up on HBOMAX. So perhaps it will mean something similar here that it will mean getting more for less like it did then.

This sounds like the answer then. Activists get a ballot measure up for vote to outlaw corporate voting then spin up 100,000 LLCs on paper to participate in the next election.

The promise of “fiber to the home” is still mostly unrealized, but those trunk lines are out there with oodles of “dark fiber” ready to carry data… someday.

Counterintuitively, I’m seeing “fiber to the home” deployed more in rural an exurb areas. My guess this is because its lower density meaning installing and maintaining copper repeaters becomes more expensive than laying long distance, low maintenance, fiber. Additionally its easier to obtain permits because there is far less existing infrastructure to interfere with right of way and critical services.

We got fiber to the home in our exurb about 4 years ago here in the USA. Its really cheap too. 500Mb/s is $75, 1Gb/s $100, and 5Gb/s I think is $200 per month.

Again I get your point… but no reasonable plumber would make that mistake.

To extend your analogy, agentic AI isn’t the “reasonable plumber”, its the sketchy guy that says he can fix plumbing and upon arrival he admits he’s a meth addict that hasn’t slept in 3 days and is seeing “the shadow people” standing right there in the room with you.

I absolutely understand what happened here. The point is there is no benefit to these Agentic AIs because they need to be as supervised as a monkey with a knife… why would I ever want that? let alone need that

I can see applications for agentic AI, but they can’t be handed the keys to the kingdom. You put them in an indestructible room with a hammer and a pile of rocks and say “please crush any rock I hand you to be no bigger than a walnut and no smaller than an almond”. In IT terms, the agenic AI could run under a restrictive service account so that even if they went off the rails they wouldn’t be able to damage any thing you cared about.

You got me curious. I also have a Frigidaire, but its circa 2012 I think. I took my largest cast iron skillet (12" Brizoll) and put it on the range dry with nothing in it. I turned on the range and here’s what it looks like under a thermal camera after 50 seconds:

I see crescent you’re talking about, but the thermal difference between the hottest and coldest part of the pan is less than 1.2 degrees C. This was only on for less than a minute. The next time I’m cooking something I’ll perform this test again. Additionally, my range has 2 induction elements to cook on on the right hand side, and the left hand elements are electric thermal, so I can perform a non-inductive test too.

The induction makes hot spots which are inconsistent across my larger cast iron pan, requiring me to rotate the pan or move food in the pan around to get everything evenly.

I can’t say I’ve experienced this with my cast iron pan and induction range. Can I ask how big of a pan you’re using?

It would be interesting to see the Canadian traffic by provincial origin. I’m guessing the difference between, say, Newfies and Albertans is pretty different.

So he’s going to deport Elon, right?

My intention is to complete the IT Management degree and then evaluate whether I want to go on to an MBA or pursue more education in a different direction.

I thought about a graduate degree too, however my career really took off (partially because of jobs I was able to get that had a Bachelors requirement). A graduate degree at this point in my life would not advance my career further and actually probably reduce my success because of the time commitment and what it would mean I couldn’t do with that same time and energy. Maybe I’ll chase one after I retire just for fun!

My biggest worry with jumping into something entirely new is burnout.

I had this same worry for myself, and it is certainly a balancing act. Too much course load, and you won’t succeed on learning/passing then get burned out even if you do. Too little, and you might get “comfortable” again getting your time and schedule back to what you had before you started.

For me I found success by starting with one course per term for the first term, then two courses per term for two more terms, then three per term (finding out that was too much), then dropping back down to two per term. Additionally, I never took a term off. I was worried I wouldn’t go back, so I did the low-and-slow path or the entirety of my Associates degree to completion. Then when I got the new job (with tuition reimbursement), I did the same, low-and-slow until completing the Bachelors degree.

So, a plan is coming together. Thanks again for all your advice, this is good stuff and will absolutely help me on my path.

Right now you might be thinking “how am I going to find the time to do this along with everything else?!” After the 2nd week of this new responsibility you will have it worked into your schedule. You will then ask yourself “What was I doing before with all this time I found for school commitments?!”, and finally after you graduate a month or two later you’ll loop back and say “Where the heck did I find all that time for the school commitments!?”

You’ve got this! The hardest part is just starting. You are so close. Just. Start.

This is the first time I’d heard about the “trump accounts”. This looks like just another trump tantrum copying something Obama did. Obama created the “myRA” program in his last term in office which served the same purpose as these “trump accounts”, except myRA could be used by low income adults too which received government subsidies to encourage personal contributions. Also the investments were in government bonds, not stocks.

trump took office in 2016 and canceled myRA 6 months after.

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Warning incoming wall of text!!!

There are two things I’d recommend you give some consideration to altering from what you described as your current path so far:

#1 Don’t go for an IT degree

You have decades of experience in IT. You are going to learn very little from trying to get a degree for an area of expertise you already know. Yes, you’d be able to test out of a bunch of stuff, but in the end you’re still going to have to take lots of classes that will be boring for you or worse, you’ll have to “learn it wrong” because of the gap between academic answers and what we both know from experience is how it works in the real working world. From my previously aborted attempt at college after high school I knew “getting bored with classwork” was one of my weaknesses. Pushing myself to do work I knew was useless or wrong is a large part of why I think I failed to complete the first time. You may or may not have the same issue as I did. At best, if you are successful getting an IT degree, you’ll likely have learned little to nothing more than you know now.

Consider instead getting a degree in an area you don’t know backwards and forwards already. I chose the business/marketing path. There are a number of reasons I liked this path:

• The coursework is not generally difficult compared to technical IT material you and I have to consume on a regular basis for work. As I was doing full time IT at the same time, it was a really nice change of topic to be able to do coursework without getting more IT to deal with. It made it something to look forward to instead of dreading.

• Having the business education gave me fantastic view of what the organizations I was working for were trying to achieve with IT, where the challenges existed we have almost no visibility to in IT, and the ability to speak the language of business to C suite executives while fully retaining all of my IT knowledge I already knew. This business communication ability alone I can point to for several specific instances where I was later successful in an IT objective because I was speaking their language.

• As for the worry about having a degree not in IT, nobody cares what you get your Bachelors degree in. Employers always assume you did it after high school anyway, instead of as a mature adult. They just want the “degree” box checked for the hiring requirement. If you truly want a degree in the field you work in, do that as a graduate degree. There, it matters.

• Its cheaper to get the degree! Business and marketing classes are available from far more schools on far more frequent schedules. This means you can shop on price for your school with far more schools to choose from and things like lab fees and textbooks were generally cheaper too.

   

#2 Don’t go to WGU as your school of choice

WGUs business model, as I’m sure you’re aware, is different than most schools. Instead of a “per credit hour” fee, you pay a flat fee “per term” that allows you to take all the classes you can handle. However, that flat fee requires nearly a full-time student course load to break even compared to other “per credit hour” schools. One the surface its a good deal. If you were quitting your full time job, I might recommend it. Instead, if you’re keeping your full time job that means you’re going to be paying FULL PRICE per term, but only able to take advantage of a small fraction of that high cost.

#3 Costs (bonus unsolicited advice!)

Avoid taking on debt for school! I’m hopeful that your employer has some sort of tuition reimbursement. Many do! Check into that and find out what the terms and conditions are. Though many have a golden handcuff clawback provision, they are usually limited to 1 year. So if your degree takes you 3 or 4 years to complete part-time, you quit your job immediately upon graduation, at worst you only pay back 1 year’s costs. Further, if you’re laid off you don’t even have to pay back that 1 year! For whatever isn’t covered, pay out of pocket if you can. This is also why choosing a cheaper school is important. You’re at an age you should be contributing heavier to retirement, not taking on student loan debt (again if you have the luxury to avoid it).

I’m not sure if you have done much if any college before, but if you have, its entirely possible that any courses you passed can still be applied to your new degree attempt. I had credits that were over 17 years old (English, History, Math) that fully applied to my new degree saving me time, money and effort. You’ll find out all of this when you pick a school and have your first talk with your assigned advisor.

As for picking a school, this part of the advice may be out-of-date so take it with a grain of salt. Avoid “online only” schools. These target people just like you that are working adults, but they charge a high premium because they know you have money. There is also a bit of a stigma with employers for some of these schools. Most state support schools which are bricks and mortar offer many online-only degrees. This means you can get a mostly or entirely online degree, from an actual accredited (seek regional accreditation only! “national” accreditation is a scam!), while getting low cost schooling from a school that is established and recognizable to employers as legitimate.

Select your 4 year school, and see which Community College credits they accept. Community college be the least expensive courses you can find, and have your advisor at the 4 year school confirm these CC classes transfer 100% into the 4 year school. Your Bachelors degree will say the 4 year school name. Nobody asks or cares where you completed your pre-req courses. Don’t pay high 4 year school prices when you can pay cheap 2 year school class prices! Also, frequently there is an Associates degree with 100% overlap with your Bachelors school. This means you can achieve a 2 year degree without having to spend all the time for bachelors before you have something to show for your work. I got a 20% pay raise with a better job just from my prior IT experience and my new Associates degree in business/marketing.

If I may be so bold, here’s your homework for next week:

1. Find out what tuition reimbursement options your employer has. Its also possible they have preferred rates for specific schools so you need to find this out first.
2. Select your degree.
3. Select your 4 years school, and search their website for what 2 year/community college they partner with for full credit transfer.
4. Contact your school of choice through their admissions process, and get assigned an advisor (all this is free). They will be able to set up a meeting with you and walk you through the next steps after you communicate your goals with the school. You will come out of that meeting with a Plan of Study which is a document that tells you what classes you’ll need to take, the info required to calculate the approximate total cost of your degree, and give you a good idea of the time to complete it.

100% of the above homework steps have ZERO COST and ZERO COMMITMENT! There is no reason for you to NOT do these things as these are the critical answers of evaluation info I was missing when I was taking too long to get going. The very first time you have cost or commitment is when you enroll in your first class. Start with just one. Use that to get in the grove with what school will demand of you. After than you can ramp up the number of courses at once. Again, I did a regular load of 2 courses at once as I found 3 to be too many.

I hope this is helpful info. If this was too much info, my apologies. If you have other questions, feel free to ask. I want you to be successful in this!

At the time I was sure it was the architecture and planning I enjoyed, so I accepted a position as an Architect with another company. In the end though, I realized that it wasn’t the technical work I enjoyed, it was mentoring and building a team. It felt great to be the guy who could help take the ideas that the team had, and build them into a workable business solution. I even enjoyed bringing my engineers back down to ground level; sometimes a really good idea, just isn’t workable in the current landscape.

You are ready and qualified for a management position right now. This is most of what I would want to hear if I was interviewing you for a leadership role.

I know a degree won’t fix every problem, but at this point, working on new ones is what I’m after.

A degree fixes one single problem that I couldn’t overcome any other way: meeting the requirement of having a bachelors degree which employers require. It will do the same for you.

I’m in the evaluation stage, trying to make sure I can stick to it if I embark on this journey. Discussions like this help a great deal.

I stayed in the evaluation stage for far too long. There are steps a few into the process which require actual commitment. The first few steps don’t. Do those first few starting next week. What I found was that I was missing critical information for my evaluation I couldn’t get any other way beside action.

If you’re interested I’m happy to share more tactical knowledge and experience about what to do next as a mature working IT professional wanting a degree. Let me know if you’re interested in that.

I joined the IT workforce during my generals at college, before the .com crash in the 90’s. I dropped out and have been working my way up ever since. I’ve led teams, I’ve been an architect, I’ve been a senior engineer,

You and I were on much the same path at about the same time.

the door is closed unless I have the degree.

I saw this same thing as I was advancing. I made the hard (at the time) choice to keep my full time IT role and go back to school part time at the same time. I did part time three years Community College getting an Associates Degree. While not the director level, it did get me a better, higher paying, job. My new boss actually called out that degree as working in my favor to get the position. That company had tuition reimbursement, so while working that full time IT role, I took advantage of that to attend a university part time, and after another 3 years got my Bachelors. My Bachelors degree got me a more advanced role yet at a new org. That lead to far more advancement.

Here’s the good news. University work will be easy for you! You’ve grown into an adult with organizational skills, an awareness of your responsibilities, and time management skills. It will be significantly easier for you now, as an adult, than an 18 year old that doesn’t understand life yet. So I encourage you to do it! Figure out your degree program you want, and get a Plan of Study from a school. Enroll in a single course and see how you do. I think you’ll be surprised how manageable it is. Its time consuming, yes, but you’ll find the time. I kept to taking only 2 classes at a time, only term did I do 3 and it almost wrecked me while still doing my full time IT job.

I’m not after Fortune 500, I’ll go be a director for a balloon manufacturer or something, just a role where I can have a little of my own agency.

I,m not sure this place you’re imagining exists the way you’re describing. Each level up just trades for a different yoke to bear. At the director level you could be given unrealistic KPIs to meet, or a slim budget to do so. You might find you can’t achieve what you want because you can’t get or keep competent staff. Even if you do everything right, market forces or regulatory change can nullify all your plans which are then made meaningless or ineffective.

As you get higher into management, firing people absolutely sucks. Keeping on dead weight/underperformers/overstaff instead of firing them means you are robbing your ability to give raises or advancement to the other workers you have that are really performing well. So you fire them, but it still sucks.

I don’t say any of this to discourage you. This has just been my experience. Perhaps you’ll navigate the river differently and find what you’re looking for when you advance. But seriously, you can totally get a Bachelors degree, and you don’t even need to quit your current job.