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I ended the work week with a very grim email from Google saying that by the first of June, all of their paid services will be charged an additional 12% VAT. Some have also pointed out that freelancer platform Upwork has started doing the same. And others will soon follow suit.
The government's justification of the VAT on Digital Services Law is that it'll level the playing field between local and foreign digital businesses. Ok, granted. But the biggest mistake they did here is to implement it on all digital services, regardless if there's a Filipino equivalent service provider or not!
Take for example Google Workspace, GitHub, Canva, ChatGPT, and cloud providers like AWS and Microsoft Azure. Are there Filipino companies that deliver those services at that scale, quality, and efficiency?!
The 12% VAT puts individuals and companies who avail of these services at a very huge disadvantage. It unnecessarily raises their operating expenses during an unpredictable global economy that seems to always be on the brink of recession. These services aren't cheap by any means, and these businesses will need to pass on these charges to their clients and consumers. Worse, I won't be surprised that a lot of companies and freelancers might even be forced to close shop. It makes the Philippines less competitive, as our access to these tools just got way more expensive. Personally, I'm already looking into discontinuing some of my subscriptions.
I echo the sentiment of a lot of people here. What amplifies the frustration tenfold is that these taxes often don't even get allocated for the common good, but instead fill the coffers of the corrupt few. People are simply trying to make a decent living in these very trying times, but the government keeps finding creative ways to screw us up.
Please keep this in mind when you cast your vote on May 12.
With AI services bound to get slapped with 12% VAT, this makes this even more challenging. And not only that, online education services such as Udemy and Coursera will probably be hit too. Government should be lowering the barrier to entry to digital skills building, not raising it further.
And you know what's even worse? That over 18 million high school graduates don't even understand what they're reading. What's there to upskill if the baseline skills aren't even there?
Apologies for my sentiments on the VAT thing spilling over to this, but oh, man, good luck to us.
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You probably noticed how Google search results have been deteriorating, as the web gets flooded by AI-generated content. It's both funny and sad that we need to resort to cheap tricks like this to filter the bad AI-pples (get it? lol) out.
There's also another comment saying you can also add "-AI" to your search queries. What other tricks do you know?
Travis not only pinpoints some of the shortcomings of inexperienced developers, but also provides ways to overcome them.
I disagree with the assumption that only self-taught developers have these problems though. In my experience, it often doesn't matter if someone is a CS/IT graduate or self-taught. But it is quite disappointing for CS grads to exhibit these.
Also, the comment that advocates for preventing self-taught developers from getting into tech is absurd. I've also addressed this kind of rhetoric on my podcast.โ
While it'd be good to be able to land tech jobs in a matter of months (and some do get lucky), these things take time. Following a well laid-out plan/course of action will increase your chances of success. Instead of treating this as a race, approach it as a journey. Yes, don't lose that sense of urgency, but temper it with realistic expectations. And be consistent, patient, and resilient.
This video is a must watch for people who want to enter AI engineering!
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