dull numbers journal

[10cents]

It was an exceptionally successful month for me. Conversion of SP500 shares to Polish shares and Polish bonds turned out to be profitable. But am I not happy too early considering the current unpredictable political situation? Taking advantage of the short winter days, when there is nothing to do outside the house, I devoted some of my free time to work. And here again I was successful. The data quality control project that I prepared turned out to be something desirable and appreciated. So I am ending this hated season of the year which is winter in a great mood and I am waiting for spring and summer.
My savings currently cover:
73,4% of the sum, when I can fulfill 4% rule or 220 months of living out of my savings. Est monthly cost of living 4.315 PLN.
NW = 949K, I'm so close to my first million.

[delay]

Congratulations on the data quality control project! I did something like that, comparing settings between systems and pointing monitors at the right endpoints. It gave me a warm feeling but over here few people appreciate it. Perhaps the systems I cleaned up are scheduled for phasing out The longest part of the winter is behind it, over here between cold and rainy days there is already some sun to enjoy.

[10cents]

March is the month of harvest, financial harvest. Both me and my wife are paid annual bonus in the amount of 150% of salaary. This month we did not have any special expenses. So we were able to put aside full amont. On top of that, we life from one salary, so we also put asise one salary - as always. Moreover, taking into account that polish stocks are still bullish - yes, we were able to cross over 1million in retirement savings. This make me thinking about how to report my savings. My plans are to go somewhere in south Europe to get more sun and leave dark-rainny polish weather. Using polish currency doesnt make sense while I have such plans. So, I will start reporting both saving and expenses in euro currency. Today EURPLN i 4,20 so my saving converts into 239K euro. How about predicted cost of living? Safely Assuming that I want my life not be worse that some random italian in their retiremnt ages I have some money to set aside. Average annual pension income in italy is abiut 20,000 euro, so its about 1500 euro net per month. This can be a new targer for me - 4% rule of savings to be about this amount. Right now it is 957 euro. Sounds like a long journey? No, its europe and we have state pension. Yes, state pension is in a threats, but somenthing will be paid. I can say more - all my prefessional live I have been paying high social contributions, and they estimates me to have ~1000 euro net pension, but in 13 years. But I dont want to wait so long, I dont want to work so long. So I have to be flexible, utilize my tax free pension account, but also put aside 'transition' money for the period when I finish my work, but still not be eligible for state pension. It all require detailed planning. Right now - I have some targerts to strive for.

[10cents]

What a strange month it was!!! Stock market went down and up. But what next? One polish sayings is like this: ' You don't change horses during crossing the river'. Ana I behaved like this. Not a single move in the financial field. Was it beneficial? Yes! Will it be in future? I dont know.
War seems to be over. But with what result? Presidential election in Poland will be next month.
To many unpredictable events.
Plus there's this story about customs duties imposed by the USA.
This is also unpredictable.
Work situation seems to went calm down.
EURPLN exchange rate went little up.
My savings currently cover:
76,11% of the sum, when I can fulfill 4% rule or 228 months of living out of my savings - still 239K euro.

[ertyu]

How's inflation in Poland right now?

[zbigi]

Currently at 4.9% (March 2025 y/y).

[10cents]

The world is rushing forward so fast and the changes are so big that I don't know what to be afraid of.
Should I be more afraid of the revolution that artificial intelligence will bring to us or the ongoing war beyond our eastern border? The development of artificial intelligence is a threat to me, my job and my paycheck. People with 1-2 years of experience using copilot are able to write code that is just as good as what I write after 25 years of work.
And the company can pay them 30% less than me.
Companies notice this, as does the one I work for, and see the savings.
A good code that a developer without much experience but with copilot support can write in 30 seconds would take me 2 days to write. It will generate unit tests with one click and code documentation with another click.
It's not juniors who are at risk - it's seniors. Someone else will do their job faster and cheaper.

So - a new threat has reached me and I don't really know what to do about it. Yes, I will make an effort not to lose this fight, but it seems to me that my professional experience pales in comparison to the enormous efficiency in work that can be achieved with the help of artificial intelligence.

However, my fear is reduced by the fact that I am already 1-2 years away from achieving full financial independence. I assume that I will manage to do it before the company decides that I am unnecessary and too expensive for them, but the fear always remains.

My savings currently cover:
76,4% of the sum, when I can fulfill 4% rule or 229 months of living out of my savings.
NW = 245K euro. Yes, it was a good month for polish assets.

[zbigi]

People with 1-2 years of experience using copilot are able to write code that is just as good as what I write after 25 years of work.

Interesting.
Is this happening in your job already? Is their code just as good and you have no other advantages over them? What kind of codebases are you working on?

[10cents]

My job consist of 10% of maths, 20% of statistics, 20% of software developments, 10 % of sec-ops and 40% of domain knowledge. We just deal with the data. Exploratory data analysis, looking for anomaly, identifying patterns, dealing with outlier. Currently we switch our main effort from ETL towards predictive analysis. So, it is just dealing with numbers. Domain knowledge is the most difficult to be replaced by AI, but the rest .... easily.
To be precise, it is not AI that will replace us, but instead of writing code, I will read and correct code generated by AI. This note of creativity will disappear. I will become a code reviewer for AI. It sounds like a completely boring job, devoid of fun, devoid of the element of creation. Moreover, having an AI assistant will allow me to demand more, faster .... the team will deliver more and faster .... we will become like a production line for accepting code generated by AI. My work will be similar to working on a production line creating plastic parts in an injection molding machine. I will only be such a QA, and I will no longer be a creator. Or maybe it is just my negative attitude?

[jacob]

I read an article recently (dunno if it was here) that coders are indeed at risk from undergoing the same process that turned mechanics into assembly line workers: The job becomes less complex, less creative, more repetitive, and faster paced.

This is a different take from the more common presumption that AI will just replace people. Instead, AI will simplify the work which will allow employers to demand more productivity from more workers with increasingly less expertise.

[zbigi]

@10cents

Sounds much like data science to me. I did not think about that, but yes, the code writing part of data science sounds much more automatable with AI than the code writing in software engineering (because, for DS code, the context window is small enough to be manageable by today's LLMs).

As for your outlook, isn't the math and statistics part more fun and creative anyway? If I were doing data science, I'd love to have a tool write quick one-off scripts for me for exploratory data analysis, so that I can rapidly go through ideas.

[zbigi]

This is a different take from the more common presumption that AI will just replace people. Instead, AI will simplify the work which will allow employers to demand more productivity from more workers with increasingly less expertise.

This is a trend that has been happening since at least nineties. Back then, you needed a true geek to write any code that has commercial value and does not crash every five minutes. Speed of development was also slow - languages like C++ are not very friendly. Now, you have much easier languages, development ecosystems and even OS-es (the browser is basically the most popular OS today), so that a person with 1-2 years of learning can already contribute at junior level in a professional environment.

[10cents]

OK, another month behind me. Nothing significant important happened. Summer is already and world looks better. I went on a short vacation to polish seaside. Wow, hot this area is developing!!! So fast, on a such a big scale. It seems that 1/3 of polish population could move into holidays homes. And they are still building new one. Polish coast look so pretty now. Far much better than splnish or italian. We do not allow to buld in firs line from the sea. I'm so impressed what I saw.
My savings currently cover:
77,2% of the sum, when I can fulfill 4% rule or 231 months of living out of my savings.
NW = 249K euro. Yes, it was a good month for polish assets, again.