I find it somewhat hard to write about anything without being prompted to. (Note how “prompt” slightly changed its meaning recently.) But I like the idea of being able to look back at these posts in the future, so (I hope) I’ll continue doing the reflections.

A few days after the last post I departed Warsaw to return to Czechia. The last rail section was being renovated so to get to Szklarska Poręba I changed from train to bus in Jelenia Góra. I took the guitar back on prior visit home so luggages were manageable.

Already in the last week abroad I searched for a flat in Prague on bezrealitky ↗. This web is meant for communicating directly with owners. But many of the flats there are offered through a third party anyway. Considering that you save about one month’s rent when negotiating directly, I found it worth paying the small amount for the service (otherwise you cannot write to anyone there). Overall, I considered about 74 flats, wrote to about 30, and 12 got back to me with a reply. Of course, I made a table to keep track of everything (template ↗).

Flat search ↗

Out of those I got a viewing to 5 scheduled to the first two week days after I returned. This was nice, I saw varied flats in a short time-span so it was easy to compare. Boiled down, the options I visited were:

Price (Kč) Size (m2) State Location Opinion
17.370,- 16 new super nice Clear winner, closest to work but very very small.
17.800,- 28 old good Significantly bigger and for a similar price. Missing some furniture.
19.480,- 33 old good Well-equippe, noticeably more expensive.
19.000,- 28 new good Nice flat without furniture, somewhat far from work.
22.900,- 50 new nice Huge nice flat, too big for me.

First observation is that the prices are high. I lived in a dormitory for about 10 years for 4.200,-. After I had to leave I searched for a flat and a feasible price would be about 8.000,- (3 years ago). In the end I lived in a shared flat with friends for 3.000,-. Abroad, the prices jumped up and I paid 13 to 15.000,- Kč for a small flat.

Out of the options above I jumped on the first one. It was in a very good location – close to work and directly on metro. The flat was very small so officially it cannot be a flat and is operating in a gray zone. I paid a reservation fee that would transfer to deposit; my mistake was to do this before seeing the contract. I was sent the contract next day and my heart dropped the moment I saw it. Although it was (essentially) legal, it was very skewed towards the landlord – every clause you would expect in a contract was a little or a lot worse than you would expect. A particular example: it was mentioned that the carpet ought to be in an “newlike” state when I leave, although a normal use of property is given by law. I did talk to the owner about this and every time I got excuses in the sense that in reality this will be more lenient, but I don’t believe what is not written so I ended up backing of, losing part of the reservation in the process.

I then reached to the second flat on the list; I liked it as well during the viewing. I requested the contract and got sent a normal contract you’d expect, no surprises. The logistics were little complicated as the owner returned to Prague three days before I was scheduled to start working. Anyway, we agreed to sign the contract on the spot minutes before I move in, and we did.

I later found that the accessibility to my work is even better than I found – via train – which is included in the Prague year-round transport ticket. Two stations, 20 minutes door-to-door, lovely. After 3 weeks the train’s last station got cancelled as the renovations are being made at Masaryk station (sigh). The good connection should come back this December. A minor advantage of having longer travel is that I had some time to read.

Job Impressions

The work initial experience was nicer than I expected. People are friendly, especially on the team I’m in. I got bunch of work-related goodies, the corporate environment has got some advantages.

At first, everything went kinda overwhelming and slow; getting used to all the things that are happening. I think I’m getting the hang of it now, but still – the overall scope is big, so I think it will just take a bunch of time getting exposed to every facet to get familiar with everything. Overall, the first 3 months went so well that I’m pretty sure what I will not return to working as a scientist any time soon.

The one thing that will change all jobs is AI – it is unclear what the impact will be, this depends heavily on what the next advancements will look like. It seems that if the technology stagnates or advances slowly the AI companies will need to recuperate costs and the price of AI will increase, driving people and companies to look into self-hosting and local solutions. (I’d quite like this outcome.) We already see some replacements in jobs, but often those companies rolled back as they realized they need people. If the tech keeps advancing we may get to a point where AI indeed is sufficient for the target job. One stage is where a small number of highly-skilled employees are directing capable AIs instead of teams of people. Another is whenever AIs are capable by themselves, in which case essentially every non-physical work is endangered. As I noted, I’d prefer if AI would remain a tool and would be incorporated seamlessly into the society; we’d get benefits of today, but gradually with better optimization, the tech would spread to many usecases.

Games