Thread 16752864

commie workers' safety edition

Previous Thread: >>16736021

This thread exists to ask questions regarding careers associated to STEM.
>Discussion on academia-based career progression
>Discussion on penetrating industry from academia
>Or anything in relation to STEM employment or development within STEM academia!

Resources for protecting yourself from academic marxists:
>https://www.thefire.org/ (US)
>https://www.jccf.ca/ (Canada)

Information resource:
>https://sciencecareergeneral.neocities.org/
>*The Chad author is seeking additional input to diversify the content into containing all STEM fields. Said author regularly views these /scg/ threads.

No anons have answered your question? Perhaps try posting it here:
>https://academia.stackexchange.com/

An archive of some of the previous editions of /scg/:
http://warosu.org/sci/thread/15740454

>>16752677
so you make 80k?
>>16752704
Quite a juvenile response from a supposed graduate. Fact is you're trying to convince retards it's still the 80s and we're surrounded by massive contracts that don't go straight to the golf course and 50k starting isn't a poverty wage. IF your average 2025 grad can get a job out of a BS which is unlikely for ALL fields now., he's walking into a job that is not much better than that of a teacher, mechanic, or janitor.
STEM is too oversaturated to rely on "private industry" which is increasingly comfortable with hiring foreigners like you for increasingly smaller wages. But there's a bigger problem
nobody dreams about being a true, not romanticized engineer to begin with. nobody fantasizes about optimizing heat exchanges. nobody fucking cares about sizing bolts for flanges
Engineering employability is about as bad as compsci employability going into the 30s. You are selling yourself a pipe dream of being a tech entrepreneur or whatever when you should be respeccing into grad school physics, math or chem. I of course am assuming you have passion for some of this. If you got into stem for the cash I would suggest trying to become garbage man, they have pensions still.

>>16752885
Bold of you to accuse anon of being juvenile and then follow up with that drivel.

>>16752864 (OP)
>Said author regularly views these /scg/ threads.
Yes, I am still here. After 14 months I have made a new update:
https://sciencecareergeneral.neocities.org/

>>16752885
>You are selling yourself a pipe dream of being a tech entrepreneur or whatever when you should be respeccing

This post was literally written by a dumb Indian high schooler or something.

>>16752885
> You are selling yourself a pipe dream of being a tech entrepreneur or whatever when you should be respeccing into grad school physics, math or chem.

My nigga, what the fuck are you talking about. The whole meme with graduate level physics and chemistry is that you have all of this technical training and still have no job prospects. Getting a master's in the relevant engineering field is way more pragmatic than physics or chemistry for job security.

>>16752513
there is nothing preventing you from getting a PhD in the hard sciences with an engineering background. is that a good career choice? no, getting a PhD is retarded. but as an underageb& undergrad who doesn't know wtf he's doing there's no point in going for an academic degree over an engineering degree, you can always pivot to science later but you won't even be considered in many engineering career tracks without the appropriate engineering degree.

all the high paying jobs you can get with a physics or math degree are in shit like finance and (formerly) tech, they don't require either of those degrees specifically

guys Im doing EE right now, but wanted to change to Mechanical from the beginning (there was a problem with switching), I can do it next year, but I'm getting more internship opportunities with EE even as a second year student, just got accepted into a space project team
So idk what to do now, ME is more of a passion to me, but EE seems to be the most successful option in my situation
What do you think

>>16753594

Sure, research careers are shitty, private or public sector. Sure, engineering is more straightforward if you just want a job. But the idea some engineers have that they can do everything that e.g. physics PhDs can is not really true. Both in terms of knowledge/skills and hiring criteria.

>there is nothing preventing you from getting a PhD in the hard sciences with an engineering background
Hard sciences is a very broad term. Yes, you likely can enter some hard science PhDs with an engineering background. But over the whole field of e.g. physics that's more an exception than a rule.

>you can always pivot to science later
Not really. There very much is an academic career pipeline that, once out of, is very difficult to re-enter. Not impossible but it's not something you should plan on.

There's no option that definitely leaves open every door for you in perpetuity.

>>16753609
All the innovation in the ME field happens in the mechatronics side now. Electrical motors, sensors in cars, control systems, battery systems, drones, radar systems etc.

>>16753631
yeah that's what im seeing. lots of deman for EE and Electronics eng, not much for ME. I really wanted to go into nuclear ffission/fusion through ME, but this field is dead in the country im studying rn (just one company who works for ITER)
All major companies look for EE or telecom, or electronics
feel kinda sad

>>16753160
>WARNING: Lately, maths graduates report great difficulties in getting a job with a PhD in pure maths. Some end up working as dog groomers.
You laugh but I am living the nightmare that is a pure math PhD

>>16753672
What about moving to Space, Satellite communications, antennas, radio and radar. A lot of those engineers are EE/Physics but they are aging out.

>>16753611
>There's no option that definitely leaves open every door for you in perpetuity.
The vast majority of people don't start with all doors open.
>But over the whole field of e.g. physics that's more an exception than a rule.
Mostly because it's so rare for engineers to even attempt PhDs. I myself switched from an engineering field to a completely different scientific field, and I've seen all kinds of weird mixing and matching.

Maybe it's different if you only consider tip-top institutions like MIT or ETH but the vast majority of universities will happily accept people with different backgrounds into their grad schools in a variety of fields. Helps that outside the US an MSc is separate from a PhD so it gives you 2 years to re-specialize in something different before attempting to enter a PhD program.

>>16753659
There is an oversupply of STEM grads in every field. ME jobs exist pretty much everywhere but they're probably not the kinds of jobs you're interested in doing, and you'll have lots of competition.

>>16753609
Do EE and get a job, and reserve the passion for your hobbies. It is not advisable to combine the two.

>>16753672
I try to limit the doom scrolling, but lately there have been so many reports about fields in deep, deep trouble that I had to add several warnings.

Is trolling on LinkedIn to get engagement a viable personal marketing strategy?

>>16753825
Depends on what you exactly are trying to market.

>>16753160
Nice, thanks for making this resource, lots of great stuff in here which is not otherwise obvious without experience. If you can find more stuff on it I'd be interested in reading about EE disciplines, it feels like that's the only field with a functional job market nowadays (as previous few messages highlight).

>>16753685
idk maybe in the US, here there's a shortage for good engineers who actually enjoy working

>>16753942
You are welcome.
And it is probably the most honest resource out there since I can make full use of yours and mine anonymity. Universities, on the other hand, will never hesitate to lie to attract even more students. That will break down one day, and I guess British universities will be the first to face reality.

Would you rather take an Internship at Zeiss' EUV subsidy or one at NASA's Quantum Metrology division?

>>16754569
Hard call big names and interesting subjects.

>>16754569
Personally, NASA

>>16753819
I might just do that. Next semester taking intro to engineering electronics, if I don't hate it, I'll stick with EE... And see how my situation evolves

>"entry" level position
>required to be a previous intern at that company to apply
should i apply any ways?

>>16754643
Why? Personal preference? Closer to your field? Geographic considerations?

>>16754654
You should have applied at 50 to 100 different places considering the state of the current economy.

>>16754668
closer to my personal interests, yes

>>16754654
apply always

>>16754569
If you go for Zeiss you will also get industrial experience, while NASA is funded from the government.
Both fields are good but EUV seems to be a wider field that will remain relevant for the foreseeable future.

>>16754434
>there is a shortage of
>just be
yeah nah mate fuck off. 95+% of job applications get thrown out and nobody even looks at them.

>>16754466
True lol, the learn to code meme and how hard unis were (and still are!!) pushing that really opened my eyes. I didn't fall for it by sheer luck, but some of my friends did and are not enjoying the results.
> British universities
As an American I've always wanted to live/study/work in the UK since it seems cool but literally everything I read about anything related to the UK is horrifyingly negative even compared to here. Feels pretty sad to watch desu.

>>16754851
The decline and fall of British universities is a regular topic at FT.com and consensus seems to be that several universities will collapse. Many "students" enrolled so that on graduating they could apply for asylum. So when the collapse starts, the students will probably be left in limbo for a while. I have no idea how the overseas students will be handled and I think it is best to observe from a great distance.
French and German universities are also in trouble, seems Europe has seen better days.

>>16754807
vro you have to socialize, online CVs are a gamble

This faang internship isn't all it's cracked up to be. Why must life disappoint me so?

Got a new position as a data scientist in some company's finance org, planning to use their tuition reimbursement program to get a masters since that's the only way for me to get promoted in this position apparently. Do you guys have any reccs for masters programs?
Only constraint is that it has to be in the US and be an online program. My background is a B.S. in applied math and would like the ability to do computational math (or do ai/ml buzzword stuff) in different domains/industries.
UT Austin and Harvard seem to have Computational Science programs that seem interesting but are unfortunately in-person programs. While I'm drawn towards more science/math-oriented programs, I do wonder if a masters in CS is much more worth it

If I could go back in time I'd spinning back kick Thomas Bayes down a flight of stairs. Here's for wasting years of my life on Bayesian deep learning HIYYYYAAAAAH, and another one for inspiring vile and evil rationalists and effective altruists AKIIIIDOOOOO HAAIIIIII

>>16754903
>there's a shortage of my friends applying for jobs
is not the same as
>there's a shortage of engineers
or even
>there's a shortage of engineers who will successfully be able to do the job if I hire them

there's a shortage of
>people you know and trust already
>people with 15 years of experience in the exact highly specific role you're looking to fill
>people with a 160IQ who will choose to work at your noname company out in the sticks for 80k over a FAGMAN for 800k
etc

but none of these reflect on the employment prospects of the average or even above average STEM grad.

>>16755304
>humblebragging
99% of posters here would happily kill you to take your spot, me included.

>>16755314
GeorgiaTech OMCS program. Not even that expensive when it comes to an American degree.

>>16755986
From the moment I emerged unhappily from the womb I have been crying out for death. A question begging for it's answer.

You'd be doing me a favour.

I am a mathematician
All jobs available in my area are
>Teacher
>Heavy machinery technician
>Nurse
>Burger flipper
What do?

>>16756046
Get a master's degree in Physics or EE.
Tragically, burger flippers can be paid the same as a postdoc in the UK.

>>16755986
Don't engage with the bait, this schizo has been spamming at least the past three threads with incoherent rants about faang internships. I have no idea why but if there was a joke intended at any point its carcass has long since disintegrated. If you're reading this >>16755304 please gtfo, nobody enjoys listening to inside jokes between you and whoever the fuck these are intended for, this is not discord.

Getting dropped by my advisor was a good thing in the long run. Anybody else know this feel?

>>16756245
What happened and how did it all go down? Give us the full details please.

I'm about to finish my associates in some shitty community college an an engineering track and I really want to do mechatronics
Can I do a normal mechanical engineering degree or should I seek out some specific school and program

>>16756250
>go to school for EE in flyoverville
>started doing research in the lab for one of my professors
>eventually got my undergrad degree, meanwhile my senior year I was getting the impression my professor was grooming me to go get my masters or PhD
>offered a monthly stipend for my masters at 1500 dollars a month and tuition paid for in full
>take it and go into my masters program for electromagnetics
>struggle through grad school for a 6 month period, feel directionless, getting filtered by MATLAB
>have an amazing personal relationship with my advisor but finally enough is enough and my lack of results leads them to dropping me
>now got a comfy cubicle job making 85k with my bachelors with only rare amounts of actually hard critical thinking in flyoverland

Graduated with bachelors in EE in bay area, wasted a couple months after doing nothing and passing FE, didn't have any internships either, is there anything other than just applying to anything I see? Thinking of possibility of moving to, but idk what to expect

>>16756201
That's the first post I've ever made you coward

I'm never going to stop you shit, you wretch. You should have thought about that when you were rude to me 5 threads ago. I've got tenacity. I'm tenacious. I never quit. That's what it takes to get a faang internship you don't really enjoy.

Why am I even talking to you? It's not like you've ever got a faang internship. And you know why? It's because when people interact with you it leaves a bad taste in their mouths. They can tell your soul is like a clump of mud. Whereas I have a beautiful shimmering don jolly indigo child aura.

I'm sorry I take it back that's not befitting of a world historical sunshine boy. I don't know anything about your soul and I won't let your relentlessly negative bullying infect my mental.

>>16756258
>have an amazing personal relationship with my advisor
who was the top

>>[bunch of spam]
why does /sci/ attract so many strange schizos? it's well above the mean for this website.

Survivability

I started playing Old School RuneScape at work instead of worrying about how I'm not doing anything meaningful. Bandaid fix but life is much more tolerable now.

>>16756738
>>16756738
Pursuing a stem career is the most mentally unhinged thing you can do. I should know as the very unhappy owner of a faang internship

Why is everything in life so disappointing? Why is nothing better than my imagining of it in my amazing and beautiful mind? Why am I only happy when I'm dreaming?

Should I go for omscs or uc boulder/coursera msece?

>>16756258
>comfy cubicle job making 85k with my bachelors with only rare amounts of actually hard critical thinking in flyoverland
How do normies stand it to live like this?

Academia
>Read and do research for hours
>Teach for 1-2 hours a day
Military Industrial Complex Job
>Read and do research for hours
>Work on projects for 1-2 hours a day

>>16756348
>when you were rude to me 5 threads ago
I was on vacation 5 threads ago, and for good reason it seems. Nobody knows who the fuck you're trying to talk to. I understand that annoying people is your only joy in life but please find another board to do it.

>>16756738
Other than this thread (despite people like above) and the textbook thread, this board has been awful unusable /x/ slop for years. At some point I guess it feeds into itself.

>>16756974
Don't lie, I've memorised your smug self satisfied posting style.

>>16756974
Is it unreasonable to assume that not a single other person would get pissed off seeing waves of picrel on this site every day? Anyways I'm done, do whatever you want. This hellsite is fucked either way.

>>16756898
>Why is everything in life so disappointing?
There is a mismatch between reality and your expectations of it.
>Why is nothing better than my imagining of it in my amazing and beautiful mind?
Either monumental imagination or monumental self image.
>Why am I only happy when I'm dreaming?
Try your hand as an author.

>>16757026
seeing this cheered me up and made me feel a lot better about my faang internship, early male menopause lol

Why is everybody in these threads mentally ill?

Anyone here with a STEM degree that does not regret it.

>>16758297
I don't regret the degree itself. Career decisions afterwards yes. I'll be a poor incel forever but I think it would have been even worse elsewhere.

>>16758297
Sure. The road was longer and harder than I thought but I am happy with my choices.
t.PhD in Physics.

>Fell for the engineering meme
GET ME OUT
GET ME OUT
GET ME OUT

Is racism a problem in getting a job?

>>16752885
They hated him because he told the truth

Any bioinformaticians here?
Just wanted to hear your general experience and advice. It's my first year of the PhD and I work as a research intern for my department. The pay isn't much but I like my job. Mostly multiomic research, mathematical modeling and general statistics in R and Python. My main goal is to break into industry once I finish.

Anybody have an opinion on this Mathematical AI PhD in university of Lancaster.

https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/maths/research/mars/#d.en.604246

>>16759289
Very buzzword heavy. What kind of mathematics do you even need for ai? Chain rule?

>>16758657
I never heard that was a problem in hard sciences. Had it been a problem, we would not have seen any Chinese or Japanese scientsts in the West.
There are other problems such as in the UK where prestigious positions are reserved for the Oxbridge graduates. A Chinese friened of mine lost out because of that and ended up leaving the UK.

Rip josh Saunders you would have loved faang internships

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES GET A MATH PHD

>>16760187
WHY

>32, working full time in a lab at a chemical plant for $80k/yr
>also going to school full time for a BS in chem

P. Chem is going to make me fully bald by December but at least they're paying for it. I'm debating going for an MS in chem since I have 8 years in oil & gas as well as chemical plant labs already and I don't wanna spend that much more time on a PhD.

Any anons here in a chemistry focused/adjacent field that pays decently that isnt routine, follow the SOP and put numbers in LIMS type work? Looking at R&D positions at my current company lately. Hoping for around $100k in the next few years.

How to i become a normal sex having wagie?

>>16758297
They are at work. Or on /fit/.
You wont find them in the /unemployed general/.

>>16760444
>Or on /fit/.
lol. lmao even.

Recent ChemE grad that just started his career as a process engineer at an Ammonia plant here. I'm almost two months in and feeling incompetent after my boss basically grilled me for not understanding basic concepts in the process or being able to identify the work I should be prioritizing.

I've been feeling like shit and having really bad imposter syndrome since. I feel like I'm going to eventually get fired. I thought I was improving and a part of me feels that it is really unfair that I am getting this grilled this early on, but I'm capable of taking criticism so I will try my hardest to give results. However, my anxiety is telling me that I'm not that smart and I just BS'd my way through college. I can't help but compare myself to some of the more senior engineers who are excellent at their jobs and can immediately answer questions. I'm kind of lost and don't know what to do. This job was the only offer I got after college and I'm scared I won't be able to work as an engineer again if I do get fired not even a year into this job.

Any other anons that have gone through this?

>>16760733
I was grilled during my orals, that was traumatic.
You have a degree, that is the foundation. One cannot expect a fresh graduate to have all the specifics fully under control. Clearly you have a bad boss who, most likely, has a poor theoretical foundation. People like that never got past Mr. Dunning-Kruger - and they know they never will.

These days I am a senior, and my role is to bring up the juniors to become better than I was. Torching juniors will not achieve anything constructive.

>>16760733
Your boss is a fucking retard. You're gonna have to learn to talk shit back to people who are "above" you and not give a shit about risking losing your job. The sorts of dumbfucks that take their anger out on their minions are the same sorts of dumbfucks that respect force and emotion over logic. So give him what he wants.

>>16760733
Just keep applying

Before/after math PhD

>>16758297
I don't regret it but I do regret the job I took and I regret indebting myself to my company by using their tuition assistance for my Master's degree.

Here is some statistics from Sweden about lifetime earnings of different degrees compared to just high school. Really fucking grim. Only MD and MEng make economic sense.

>>16761669
Average lifetime earnings after taxes for college graduates are 17% over high school graduates

>>16761021
I might get to this point soon, Im not far away enough from when I graduated that I cant explain the long gap in unemployment if I exclude this company from my CV. My boss is coming down in two weeks and if I get grilled again Im going to start applying en masse to other companies.

Take care of your health, few others will:
>‘Quiet cracking’ is spreading in offices: Half of workers are at breaking point, and it’s costing companies $438 billion in productivity loss
https://archive.is/E7YxS
>“The telltale signs of quiet cracking are very similar to burnout. You may notice yourself lacking motivation and enthusiasm for your work, and you may be feeling useless, or even angry and irritable,” Martin Poduška, editor in chief and career writer for Kickresume, tells Fortune. “These are all common indicators of quiet cracking, and they gradually get worse over time.”
>Unlike “quiet quitting,” this decline in productivity from workers isn’t intentional. Instead, it’s caused by feeling worn down and unappreciated by their employers. And oftentimes, as with burnout, they don’t even register it creeping up on them until it’s too late. But feeling unable to quit in protest because of the current job market, it’s left them ultimately stuck and unhappy in their roles.

>Unfortunately, managers are slow to catch on
Do they even care?
>there are ways to spot fissures in company culture before employees are fully down in the dumps, and managers need to stand on guard
They won't. To wit:
>Among employees who experience quiet cracking, 47% say their managers do not listen to their concerns
Next is shifting the blame:
>Managers aren’t the only ones with power in fighting workplace disengagement; employees also have the power to combat their own unhappiness.
>If you feel like there are no opportunities for progression with your role, you may find it worthwhile to talk to your manager about a development plan
We already established they won't and do not care.
>However, not every company is going to be invested in developing their workers, even if they voice the need for it.
See?

Is STEM dead as a career path for the mediocre student? AI so so far above the average student that it's makes me wonder why should mediocre people go into STEM anymore

>>16762869
ESL...

What are the most and least promising areas of research in /cs/?
I barely know anything, and I kinda like computer systems. I did a small research project with synchronization primitives

>>16762814
How is this different from regular burnout?

>>16762985
Thankfully, I have not experienced this myself, but from the article, the difference is that
> You may notice yourself lacking motivation and enthusiasm for your work, and you may be feeling useless, or even angry and irritable
Colleagues who were burned out just lost all energy.

5 weeks until I have to submit my thesis. I've been running on fumes since forever, but I'm almost done. Then, either I pass my viva, or I kill myself.

Experiencing never before seen levels of suicidal ideation. I bet that's exactly what you wanted isn't it? It's making you really happy you little freak, you freak.

I've been applying for phds in every direction I can find.

The competition is fierce in Sweden right?

Is this true?

I am writing my first thesis.
What must I watch out for when 'quoting' a figure.
I want to show an image from another author in my work (because they are wrong and dumb).

>>16764855
Dont

>>16764855
I'm in germany. Professors who disnt know I didn't even bachelor yet have been spamming PhD tenders my way for quite some time.
Might be a national thing. Or a skill thing.

It's unironically over for me. Ten yeas ago people were telling me EVs are the future, go into electrochemistry. Now I am about to graduate with my PhD in battery tech and the last German automaker closed their pilot production line for battery cells yester. A whole industry was destroyed from the systemic incompetence of a dumb and nostalgic management boomer class going full Nokia. We used to have the research edge and still have it in many areas but no chance if management is that incompetent. German manufacturers will now for 100% be dependent on Chinese-made battery packs, which account for up to 40% of value added per car, so they likely won't exist for long anymore.

Recommendations for countries to emigrate to? I speak 5 languages.

>>16765154
I am hellbent on leaving germany currently and I have made out several options, I'm a bit on the edge, it really depends on wether I want to try healing and be a functioning member of a society somewhere again or go full hermit.
Honestly poland, portugal, sweden. Sweden is the full hermit mode tho.

>>16765293
t. industrial engineer / electrical development engineer btw

>>16764973
Just have "figure taken from [citation]" in the figure legend

TIA or migraine? Trying to figure out what's causing your scintillating scotoma is a fun game to play at your hellish faang internship that's making you consider if getting your PhD really was a huge waste of time and if all the suffering you have been availed to throughout your miserable stemcel life was for nothing

>>16765020
How are there that many PhDs?

>last classes left before graduating masters are calculus 2 and differential equations
Am I fucking retarded or what?? Nothing else has been too difficult but fuck this integration bullshit and ln and e whatever the fuck

>>16767537
>Am I fucking retarded or what??
Most people do those classes in high school or in first year of uni.

>>16767153
okay thank you will do that.
this would also mean i am okay with making additions if I point it out like
'figure taken from (citation), authors additions'? or so?

>>16767503
How do you mean that, every prof has maybe one or two and the profs that are part of the decanate my studies are part of would usually approach me when I have a course with them. or worked with them or something and thats usuay where I need to be like 'ermmm... i dont even have a bachelors.'
I already thought if I could leapfrog shit lol. Like if I get uni to hand it out and i complete it is it my fault then and would it not being my fault mean they have to leave it be?KEK anyways bachelors in 4 weeks

>>16765293
Why would you go to Sweden? One of the worst countries in the world for PhDs

>>16756046
Millwrights make bank if you don't mind the long shifts and potential travel.

>>16763663
Hang on in there, anon, it is always darkest before daybreak.

>>16767740
No after I'm done. I want to not be in germany. Thats the main motivator. I want nothing to do with it.
Maybe I'm overreacting and I just want to be 10km from the next settlement in maybe spain, portugal or sweden and work fulky remote only as much as I need which is very very little.
If that's an overreaction it would mean I can actually just do the normie thing judt not in germany.
But for the time being it's unironically smack bang in the middle of Angermanland/Jämtland. Buy a summer house but inhabit it permanently.
>inb4 Ted
Unironically what society does to a MFer.

>uni's CS enrollment is way down, EE/CPE enrollment is skyrocketing
>EE/CPE technical electives that had ~5 students a couple years ago now have nearly four times that
i thought it was a meme but no, EE really is the new CS.
which subfields are best to go into and which ones should i avoid? RF seems pretty okay based on the types and number of people in my classes, while semiconductors and anything digital looks grim

>>16767847
>EE really is the new CS.
yes.
>which subfields are best to go into
are you paying attention to what you're saying? look at what happened to the trend chasing retards in CS. now, what does that tell us about the outcomes of trend chasing?

>>16767714
In that case you say "figure adapted from [citation]"

>>16768160
thanks again

That feel when in a country with very high unemployment.
Therefore no PhDs available.

>>16767847
Use your EE to go into petroleum and make six figures in some carcinogenic shit town and never look back.

how much does age matter in phd applications and post phd career? I wish to start my Phd at 29 and I really really wish to get into top Phd programs bros. I'm a CS fag of course.

is there any hope in pursuing a career in MEMS? is it possible to pivot that into something else if it doesn't work out?

>>16768522
29 is fine especially in CS.

>>16768649
fr?? how many even manage to find a job post phd in academia or a well paid job (150-200k +) in the industry?

>>16768678
CS has historically been a gold mine.

>>16768790
lol, not anymore. It's the largest source of unemployment today. No Phd in fake fields will save you

Good idea to go back for a PhD by dropping your 100k job?

>>16769284
lol no

How hard is it to transitioning from back-end semiconductor electronics (adhesives, wiring) to front-end?

can entrance exam scores of my cunt be used for greatly improving my odds of landing a good phd program in the west, as an international applicant?

>>16770785
You mean university entrance? Lmao no one gives a shit about that here. If you had exceptional grades you can list it on your cv with an explanation in brackets (like percentile) if you otherwise have good grades in college too it underlines you being a good student but apart from that it's utterly irrelevant.

>>16770796
the grad school uni entrance exams in my cunt are actually quite hard in terms of difficulty & competition that they're even considered for job recruitment in a good lot of govt companies and are even considered for grad school admissions in germany & singapore.

>>16770796
moreover, how are grades even taken seriously as cheating is just far more likely to happen in university course exams unlike national level entrance examinations with extremely strict monitoring & a real possibility facing jail in some cases and a sure life time ban from taking up examinations, after being caught?
here's a question i took randomly where the candidate has to answer 65 questions within 3 hours, of which some are MCQ(single correct & multi correct types) and numerical answer type.

>>16770834
Grad school admissions in Germany aren't competitive for 99% of all programs, especially in Stem so this means shit.

>>16767537
this is a science board, retard

>>16770998
MSc correct. PhDs are competitive since they are paid.

I'm stuck always working for shit research groups where the PI is always too junior and too incompetent, and can provide no good guidance at all.
It's my fault. I guess I should have prepared better for grad school.

But now I'm stuck,
>shit guidance
>lots of wasted time, no good results
>no good publications
>cannot change to a better group

This is why you don't do a PhD with a junior PI, with no track record at all.

>>16771994
You are literally me. I am the first PhD student to my PI's group. She is so disorganized at everything and always delegates a lot of tasks to me. Everything you said applies to my experience as well. I just spend the entire summer doing "research" with nothing to show for it.
How long have you been in your PI's group? started this summer and so there is still an option to switch.

>>16772037
if you can switch, do it immediately

I am from Europe so I cannot switch because it's not how it works here.
The longer you go without good results the harder it becomes to switch or to justify your time there, even if you just want to find a job.

I'm unfortunately stuck in this catch-22 where I just want to leave but I first need to publish something so I can justify the time I spent there.

>>16772063
It's the start of a new school semester here so I cannot switch as soon as I would like to but I can switch as I near its end.
>I first need to publish something so I can justify the time I spent there
I see. Is that restriction set by your department or one you set yourself? Are you trying to get published to a really high-tier journal, or are fine with an "average" one?
I am trying to leave ASAP because my PI not only has no idea what she is doing but also loves to take her stress and anger out on others when pressured, loves to scream at me during group meetings, and makes me come to the lab on weekends where I work ~11 hrs.

>>16752864 (OP)
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>>16752864 (OP)
I want to be part of the current space race somehow, but I'm afraid it may be too late for me to start college for aerospace engineering at this point; I'm 22 and was homeschooled so I would be far behind new high school graduates in terms of timing. Not to mention the financial hurdles I'll have to clear. I believe I have the mind for it but I might just be too late. Maybe I'll stick to flight school. I just want to be useful while doing something really cool that I'm passionate about at the same time. Does anyone know how difficult it is to get into high caliber engineering programs at the level required for a career? What steps should I take in determining whether aerospace engineering is the right path for me?

>>16772129
>Is that restriction set by your department or one you set yourself?
I did a couple of interviews and in both they emphasized that I am basically in this situation where I need to justify my time in this shit department, else I just look super bad.

If you're doing EE is it a must to do AI-related postgraduate stuff?

>be me
>desperately looking for a new job
>spot really interesting academic project on GitHub
>ticks literally all of my boxes
>send an email
>???
>no reply

The disappointment was expected, but it still hurts.
It's a super niche thing btw, so I doubt he gets lots of emails asking to work on the project.

>>16772514
Depends on what you want to do, but typically for most fields in EE the answer is no.

>>16772514
>>16772600
can you study and work on low power inference devices as EE?

I'm surprised at how almost everyone working at my physics department is a normalfag. By which I mean they're all in a relationship. Sperg wizards like me who have never even dated are very few. I'm not annoyed by this because at least the coworkers have never tried ask me questions about this topic. Just surprised because I thought there would be more weirdos working in research. But maybe the weirdos tend to drop out and not graduate and I'm an exception. Or maybe they go for computer science. Thoughts?

>>16772631
If it has to do with the manipulation of electrons, it can be done with an EE degree. The only thing is the more specialized and niche the field of study, the harder it will be to actually find a university or job that works in that field. Ubiquitous fields like power, controls, semiconductors, etc can be done at many universities. If it's niche then you'll have to dig and find the right university for it.

Got an offer for a company sponsored PhD today

Yurotard here.
What do you need to do to work with a Professor at an American uni?

Here in Europe you can mostly just email them, and they might open a position for you as a PhD, PostDoc or temp academic worker of some kind. That's how I got all my past jobs.

I guess the US is different, because whenever I email a Prof, I never get a reply back at all.
I'm not spraying and praying my CV, either. It's all very targeted with good cover letter and a good show of interest and relevant experience.

I have 10 days to become a python data analyst wizard for the most important interview of my life and review my quantum mechanics lectures from the 3rd semester.

Should I just kill myself.

Hey friends, I would like some tips on how to get my first data science job with just a stem bachelor's and no experience. Assume I already tried every standard approach. Thanks in advance.

>>16773249
Step 0: don't because the market is oversaturated with graduates from all fields and AI made it so easy to do data science that the job is basically fully automated now

>>16773249
Also datascience is the old fad. The new fad is AI.
Instead of having a datascientist give you bullshit "hand readings" of your corporate data, you feed all data into an LLM to get the same bullshit hand reading.

>>16773258
>>16773256
I'm afraid I've no choice at this point. Anything else?

>>16772553
90% that the email address is depreciated. Check what other emails they can be using.

How much does olympiad math help in areas like theoretical CS/ML/Data science? Does it help you have an accelertated or deeper learning experience when you're doing math and theoretical CS courses?

>>16772667
Scientists are chads now, this isn't the 80's my brotha

>>16772667

There's a pretty big spread. The more applied and chemistry-like you get, the more normies and women there are. Everyone I've seen who does theoretical high energy physics has been a massive sperg.

>>16773402
The benefits of olympiad math are that it will solidify strong foundations (i.e. ability to follow complex reasoning without missing cases, being comfortable with high abstractions, etc.) and it will also let you develop a sense for that intuitional feeling of when certain approaches "should work" or "can't work" or whatever, which is an extremely useful soft skill that most undergrads suffer badly from not having.
The obvious detriment is that most olympiad math is topically kind of niche, you'd be spending a lot of time learning random spatterings of elementary lemmas like Fermat's little theorem or Vieta's formulas which have next to no use once you leave olympiad math, and the previous benefits could in theory be gotten just from any general long-term work on difficult problems, so you may as well find problems that are topically close to what you really want to learn.

>>16772667
I'm a mathfag and noticed basically the same thing, a few fellow spergs but mostly socially well-adjusted. I think it's a combination of spergs not actually being as common as you think in general, and also even the academia path having a bit of a sperg filter by the time you get to grad school, just a slight but continuous social force that starts in grade school and gently biases the most socially maladjusted away from respectable positions.

>>16772384
>be me
>physics wastrel
>phd in novel magnetic materials
>mostly like tinkering with dil fridges
>shake hand at conference
>talk about dil fridge
>get job designing cryocoolers for spacecraft
There are a lot of paths into space. If you want to do it stop whining and make it happen, 22 is not too late.

>>16773631
Ok, I've some things to ask topic wise.
1.Geometry-Will the theory, tools, ideas and techniques that an olympiad student learns benefit him when he encounters a rigorous course on linear alegbra?
2.algebra(inequalities, theory of eqns, sequences, functional eqns.)-what bout this topic?
3.combinatorics-again, will this help in some advanced combinatorics course or something like idk computational geometry? I've heard olympiad level combinatorics is wild

>>16772384
>I want to be part of the current space race somehow, but I'm afraid it may be too late for me to start college for aerospace engineering at this point
nah, 22 is a fine age for starting college. just don't mention it and most people wont ask or care. if anything, being a bit older is probably better for your career in the long run since you'll (hopefully) be a bit more mature than you're peers and can prioritize studying and extracurriculars better
>Does anyone know how difficult it is to get into high caliber engineering programs at the level required for a career [in space]?
my university has something like a 95% acceptance rate and i interned at a space company last summer. any state school with an ABET accredited engineering program (mech-e, EE, aero are the typical ones) is "good enough". what really decides whether they'll hire you (as an undergrad/new grad) the project experience you get while in undergrad, since the degree itself is little more than a box to check to filter applicants.
after you get past your first year or two of employment, nobody cares about where you got your degree from unless it's an ivy league
>What steps should I take in determining whether aerospace engineering is the right path for me?
just enroll and try it out. see if you can get involved in some uni-sponsored space projects (undergrad research, rocketry club, etc) and see if you like it

Should I troon out? I think it's my only path to getting hired.

>>16772797
That's normal.
A lot of the time you just went into their spam filter which means you are effectively invisible to them.
They also get lots of emails and could easily have just overlooked you.

I have my physics prelim at the end of the semester and I'm terrified. I thought it was supposed to be next semester but apparently the rules changed over the summer (lol).

I don't think the fail rate is that high at my school but still, the thought of being kicked out of my program failing out on my life goals makes me terrified.

Anyone have any tips for this?

>be me
>gradutae uni
>get job in embedded
>get to work on airbags, steering colums, etc.
>everyone gets laid off and company gets broken up into smaller companies
>start work in devops and its boring af
>"it'll just be here a few months, no worries!"
>been almost a year
>rusty + skills from automotive dont transfer that well to other embedded areas

I was thinking of doing a github project involving the techs I want to get proficient at, thats a no brainer, my question is should I work on getting certs? What about a masters?
I already built a comp sci curriculum based on a few masters programs that intrest me but a lot of people in meatspace advise me against a masters despite the fact that I've seen a few job postings that treat it as YoE.
What do? Validate me or spit, you choice.

>>16774286
>theory, tools, ideas and techniques
The overlap between specific material like this in olympiad math and specific material in "advanced" math or math-adjacent fields is very small, so if that's your goal then olympiad math as a whole would be a huge waste of time. Pick up actual textbooks.

>>16774414
>certs
>masters
unless your employer is paying for it, dont do it. you're better off doing an embedded project on the side, focusing on whatever you want to work on in the future
throwing away a job without having another offer lined up is retarded considering the state of the job market right now

>>16774286
If you are still in high school you can study some olympiad math and go to some competitions, the competition format is great because it forces you to be better and you can meet some fellow spergs, some of which will be successful later on in life
If you already graduated or are close to graduating high school then its a bit pointless desu, focus on more relevant stuff

ALL I EVER WANTED WAS TO BE A PROGRAMMER OF NUMERICAL LIBRARIES
WHERE THE FUCK DID IT ALL GO SO WRONG?

>>16774561
I keep seeing that projects don't have as much visibility to employers on /g, either way a cool project is a cool project.
Might skip on the cert but masters has always been a personal goal, just dunno how much it would help at getting a job...
I'll stick with the job but honestly if they we're more demanding I would have quit already, I have a small side business I could survive off, not optimal but doable.
I just don't want to get barred from that field or whatever, writing software that could kill people is my passion.

>>16774613
I've heard a lot of inequalities, combinatorics and number theory is useful later in life. How true is it?

>>16774696
Saying "inequalities" and "combinatorics" are useful is like saying "variables" are useful. I've known undergrads like you, you're still thinking of math like it's Khan Academy, where all you have to do is pick the keywords you need and go through those courses. Overeager is maybe the word; you're trying to design your own curriculum but don't really even have a general understanding of the field.
There's a reason the standard math curriculum has settled where it is; pay your dues, get the textbooks and stick with it.

I'm a sophomore who switched from electrical engineering to computer engineering because it's easier. Was this a mistake?

>>16774857
compare how many times you hear 'electrical' in your day to day life vs 'computer'. Now try to guess which is going to need more engineers.
yeah...

Im a senior chemistry student interested in materials but im terrified of the job market. Is getting a masters in materials science retarded? Should I do a phd instead? I just want to make a solid living. Debating going into finance or law at this point.

>>16774790
I understand I'm sounding like a retard, but there really are some standard texts on inequalities & solving functional eqns.

>>16775064
I'm assuming the worst because you speak very vaguely. It would help to know what exactly your background is and what exactly you're trying to accomplish.
>there really are some standard texts on inequalities & solving functional eqns.
Inequalities I can believe, there are a lot of classical inequalities, but it's quite rare to encounter most of them "in the wild" apart from Cauchy-Schwarz and maybe Holder. It's much more common to just use calculus-based optimization. And I googled "functional equations textbook" and got almost exclusively contest-related results.
Those two examples are particularly poor as well; inequalities and functional equations are, along with Euclidean geometry, notorious for being just "contest math" rather than "actual math." And even then you don't see many contest inequalities nowadays.

>>16775103
>It would help to know what exactly your background is and what exactly you're trying to accomplish.
alright, take this as a confession eh. I just have a high school degree and about 8 months time to decide what I wish to pursue.I was wondering if I was cut out for doing serious math on my own and luckily enough an incredibly hard math entrance exam is conducted every year in my country. Although I have no intent of joining their math program, but I was wondering if I could use their entrance exam as a litmus test to check my abilities. The syllabus for the exam covers the olympiad syllabus and also has single variable calculus, although questions are more proofs based. The questions are also of olympiad flavour where explicit proofs/solutions have to be written. pic rel is a sample question

>>16775167
>I just have a high school degree and about 8 months time to decide what I wish to pursue
Mother fucker.

>if I was cut out for doing serious math on my own
No.

>Although I have no intent of joining their math program, but I was wondering if I could use their entrance exam as a litmus test to check my abilities
Stop fucking around and procrastinating and GTFO me thread.

>>16775188
ah c'mon, I could be a half decent computer scientist in the making

>>16775213
Yes but this "litmus testing" has fundamentally nothing to do with it. You're fucking about.

>>16775230
>Yes but this "litmus testing" has fundamentally nothing to do with it
I'm not just a neet either as I'm currently enrolled in a diploma course just so I don't end up wasting time. But my heart lies with math and CS. Here's another sample question if you think this is a joke. M8, I just want to know for a fact that my exam prep wouldn't go to waste even if I screw this exam up as that preparation may help me in learning shit like algorithms, discrete math, etc., in a deeper level.

>>16775238
>just want to know for a fact that my exam prep wouldn't go to waste even if I screw this exam up
It will.

>>16775240
why so mean?

>>16775243
Because you are fucking about, feel bad about it, and want le Gigabrain Groyper /scg/ to tell you that your fucking about is actually heckin' productive and cool so that you don't feel bad about fucking about.

The only thing that studying for exams ever helps with is passing said exams. If you want to study linear algebra - study linear algebra, Shilov's book is easy to pirate. If you want to study combinatorics - study combinatorics. And if you want to win olympiads - go win olympiads. Don't come here and ask locals to tell you how useful and nutritious your halfassed tilt with a math olympiad is going to be for your Greater Understanding of CS and ML and some shit. It won't be.

>>16775253
alright. thx for the kick in the arse m8. Will do the needful stooodying.

Instead of wasting time with competition math just get a faang internship and stop playing about

AM I Crazy or is success in a PhD mostly about the PI/advisor and not the student/candidate?

Good PIs never have failed students and seemingly all their papers get cited handsomely. How can this be?

Seems to me, good PIs just have really good ideas for papers (very important) and can actually effectively guide their PhD students and then once they build a reputations of solid work the citations comes from themselves because everyone will be following their work.

Meanwhile, bad PIs start of with shit paper ideas. Then expect their PhD students to do miracles and then when the PhD gets stuck staring at an unmovable wall, the PI has no good advice to give either. And when eventually something gets published, it gets ignored because the PI has a shit track record.

>>16775540
It depends. Some PIs are legitimately clueless and lucked into having a few ambitious students do everything and start up their career for them. If they can build enough of a reputation during that time they can keep attracting good students. After that it kind of depends on the group culture whether or not that situation spins out of control or not.

>>16775238
I don't even know what this means anymore.
t. chemlet

>>16775540
>AM I Crazy or is success in a PhD mostly about the PI/advisor and not the student/candidate?
For funding, research direction and signal boosting of the accompanying papers for a PhD:
Institution > Lab > PI = Candidate

For completing a PhD:
Student = doctoral committee. Everything else is completely and utterly irrelevant.

Good conditions can and very much do make you PhD a lot more comfortable, sensible and relevant to your further career. Success in obtaining a PhD is entirely down to you working and the committee recognizing that you done work.

>Seems to me, good PIs just have really good ideas for papers (very important)
It's more complicated than that. You don't just research whatever the fuck you want just because you are a PI, and you don't advise PhDs that are lightyears away from your shit, so you integrate your students into what you have. And you don't come up with things for the student - you advise, you give a student some direction and, if you're a good PI, do some back and forth on the ideas, shooting down the bad ones and encourage the good ones. If a student expressed the sentiment that I am supposed to give him all the ideas ready on a silver platter, I'd terrorize that faggot on purpose. You're here to try and learn, so try and learn, even if you feel like you don't know what you're doing. That's the whole point.

>Meanwhile, bad PIs start of with shit paper ideas, then expect
I assure you 80% of bad PIs only very occasionally remember that they even have students. The remaining 20% do remember but only because those students are female and provide sex.

>And when eventually something gets published, it gets ignored
99,999% of all PhD papers get ignored. They are PhD papers ffs. PhD students CAN get good papers if their PhD is well integrated into a bigger study, so the student gets a 47th authorship on an actual Big Boy paper.

IYou just have a seething student perspective but it's ok, you'll learn. Probably.

>>16776019

I worked under 3 PIs and I always had major issues:

1. 1st PI allowed me no freedom and he basically used me as ChatGPT before ChatGPT. I was just supposed to research and compile information for him.

2. 2nd PI was actually very nice to me and we got along well. The issue was that the problem we were trying to tackle was not suited for the capabilities and experience we both had and then when I did find a promising lead I was discouraged from looking into it because it felt too technically involved. Turns out it was the right direction.

3. 3rd PI acts as if I am just an instrument in his toolbox. Completely disregards any of my input and wants to do the research himself, including coming up with all the ideas and solutions. I'm just suppose to do the actual work. And then when his ideas work out, it's all him, and when they don't it's all me. He's the worst of the 3 because he has the worst elements of both.


When I look at actually successful labs, of course I'm looking from the outside but it doesn't look like anything I am going through.

>>16776061
>I was just supposed to research and compile information for him.
>acts as if I am just an instrument in his toolbox.
Those are fine. You are the galley rower of the academia, you are supposed to be relentlessly used for the most repetitive labor until you gitgud and obtain your own minions.

>The issue was that the problem we were trying to tackle was not suited for the capabilities and experience we both had
That's up good. Pushing for something new (either for the entire field or for your collective) is good PhD foundation.
>when I did find a promising lead I was discouraged from looking into it
A common issue - PIs are often too conservative and careful when trying out new things. Depending on the details, it is possible that you could disagree with the discouragement and try anyway. Or maybe it was impossible, since it would require funding that was outside of your scope, in which case much sad@shit happens.

>wants to do the research himself, including coming up with all the ideas and solutions
>And then when his ideas work out, it's all him, and when they don't it's all me
Turbogay, extreme shitter. Take your ball and leave, nigger doesn't own you or your PhD.

>it doesn't look like anything I am going through
I don't know a single lab that existed for more than 3 years and didn't get it's own hearty serving of dirty laundry, drama or closet skeletons, and I know a lot of labs. And the funnies part is - the more successful a lab, the more drama and skeletons, they just put extra resources into PR as well. It's just how workplaces are.

But regarding PhDs and PIs, 90% of issues I ever saw are PIs just not giving students enough attention (not my own story, my PI back when was neato) and students worrying too much when they need to just do it.

>>16752864 (OP)
Is tinnitus the worst condition that can happen to someone in STEM or any field that requires a high level of brain power? Once it starts, it's over for you, as you can no longer use your brain due to the constant ringing that occupies your attention.

>>16776199
just put some bach on, or some atmoblack

>>16776199
Are you aware that hearing loss and other ear conditions are associated with early onset of dementia by dozens of replicated studies?

>>16763663
3 weeks and 3 days left. I need to write 2 more mid-sized sections, make a handful of minor adjustments, and finish formatting my thesis. I should be able to get it all done in time.

>>16767806
Thanks, I'm feeling better now, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully it's not a train.