daniel

@GergelyOrosz Interesting cultural hangups about elite talent compensation. £600k a year is less than the average EFL championship player in London

"However, in reality, they may end up pricing out, or poaching talent from, some of the capital's home grown companies." Let's celebrate when the market moves up (great for employees!) and not vilify it under the false pretence that this is bad. It's great for everyone...

@teo_kai_xiang The former PSC scholar?

"Ms Ashley Toh (...) replied that citizen interactions with the Government can be a “black box”. “When you use Shopee and order something from China, you get real-time updates. Sometimes, here, it’s something so important and personal and you’re like, ‘What’s happening?’"

@teo_kai_xiang OpenClaw is just what everyone thought Siri would be in 2012

People are so enthralled with the idea of OpenClaw because the desire to have a class of people preoccupied solely with executing your whims, but without any compensation, is like the defining struggle of humanity for time immemorial

@ViscountBP SkillsForce goes harder

Let me guess... WorkFuture SG.

imo the real danger is that the AI hype (justified or not) realigns this incentive. If one’s job security and career advancement now depends on AI adoption, the invisible pillar shielding low productivity white collar jobs vanishes

At the strategic level every company wants to cut costs to boost profitability. But from the individual manager’s career POV, headcount under management is a key KPI for advancement

This is an underrated observation. Anyone that’s worked in a large bureaucratic org knows lots of white collar jobs that could have been even removed pre-AI revolution. The question is why do they still exist? My pet theory is a principal-agent problem

@agihippo The system ruthlessly optimizes for median graduate salary. The tragic part is that the kids who actually like computers and have curiosity get crowded out by straight A strivers that view programming as a stepping stone to “management” roles

The best thing that happened in my school years was that I got destroyed in my a'levels. Had I done well, I might have done something more useless in uni like business or at that time, in Singapore, super hot like accountancy. CS was a "dumping ground" but it was the biggest blessing that happened to me. People also optimize their uni choices based on the courses cutoff, which is really strange if you ask me. This is herd mentality maxxing literally. With where I am right now, many people always assume I did well in my schooling years. Truth was that I was a horrible student. Exams suck and are pointless. I also almost retained at secondary 2 because idgaf. Conventional Singaporean parent wisdom about education is really misunderstood and suboptimal. As I raise my kid I will focus on them enjoying and learning to learn. The education system in Singapore is pointless and only good if you want to dive head first into a funky local optimal.

@swyx Vibe coding unmaintainable slop makes perfect sense if you view code that does x as the goal. Makes no sense from the old school perspective of code, people and institutional knowledge as a long term enterprise.

@swyx People view software engineering from mutually incompatible perspectives. Either as a generic unit of labor to produce “code” or as a craftsman like vocation. As tech careers became more lucrative in the past decade, the former group has outgrown the latter

AI anxiety is a serious mind virus. Software engineers are giving up on the one thing that could grant them tremendous power and impact out of fear and sloppy thinking. I recently campaigned for more software engineering education in my home country of Singapore. the goal was to 100x the number of AI Engineers in Singapore in 30 years, by taking the second language of the country, primarily Mandarin, and replacing it with Python. Yes, I would make Singapore the first country to teach Python (or Mojo!) in schools and require literacy on the level of math, nonenglish languages, or history Proposal was shot down because they felt uncertain that software engineering jobs would exist in 30 years. fundamentally not appreciating what it is software engineers actually do with tools that have increasingly higher abstractions over the last 50 years of software. When I realized the government did not want help and could not be helped to do the hard things needed to be a serious player, I gave up advising them.

@illyquid @rubicon59 @MikeFritzell One can only hope. The sgean preference for dividend paying reits is an intangible factor Though I imagine LHNs short term rentals is a more exposed to economic conditions vs worker dormitories

@jadenkore @rubicon59 @MikeFritzell They’ll pay off some debt with that cash. But yes that leaves the remaining property port and a multiple on the Reit management fees. Price does not make sense. Dynamic here might repeat with Boustead and LHN.

What are folks best picks in Singapore right now? (No overpriced hotness, please.)

@illyquid @rubicon59 @MikeFritzell And if I’m interpreting this right, they’re planning a 5-10% dividend in specie from the reit

@illyquid @rubicon59 @MikeFritzell By my rough calc its: - Stake in REIT (45.8% of 1.78B =~ 815M) - Cash raised (497M) that’s 1.31B vs its market cap 1.24B. Still leaves the remaining property portfolio. I may be missing something but the board joint chairman buying 450k last week seems like good sign

@visakanv When you ask “why?” twice and get told to “shut up, that’s just the way it is”

tbh this is what life felt like for me already as a kid

@finphysnerd Amazing call in real time. Congrats

Full disclosure, I've halved my position here from 10-5%. I got in around 1.35 and I sold at 1.48ish for a 10% gain, which I'm super stoked about in 3 days. I still hold a 5% position but I don't want to get greedy, especially as the momentum eases up. It now shifts from a trade

@finphysnerd No judgment here, my financial future also lies in Adrian Puljich’s hands

@jadenkore Gambling addicts haha. (I say that though I just threw 10% of my new wealth into a somewhat speculative short term Singapore shitco trade).

It's interesting the shift in mindset from wealth creation to wealth preservation. I'm no longer comfortable getting aggressively concentrated (>20%), and my general focus for ideas has changed to safe 10-15% returns, as opposed my traditional aggressive high hurdle rate. I'm

@finphysnerd It continues to blow my mind how slowly news gets priced in. Centurion took like a year to reprice

@jadenkore I just happened to be looking at Singaporean microcaps, they were trading at like 3x earnings mostly from Gemlife. And yeah, that would be because $100m Singaporean microcaps are slow to react to information. Nobody is looking. My bet is that more eyes are coming.

Ok I just tripled my position, it's now my largest position (despite it being up 50% in a week). They own 30% of Gemlife, which is reportedly ipo'ing at $2bn ($700m new capital) so their liquid stake should be worth $400m. Their current market cap is $171m and it doesn't even