/scg/ - STEM Career General

[Anonymous No.15439648]

Astronomy Edition

Last thread: >>15404897

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 all the previous editions of /scg/:
>>>>>>>>>/sci/

[Anonymous No.15439650]

>>15439648
>astronomy edition
nice im a taurus

[Anonymous No.15439722]

Thinking about breaking through the upper middle class and the royal aristocratic high society of certain and very specific countries. What do I need besides a degree ? Children ?

I mean, look at Epstein. The career of this guy doesn't make any sense.

>math / physics degreeless teacher
>talk with some children's parents
>job in finance
>???
>billionaire

What the fuck /sci/ ?

[Anonymous No.15439740]

>>15439722
The answer is always crime

[Anonymous No.15439766]

>>15439722
Higher ups/stakeholders/decision makers are people too; impulsive.
Use that to your advantage.
Get close to them, sound smart, make them think you create value for them.

I applied to work for a company, got instantly rejected. Then about 7 months later I happened to run into their CEO at a conference, small talked with him a little, and a few days later got an email with a job offer. He didn't even know what degree I had or what I worked with, and they'd already deleted my CV and cover letter lmao.

[Anonymous No.15439842]

>>15439648
Federal institute has a job ad for a comfy indefinite researcher position which I am completely fulfilling, quite tempting to apply. What is /scg/s stance on governmental vs. industry positions?

[Anonymous No.15439878]

>>15439842
I have never worked in a gov't position but can only assume a) it's a lot slower b) it's a lot more bureaucratic c) it's got better work-life balance d) there's a pension

[Anonymous No.15439902]

>Find an ML summer internship for July-August
>Gratification is half the minimum wage

Currently on my first year of master in math/statistics (t. european), I was hoping to get experience this summer through an internship in ML, but the offer I have rn offers too low pay. Should I continue searching an ML internship for this summer in hope for better pay (and if so, where because time is running out) or should I just get a regular summer job because tech internships will always be low pay anyway?

[Anonymous No.15439920]

>>15439842
Non-military, non-research institution government can be max comfy. The trade-off is lower pay, less freedom in research direction and usually more boring research.

[Anonymous No.15440060]

How dumb would it be for me to change careers from Software Development to Medicine at the ripe old age of 30?

[Anonymous No.15440083]

>>15440060
A lot of stress and study, competing with sweaty tryhards who are younger than you and it'll take a while before the good pay kicks in. If it kicks in at all. How about something medicine-related like trying to aim for a medical software or imaging specialist?

[Anonymous No.15440102]

>>15440083
imaging is hard to get into without connections or work experience, but not impossible
I really want the title of doctor though, shame the medicine-related stuff doesnt provide opportunities to acquire it outside of part-time study

[Anonymous No.15440324]

>>15440102
Medicine only gives you the MD. Why not go for a PhD instead? Should be quicker overall than going through all of Medschool if you already have a university degree. Maybe look for a project on fMRI, they sometimes take coders for development of image analysis methods. Could get you a foot into MRI manufacturers.

[Anonymous No.15440419]

>>15439902
If it's a good company then take it anyway. It's not about the money.

[Anonymous No.15441247]

>>15439722
>The career of this guy doesn't make any sense.
I noticed. And without going into conspiracy territory, I have noticed that a lot of "leaders" have careers that make no sense. One girl in my class had no real education, was thrashy and got a super job. She died very youmg, very dissipated. I can only imagine her willingness to go above and beyond the call of decency to be the key to her success.

[Anonymous No.15441279]

>>15440419
Correct. Just make sure you do a lot of networking. That is also true for postdoc work.

[Anonymous No.15441414]

>>15440419
>>15441279
It's a startup. They're part of a business incubator.

[Anonymous No.15441823]

>>15441414
Go for it. Assuming that you're going for a career in ML, not only would an internship in ML be very valuable, they're also VERY hard to come by. Very few companies are willing to let interns work with actual ML projects (data security etc.).

Most euro countries give shit pay for interns, odds are you won't get any higher anyway. I did my internship a few years ago at 7 euros an hour and that was considered good for an intern back then lmao.

[Anonymous No.15442134]

>>15436610
>best field to get into after not working for over 8 years?
Theoretical physics, you'll do no work for your entire career and get paid for it

>durr wut if everfing is littul strings?
Fucking bravo

[Anonymous No.15442145]

[Anonymous No.15442451]

>>15442145
I do electrical and automation work in factories - including HVAC controls - and I'll take the 200k over commissioning another controls system any day of the week. it's all so tiring. I'd go into project management but people are simply retarded.

[Anonymous No.15443823]

I’m 3/4 of the way complete with my EE degree and I’m beginning to have serious regrets about majoring in this field. I don’t if I should jump ship and become a medfag or get my degree and become a parent attorney.

[Anonymous No.15443891]

Is there a career for biology majors outside of the medical field?

[Anonymous No.15444018]

>mfw my research just got funded

[Anonymous No.15444169]

>found out program I'm in would have awarded the degree in the form "Bachelors of Science in Applied mathematics: Computer science"
>drop minor/cognate so I could just have a regular non-retarded looking diploma
Wise choice?

[Anonymous No.15444717]

>>15443891
Finance and consulting, also patent law.

[Anonymous No.15444737]

>apply to entry level EE jobs to a big company
>they disregard those and apply me to a different job I don't qualify for
>check the job on linked in
>1 month+ and zero applicants
How fucked am I? This job requires two years of experience and I have none.

[Anonymous No.15445012]

>>15443891
Pharmaceuticals / drug discovery. You should get a PhD though if you don't want to hit a glass ceiling very soon.

[Anonymous No.15445080]

I love huge boobs so much I became a breast cancer scientist. There will be no more mastectomies on my watch.

[Anonymous No.15445157]

>>15444737
You should be fine. They are probably doing it because you're the only qualified person they've interviewed in months. I remember when I interviewed for a hardware position the hiring manager was working really hard on selling me the position. After I was hired he basically told me I was the only person qualified they had, every other application was from a random newgrad specializing mainly in software clearly mass applying to everything as their graduation date is near. Meanwhile the software team gets hundreds and hundreds of applications.

[Anonymous No.15445292]

>>15445080
based, but the most common complaint that tiddybabes have is how painful they are to run with. what are you going to do to advance the field of bra physics?

[Anonymous No.15445308]

>rejected from every PhD
>again
>last place said my resume was good
What should I do while I sit on my ass for another year? I can't take another year of being a NEET.

[Anonymous No.15445775]

>>15445292
Physically hold every large pair of tits myself whenever requested. I undertake this great burden with humility.

[Anonymous No.15445784]

>>15445308
Question, do you email the professors who's projects you're applying to? If not, you're guaranteed not to get a place. You email them, speak with them over zoom, they choose a candidate, then they get you to apply for the PhD, meaning you apply for funding. You need both him and the funding body to choose you. At least that's how it works in the UK.

That's assuming you didn't get interviews. If you did, then just be better at interviews.

[Anonymous No.15445833]

How much of my skillset being self-taught are the employers willing to accept? I realized very little of what my college curriculum teaches will actually be used in my career. So, I'm parallelly teachingmyself a bunch of the stuff. Will employers find this acceptable or demand some documents or other kinds of proof of my knowledge?

[Anonymous No.15446215]

>>15443891
>intense 4 year stem degree
>2 years of experience
>40k-60k

I looked at this for 15 minutes and just laughed my ass off

[Anonymous No.15446223]

>>15445784
>If you did, then just be better at interviews.
How do I do that?

[Anonymous No.15446254]

>>15446223
Know your project inside and out, think of every possible question they could ask and prepare concise, exact answers for all of them.

[Anonymous No.15446725]

My GPA is in utter shambles, and my transcript is probably worse. Is it safe to assume I don't really have a shot at a masters program? Do I just try to make it in industry?

[Anonymous No.15446886]

>>15446215
Enjoy being unemployed

[Anonymous No.15448366]

>>15446215
Your salary is a function of what industry you work in rather than how hard your degree was or how much experience you have.
You feel like someone is supposed to reward you for your personal achievements but that isn't how compensation actually works.

[Anonymous No.15448377]

>>15446725
I guarantee you that my transcript is 10 times worse than yours and I'm currently in a master's program. It was a long shot but I got in. You will have to make a lot of compromises. I probably stood no chance of getting in as a purely academic student, the way I did it was by securing a job with a company that does tech very similar to the degree program and heavily emphasized that in my statement of purpose.
Then I was only admitted as a non-degree seeking student (and even that I had to petition for, the program liked me but the graduate office didn't) and ONLY THEN after I did well in my first batch of classes was I able to be moved to master student status.

[Anonymous No.15449314]

>>15439766
>Higher ups/stakeholders/decision makers are people too
Doubt

[Anonymous No.15449324]

>>15445308
Considered applying abroad?
The job market is cratering, and always when this happens, people return to universities to upgrade from bachelors to masters or masters to PhD.

[Anonymous No.15450472]

If I want a good job with an undergrad degree, physics or meche?

[Anonymous No.15450646]

>>15450472
EE/CompE/CS>mech.e
In terms of job opportunities with higher pay ceiling that is. There's a lot of gigs for mech.e's, but a lot end up learning how to code for the higher pay. You decide what you want.

[Anonymous No.15450973]

Applying to physics postdocs at the moment.
Most of them are the normal two-year shindig with varying levels of teaching but I have found one I'm well suited for which is a six year thing.
The starting pay and pay scale is decent but is a six year postdoc normal? Does this replace the normal postdoc -> postdoc fellowship thing?

[Anonymous No.15451120]

gonna start my degree in electrical engineering this year
at 25 yrs old
yikes

[Anonymous No.15451354]

>>15451120
Don't worry too much about it. If you have any life experience you'll do better than the kids coming in fresh. Good luck buddy, it's honestly not that hard of a degree to get if you have always excelled at math, science, and generally abstract topics.

[Anonymous No.15451407]

>>15439842
Lower pay, consistent hours, you will not be fired, easy to work with academics (government and academia are much closer than industry and academia), lots (and I mean LOTS) of bureaucracy to the point that you may hate yourself, once you're in government you can stay in government and go literally anywhere (all benefits transfer).

Honestly, government is a lot like how industry used to be in the 50s and 60s. There's a reward for loyalty and you know you won't be fired. It's just also government so there's no reward for working hard outside prestige and good boy points and you're really not paid enough for the amount of bullshit that can get thrown at you (especially with the amount of money you typically manage), luckily they don't expect you to work hard either.

[Anonymous No.15451430]

>>15451120
I started meche at 27, all good bro.

[Anonymous No.15451434]

Can I realistically still get into a top 50 global grad school with a Math BSc from a medium tier uni, a single fail, 3.2 GPA and 4 conference and journal publications?

[Anonymous No.15451437]

>>15451354
>>15451430
i hope there'll be other "boomers" too, too many zoomers would make me sick
as long as I could focus properly math was enjoyable for me

[Anonymous No.15451443]

>>15451437
Well if it's any consolidation a lot of the zoomies are going to get filtered pretty early on, probably more than usual too since they had a couple of their high school years during the meme lockdowns and it fucked them up.

[Anonymous No.15451444]

Esteemed /sci/ buddies,

I never thought I'd get here, but I finally have my BSc in Math and CS.
This is not a blog post; I'll just say that I'm from a low-tier EU country, and studied hard over 10 years, working in tech along the way, to graduate with honors - embarrassing and irrelevant, but I'll take the W.

Now that I've finally reached the starting point for anything serious, my question is, how do I prepare for graduate entrance exams?
I've been taking a look at some, e.g. for Kyoto's CS master program.
They don't look too difficult, but because undergrad CS programs seem to be so varied, there's about a 70 or 80% overlap between them, so there's a small portion of the material I'm not very familiar with.

How did you all handle this? I'm considering going through the institution's undergrad syllabus for important bibliographic references.

I'd be interested in hearing from your collective experience, even from other fields.

[Anonymous No.15451450]

>>15450472
Mech E over Physics. Though if you really want a job out the gate, EE degree with a focus on embedded systems. Personally I didn't find that shit enjoyable but if you do, I highly recommend doing it as you make easy money right out of college.

[Anonymous No.15451462]

>>15451450
why were embedded systems not enjoyable for you ?
I have experience working at an assembly line so I know what not enjoying work means, lol

[Anonymous No.15451464]

>>15451462
I hate coding, that's why.

[Anonymous No.15451474]

>>15451464
what other branches are recommended to specialize in as EE ?

[Anonymous No.15451485]

>>15451474
Well it depends what you want to do and what you find interesting, there's really not a shitty choice in EE. There's software, biomedical, power and energy (that's what I took), signals and communications, etc. Also your university might have different areas of concentration than mine did as well. Your college might not have biomedical for example. If you don't have any preference then you could just have no concentration and get that specialization working EE jobs.

[Anonymous No.15451600]

Okay... How do you figure out what to do next? I've just finished my masters in applied math and I have good work experience in a math field (operations research for the military).

What's next? I want to learn more, should I go for a second masters? It doesn't seem valuable. Should I start self studying textbooks? I'm not sure how effective I'll be at that, I like structure and hard deadlines with consequences.

[Anonymous No.15451722]

>>15451485
>>15451485
As I said I already have experience with PLCs and Automotive production facilities
Logically the best specialization would be automation technology, although I want to check out other fields as well

[Anonymous No.15451909]

Professor randomly sperging out in the syllabus.
What's really funny is this is the copy he submitted for the university's public site which means some admin read this and approved it.

[Anonymous No.15452056]

>>15444169
Not really, I have a "bachelors of science in natural science with a major in chemistry and major in natural science with a concentration in geology" but I just tell interviewers I dual majored in chemistry and geology.

[Anonymous No.15452089]

>>15451600
What the fuck do you mean "what's next?"? You've done a masters and an internship, so what's your career plan? You sound like this is the very first time you've even thought about your career, explain yourself.

[Anonymous No.15452105]

hey guys has anyone here successfully made the transition from engineering to project management? I am a manufacturing engineer in pharma right now but I'm coming to a point in my career where I'm expected to make a decision on what I was to specialize in (purification, upstream production, quality, data management etc)
for a bunch of reasons I think I'd be a great project manager but I don't know anyone that's made that transition

[Anonymous No.15452123]

>>15445080
>mom is an OB/GYN
>dad is a radiologist, HIGHLY specialized in mammography
born and bred the horniest thing alive

[Anonymous No.15452213]

>>15451434
probably, just go around and get to know some of the professors where you want to go/express interest in certain projects.

[Anonymous No.15452477]

How can I get an internship for next year? I just finished my first year of CS/math with a 3.2 GPA and I'll kms if I have to work another summer in retail. I don't care how hard it is, studying has been pretty rewarding for me when I've actually put effort in. I've not done much outside of my classes but I know I need to. What the fuck do I do? I'm lost

[Anonymous No.15452519]

>>15452477
Talk to CS professors that liked you for research options or references, then apply to every internship you can find.

[Anonymous No.15452529]

>>15452519
My classes are way too big for that, but I had a friend that did some kind of research thing. I'll look into that.

[Anonymous No.15452592]

>>15452529
1. Get a better gpa. 3.2 is okay, but 3.3 or higher will make it easier to get internships. There's kind of a "sweet spot" when it comes to GPA, and it usually rests around 3.5. It tells an employer that you're a solid worker (or smart), but not so autistic that you spend all your waking moments studying. You should always have above a 3.0 though, because employers can and will impose cutoffs below that magic number.

2. Get a student job. There are probably plenty of opportunities to do undergrad research, become a TA, work in a university facility, etc. Make sure you only pick one thing at a time to avoid overloading yourself. It's also a decent way to get pocket change here and there, which is always a plus. All those things look good on a resume and are easy to obtain.

3. Join a relevant club. You have to be able to find at least SOME club that needs programmers. Do something that interests you and just make something out of it. You probably won't get money for it, but you'll do good for yourself.

4. Volunteer. If you really have nothing else, then just donate your time towards something that interests you or warms your heart. More relevant = better in the long haul.

5. Obtain recommendations or references. Sometimes just being pals with a professor or doing well on a project will get you a good word, and it will ultimately help you out. I got my first job in part because I brought a LoR with me to the interview

6. Grab some certs. Boomer bosses cream themselves over certifications, and it proves you have some level of competency with certain tasks. There's plenty of cheap ones that can make you more employable.

Get creative and pull one lever at a time, you will eventually be chosen for an internship if you do some of the above. You want to keep your balance as best as you can, and avoid overloading yourself for your own sake.

[Anonymous No.15452708]

>>15452477
It's a numbers game and I don't think it really matters where you do your internship. Like yea, maybe something that interests you is better than just going for it, but when you graduate and apply you'll probably change your mind as to where you want to work full time and any work experience counts as a fresh grad.

[Anonymous No.15452895]

I have a math bachelors, thinking about getting a Mathematical Finance Masters and get into quant, is this a good idea?

[Anonymous No.15452908]

>>15452477
everything that other anon said: clubs, work just a little harder on grades, learn to leverage school projects for interviews, find some references, but most importantly APPLY TO EVERYTHING. go grab a red bull, sit down, open a new tab for every single internship you can find on the internet, start chugging the red bull and applications, rinse, repeat, every other day so you don't burn out. i had ZERO internship experience and got a first job nearly six figures, it was all just a numbers game in the end

[Anonymous No.15454237]

>>15448366
>Your salary is a function of what industry you work in rather than how hard your degree was or how much experience you have.
Can confirm. Around here, getting into Library and information science takes veruy good grades, and when you graduate, the jobs pay a pittance.

[Anonymous No.15454247]

>>15452895
it sounds like a lot of fun actually, following your career path sounds cool.

[Anonymous No.15454842]

>>15452529
Right that's another thing you can swing to your advantage. Your friends can help you to get jobs as well if they're willing to recommend you to work in the same companies or research to intern with. That's something I personally didn't take advantage of but if you can, do it. Good luck.

[Anonymous No.15454876]

Engineering is low paying trash

[Anonymous No.15454881]

I got a job as a fatigue/inspection/NDT engineer. You don't know how much this means to me bros. It's been a long journey.

[Anonymous No.15454882]

>>15454876
>100k mean
>Low
Maybe if you're from a rich family already which I'm guessing you are.

[Anonymous No.15454888]

>>15454882
100k can’t even get you the average house in the US anymore, and the median engineer doesn’t even make 6 figures. It’s a huge waste of time studying engineering now, compensation is horrendous and hasn’t gone up in 20+ years.

[Anonymous No.15454889]

>>15454881
congrats anon, what will they have you do?

[Anonymous No.15454891]

>>15454888
Nobody buys a house in cash retard, they get a mortgage and 100k a year is enough for a mortgage for a decent house unless you're in San Francisco or something like that.

[Anonymous No.15454894]

>>15454891
No shit, that’s literally what I posted. Engineers are such low IQ betas lmfao, you guys literally eat shit and don’t care that you’re massively getting fucked over in pay. Have fun being a permanent renter.

[Anonymous No.15454896]

>>15454894
I already knew I'd never make a lot money unless I moved into management or started a business and I'm fine with that. I like my subject, do interesting worthwhile work, and I get decently paid for it. I'm not obsessed with money like you are.

[Anonymous No.15454899]

>>15454896
Yes, you’re a beta that likes to be taken advantage of like so many other engineers

[Anonymous No.15454900]

>>15454894
Some engineers switch from engineering into management, it's possible

[Anonymous No.15454906]

>>15454894
Yeah bro, people should stop becoming engineers and instead do comp sci and make more shitty apps or go into finance and move numbers around on a screen. We don't need infrastructure, power, or anything real.

[Anonymous No.15454907]

90th percentile is so easy to reach if you aren't a turbo shitter. Nobody want's to get their license and do actual design work because sizing duct or rebar is boring.

[Anonymous No.15454909]

>>15454899
I would knock you out, am I still a beta when I flat line you in 2 jabs and put you on your ass? You're a beta bitch that would never open his mouth in real life, your hands would get all sweaty and shaky and you won't say shit.

[Anonymous No.15454910]

>>15454907
Design work is stressful, you get the blame for shit not working/going wrong, and pay doesn't match the stress.

[Anonymous No.15454911]

>>15454906
The engineers that work on those things should actually start caring about their pay and demanding larger, more frequent pay increases instead of the standard beta “I don’t care about pay, I like my work!” cubicle monkey response

[Anonymous No.15454912]

>>15454911
The real world doesn't work like that.

[Anonymous No.15454920]

>>15454910
wut? no its not. %99 of design work is cookbook shit you pull out of a manual and then cross checking against the local code requirements to see if you missed anything.

>>15454911
the engineers doing actual infrastructure design work do get paid well. the only peers of mine with their license making under $150k are the ones with 20 hour a week fully remote jobs where they're fucking off in some foreign country for 6 months out of the year. dudes really are above designing sewage systems for globohomo inc. regardless of how well it pays.

[Anonymous No.15454928]

>>15454889
Fatigue assessment(s) of different structures, components, and machines. A lot of travel, including international, plus a company car.

[Anonymous No.15454930]

Most engineers are shitters who should've never gotten into the profession to begin with. Most guys who get into it are doing it because their boomer or genX dad said it'd be a solid career without having any aptitude in it. Also, not even being muh soggy knees tick but it's incredibly prevalent with women. Women do fantastic in engineering school where most of the problems have nice neat little close form solutions but then fall to pieces once they hit industry and things become open ended. You see this all the time, fresh engineering grad hits industry, has that realization of "oh shit I don't actually have any talent for this stuff" then stalls in some dead end position or laterals into management.

In the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" Jimmy Stewarts character dreamed of being an engineer and had to "settle" with owning a bank.

[Anonymous No.15454934]

>>15454930
Things in industry aren't really open ended unless you're in cutting edge design work and even then you're going to be working with a giant team and you'll be told what to do by management and leads. Even an average engineer does good work.

[Anonymous No.15454939]

>>15454934
they're open ended enough in that there isn't a singular solution to the customers problem statement. the vast majority of engineering coursework/exams have only one "correct" solution. Even with the simplest of projects there is enough choice paralysis to get midwits second guessing themselves. I've seen this shit first hand for many, many years.

[Anonymous No.15454946]

>>15454939
You don't second guess yourself? You must be Spock

[Anonymous No.15454956]

>>15454946
not really because I know how to cover my ass and have faith in the fundamentals. there are also enough safety factors built into the design that so long as i don't screw up royally then it still works. maybe the customer pays %5 more in materials or something but honestly they care more about getting that deliverable in their hands on time more than the added build cost.

If i am on a unique enough project where i do second guess myself i get a trusted peer to put eyes on it. the design might not conform to his particular style, but he'd be able to validate whether or not its going to go tits up or not be in compliance.

[Anonymous No.15455130]

>>15448377
Thanks, makes me feel a bit better about the future. I really fucked up hard these 4 years... well no point looking back at it.
I wish the job market was better though, hard to get something :(

[Anonymous No.15455148]

>>15452089
She's a studious and handholdy one. If you give her a book to study from a to z, she will be able to recite the copyright details on the first page.
If no one is there to give her the book, she now renders as that type of person that makes a Reddit thread simply titled "help" -- a cry for help by some quasi-sapient para-sophont, like a teenage girl will cut herself and Attempt SuicideTM as some cry for help with being a 21st century teenager.

[Anonymous No.15455686]

>>15454909
Threatening to beat someone's ass on the internet? That's a classic beta move.

[Anonymous No.15456393]

>>15439648
Just nepobabied my way to a graduate geotechnical engineer position in a major engineering firm with a 2.50 GPA. What am I in for?

[Anonymous No.15456429]

>>15454912
It might if you joined a union.

[Anonymous No.15456430]

>>15454934
>>15454939
>>15454956
Not that anon, but I agree that a lot of engineering jobs are more "cookie cutter" than others.

A lot of the work people do are incremental steps as part of a much larger project, so the risk and consequence of messing up is low. The typical example is all the software devs adding features on top of features, and the industry at large has moved towards adopted this "agile" methodology with sprints and the like. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it means that even the mediocre and sub-par engineers can produce valuable work while hedging the risks of their mistakes.

I do disagree with engineering being a bad career move, a midwit studying engineering will at least be forced to learn some academic rigor and self-discipline. The education, even if unable to teach critical thinking skills and creativity, does make their labor more valuable by making them a bit less retarded. I'd trust a midwit engineer with important work far more than an above average "media and communications" major.

[Anonymous No.15456438]

>>15440324
Getting prof is longer than getting MD.
Getting PhD is like 1 year shorter than MD.

[Anonymous No.15456443]

>>15444169
No, literally nobody cares.

[Anonymous No.15456447]

>>15446254
Not even remotely how it works here in canada, so obviously very location-dependent.

[Anonymous No.15456450]

>>15450973
Don't know what country you're in, but postdoc and postdoc fellowships are synonyms here. You don't do such a thing as postdoc into anything but a prof position (if lucky) or another postdoc (until you get lucky enough to land a prof position). 6 years is very abnormal, most positions are 1-2 years max with renewable fixed length contracts.

[Anonymous No.15456457]

>>15451434
Probably not. The hard cutoff at all unis is 3.0 or 3.2 and 3.0 is rare. Needless to say the competition is higher and the soft cutoff is usually around 3.4. You can usually find these stats at your school of choice or on the specific lab website, and you would do well to use it. Also, in my experience, school of origin matters a LOT to tons of profs (fucking morons). Your saving grace are your publications, but were they your own or were just credited for pity reasons? Your publications could save you if you luck out but that's your only angle of play.

[Anonymous No.15456462]

What reason is there to do a PhD other than enjoying the subject? I've been offered a robotics PhD at a top 10 UK uni and I have absolutely no idea what to think of it.

[Anonymous No.15456486]

Here's a bitter pill for you to swallow: just because you aren't entering a CS/IT field, or even want to become a programmer specifically, doesn't mean you can pass up on learning programming. "Programming" is like writing for the 21st century and 100+ IQs. It's like deeming the ability to write just something befitting for scribes and other "book people". This is how outlandish the concept of being in STEM and meanwhile not being able to code is.

The only difference is that while being able to read and write can a) be achieved by everyone, and b) is also used by everyone nowadays, coding will never have a ~98% penetration among mentally sound people like reading/writing does. It's just for the 100+ IQ half. I don't discount some future visual Scratch-like language/tool will accomplish that 98% penetration, but look what you are prerequisiting -- some smart tablet with very Byzantine code running underneath it just to be functional. You can write current-day code in a text editor on a Nokia brickphone. But <100 IQs will never be smart enough to understand such syntax, symbol manipulation, and variables.


Yes, this wasn't true in previous decades. When society still largely worked on clerks, typewriters, and paper, the ability to code on mainframes is not an universal tool you need to be able to use.

No, this doesn't mean this hasn't changed. No, this doesn't mean you need to be able to write metal-whispering C. That skillset is worthless for anyone besides above mentioned mainframe-nerd equivalents. If you can't write a Python (or I guess Excel) script, you are 21st century illiterate for jobs that require you to use a computer.

[Anonymous No.15456530]

>>15456462
Only do a PhD if you're stuck in one of those fields where it's the only way forward (e.g. math, biology, chemistry), or if it's required for what you want to do (e.g. you need access to multi-million dollar equipment and thousands of dollars for any experiment you want to do, and that's only allowed if you are a researcher with a PhD).

[Anonymous No.15456538]

>>15456486
Absolutely true, and I'll also add that most modern advances in the sciences is due to advances in computer programs almost exclusively, be it the control software of the hardware probe (enabling ever more sensitive and faster data acquisition with inbuilt environmental condition control) or the data analysis software that comes after (increasingly able to automate and make sense of massive data throughput impossible to process by hand, not to mention now capable of deriving complex relations from this data in a way no man is currently able to).

[Anonymous No.15456788]

>>15456486
This is true. Just learning VBA has allowed me to dunk on my engineering peers.

[Anonymous No.15458231]

>>15456462
I did my PhD at a time when the job market was obviously heading into the toilet, head first. My hope was that it would have recovered by the time I had graduated - it did not. so I did a few postdoc rounds too, and made sure to enjoy my time.

For the other reason to do a PhD is that you will soon enough get into a 9 - 5 job wher eone day is like the other. And you do that until you retire. Better then to spend your youth doing something that is more high risk when you can afford to take those risks.

[Anonymous No.15458653]

>>15454876
Can you post how other professions compare using the same metrics as this pic your posted? I'm really curious if engineering is low paying trash, how do other professions even fair.

[Anonymous No.15458767]

>>15458231
How's the market looking now? Layoffs everywhere, but say, the next 4 years?

t. starting my PhD this fall

[Anonymous No.15458787]

>>15458767
Not great desu

[Anonymous No.15458799]

>>15458787
Perfect, I can justify my poor life choices now

[Anonymous No.15459036]

>>15458231
>Better then to spend your youth doing something that is more high risk when you can afford to take those risks.

It might be worth it if it was high risk high reward, but a PhD is high risk no reward. Doing one is objectively a bad idea. It's also very hard to enjoy the PhD + postdoc grind when you have to live in poverty and move regularly, killing any semblance of family or social life long term. At the end of it you've spent a decade living like a rat and will be looking at the same positions and salaries as someone straight out of undergrad with maybe a year or two of experience. And those people probably got more time off and certainly were better compensated. What you're saying is just kicking the can down the road; it might look better than unemployment on paper but it doesn't actually solve anything.

[Anonymous No.15459310]

How bad of an idea is it to target brand new or young faculty as potential PIs? I'm currently researching professors I would like to work under at the schools I'm most interested in applying to, and for one of the schools, both of the professors are very new, with one of them entering back into academia after doing corporate research for a couple years after his PhD. I'm interested in both of their research fields (sustainable and secure embedded systems), but I was wondering what your experience with new faculty is, and how risky it is.

[Anonymous No.15459445]

>>15458231
I'm already late 20s and need money/job. I don't really see what I could do with a PhD other than try to get into academia, but that seems stressful and the reward is small. I have a job offer paying about the same as a PhD with several years of experience and I am interviewing for more. I'm not in a position where I can take too many risks. I am thinking about going to see the lab and talk to supervisor.

[Anonymous No.15459805]

>>15459310
It's risky, especially if the PI is not a full professor yet. Early career academia is ugly and young non-tenured PIs have their head on a chopping block constantly. This translates to a lot of pressure ultimately on you, since they need the results and output of your work to progress their career. There is also a very high chance of getting fucked over if the money runs out or if the PI gets a position offered elsewhere, in which case they will leave and kill your career before it started.

Further, they might not yet have their lab all set up or the resources to get all the equipment or students/postdocs they want. You might have to spend a lot of time on getting things to work, and this can lower your research output. A smaller group also has less expertise around you to draw from.

Academia is largely about reputation, and young PIs generally do not have it in the same quantity as established professors. This looks worse on your CV and impacts the kinds of networks you build and the ease at which you can get collaborations or publish in good journals.

Last is a bit subjective. I don't know what the reason is but I find early career PIs tend to be egoistic and underwhelming. I think the selection process rewards essentially con artists. They need to appear nice and smart for a few hours to convince selection boards, but on longer interaction you realize their knowledge is shallow and they are interested in how they are perceived rather than what they are doing. The really dumb shit tends to be from new groups.

I basically stumbled into all these issues and it has more or less destroyed any chance of making a permanent career in academia.

[Anonymous No.15460172]

>>15459805
Thanks for the advice. There are a few more experienced, tenured professors I was also contacting, but the issue I ran into is that my technical experience doesn't directly translate into his work. To be specific, I work in mobile sensing and computing, but his work focuses more on hardware security and secure systems and secure processors. I've taken an intro processor design course and I work a lot with low level systems through my course work, but I was trying to figure out if this was too big a leap to make. I also have a question concerning funding. I'm working at a national lab this summer as an intern, and some of the people I've spoken with that have worked at the lab have said that, depending on how things go this summer, there's a chance they could give me funding for my research. Do you think it would be smarter to delay applying, wait till I get funding, and then apply, or just apply straight out of undergrad like I was planning? Also, the downside to taking their funding is that I would be contractually obligated to work for them at the lab for the number of years I take their funding after I complete my studies.

[Anonymous No.15460701]

>>15456486
>will never have a 98% penetration
wasnt that said about literacy? just give it time, retard.

[Anonymous No.15460973]

>>15460701
They just massively degraded the standards for what is considered "literate" until everyone is considered literate.

[Anonymous No.15461114]

>>15460172
I won't really be able to give answers on all those points. In general it's of course not guaranteed misery if you choose a young PI, and some would argue there are upsides in that you will likely have more access to your advisor and more of their attention to your work. It's just that I have first-hand experience of what can go wrong and all other things being equal I would recommend an established professor if the choice is available.

I don't know anything about your field, so whether or not a leap is too large is not something I can answer. In general as a PhD student you don't need to be an expert on day one, and it can be unhealthy to become overspecialized. I'd assume this is especially true in fields as centered around current technology as yours.

[Anonymous No.15461213]

Will a PhD in ML (maths department) be more useful than a Master of Data Science? I'm lucky enough to have a job that will sponsor me for either a full time PhD (4 years) + a couple of days a week working for them, or the part time Masters (4 years) plus working for them roughly full time as usual. Either way, my total earnings/outgoings for the 4 years will be almost the same. The PhD topic is really interesting, advisor is great, and it's at a top 50 global school. However, I feel like the Masters would give me a broader skillset (statistics, software eng, IT, etc). I'm into predictive modelling in general, I could see myself going into research but I also like to build shit and am considering going the ML engineer route. Any advice?

[Anonymous No.15461295]

>>15451443
Hey, that's exactly what happened to me, except it was my second semester of my first year. Cratered all but one class. Retook digital logic for computer engineering and turned a D to an A, so there's that.

[Anonymous No.15461555]

How do you guys apply for a master's degree? Do you apply to the campus first or scholarship first?

[Anonymous No.15461689]

>>15461213
I work with a team containing masters and phds in both DS and ML, and they all generally work on the same kind of stuff.
I'd say it's more financially sound to just do a masters rather than a PhD, however since in your situation they'd both take 4 years, I'd personally pick the PhD option.
If you want to minimize the risk of getting stuck in academic bureaucracy bullshit then the masters might be a better idea.

[Anonymous No.15461709]

>>15458767
>How's the market looking now?
Grim and getting worse.
>Layoffs everywhere, but say, the next 4 years?
A lot of companies overemployed people during the pandemic, Elon Musk triggered the cleanout but more companies will follow.
>t. starting my PhD this fall
Good timing. Remember: after rain comes the sun, and you will be in a better position.

[Anonymous No.15461836]

Best books for self learning calc based physics ?(Other than Resnick halliday or serway)
My college prof sucks
T. 1st year electrical engineering

[Anonymous No.15461854]

>>15461836
What do you mean by calc based physics? Are you looking to learn calc or a specific bit of physics?

[Anonymous No.15462111]

sorry havent been posting here was too busy having sex

[Anonymous No.15463262]

Questions about Masters Programs in the US:
1) Is it like undergrad where you pick a major to apply to, or do you have to talk to a professor who runs the program.
2) What's a good way to strengthen my application for a Masters in CS outside of school besides the GRE?
3) Is there a difference from doing online/offline programs besides the lack of networking? Are online programs easier to get into?
Thanks in advance!

[Anonymous No.15463269]

>>15463262
More like undergrad, but you should have a clearer and more justifiable idea for what research you'd want to do. Talking to profs would be advisable.
I don't know anything about CS. However, Masters in general are quite easy to get into at any school because you're paying to attend. It's a scam if you pay your own money and don't have a company pay for you.
Online programs carry probably 1/10 of the prestige and are not going to be widely accepted as legitimate.

[Anonymous No.15463278]

>>15463269
To be honest, I didn't really have any aspirations of doing a Masters since I wanted to go into industry, but right before I graduated my offer got retracted and I'm basically a neet atm. The point of this story is my GPA is really bad, like 2.5ish. Are there still masters programs out there that would accept me?

[Anonymous No.15463289]

>>15463278
You can get a Master's, probably at a pretty decent place. You'll just have to dish out some cash.

[Anonymous No.15463291]

>>15463289
That's good to hear, at least I have a backup plan in case the job market doesn't get better. Thanks for the responses!

[Anonymous No.15463393]

>>15461854
In high school we are taught algebra based physics(which doesn't require diff,integrals) but I I am kinda struggling with calculus based physics in college

Any particular book with good theory ?

(I am looking to learn undergrad mechanics-calculus based) similar like AP Physics mechanics - C
But in more depth

Pls suggest some books, my prof really sucks....can not get my mind around variable acceleration and stuff like that in one dimensional motion

[Anonymous No.15463411]

>>15463393
have you actually taken the calculus classes themselves?

[Anonymous No.15463583]

>>15463393
learn calculus first retard

[Anonymous No.15463612]

What do the opportunities for EE and CS (specifically cybersecurity) look like? Do you guys think it’s switching to?
Thanks bros
t. 1st year EE

[Anonymous No.15463640]

>>15463393
But all physics is calculus based, they just hide that from you at school.
Surely a pure math book would be better, physics books generally have calculus as assumed knowledge and learning that makes applying it to physics really easy.
Otherwise, pick up any mechanics textbook or even a core phys like Young and Freedman University Physics. They're more than good enough for what you need so check your university library and see what they have.

[Anonymous No.15463695]

>>15463583
It's a co-requsite with first year mechanics course

[Anonymous No.15463696]

>>15463640
We don't have that one, in mechanics have - David Morin, resnick and kplenner

[Anonymous No.15463698]

>>15463640
Any video lectures I can supplement with the book for mechanics ? (Other than Walter lewin one)

[Anonymous No.15463699]

I can never do good in exams because I always end up panicking. I failed a really important exam recently despite knowing 90% of the answers. But due to panicking, I could barely answer half of them. What to do?

[Anonymous No.15463785]

>>15463696
Any of those should be fine
>>15463698
Mechanics statics and dynamics are very much Phys 101 so not many videoed lectures of them. Even Feynman is brief on the topic.
I believe there are some classical mechanics lecture series on YouTube or whatever.
Is there anything specific about variable acceleration that you are struggling with? You could always ask /sqt/ here.

[Anonymous No.15463943]

>>15463785
Literally everything with variable acceleration, can not comprehend around it

[Anonymous No.15463953]

>>15439648
imagine being a STEMchud. Studying some soulless crap only to wage like the rest of us because firms of third worldies in Pooland and the Philipines will do you work for a fraction of the cost. The real people making money now are tradechads. At least humanitychads get to be cultured and study want they love. Stemfagging is an akward middle man of wanting to be the smart guy and wanting money but getting almost neither.

[Anonymous No.15464045]

>>15463612
Can you actually get the EE degree? If yes, then no don't switch. If no, then yes just switch now.

[Anonymous No.15464253]

>>15463943
Bump

[Anonymous No.15464293]

Is EE the only engineering field where PhD is worth it? I looked into salary statistics and PhD gave a flat 50% bumb in ones salary.

[Anonymous No.15464328]

>>15463695
>>15463943
If you don't understand the math, learn the math first.

If you don't understand WHY you use the math, then watch a youtube video or something about it.

If you still don't understand then switch to a major outside of STEM, fucking pajeet.

[Anonymous No.15464513]

>>15463953
>Studying some soulless crap only to wage like the rest of us because firms of third worldies in Pooland and the Philipines will do you work for a fraction of the cost.
Outside programming that is not a problem.

[Anonymous No.15464587]

>>15451909
based

[Anonymous No.15465168]

How much is %100 remote worth to you /scg/?

[Anonymous No.15465341]

>>15463699
realize there's no point to panicking since you already know it all/take your time, or ask your doctor for some pills.

[Anonymous No.15465370]

>>15464328
Can not find any good lectures on that topic, can u suggest some ?

[Anonymous No.15465846]

>>15439648
Why do embedded systems and digital design subfields of EE attract so many low iq students?

[Anonymous No.15465879]

>>15463953
Not everyone is a money whore pajeet who studies stem for money. For example I've been interested in amateur radio since I was a child, which is why I studied electrical engineering with a focus on RF engineering. I would even work in this area for min. wage

[Anonymous No.15466295]

I took a job at a manufacturing place that constantly has issues and people die all the time.
I took it for the money but now I'm wondering if I made a mistake.
As an engineer I'll largely be insulated from the explosions, right? It'll mostly be techs and operators getting blown up?

[Anonymous No.15466407]

>>15466295
Depends on what you're doing but chances are no you won't be insulated from the explosions. Just take the proper precautions.

[Anonymous No.15466987]

Finally got all the background research for my disertation done. Nearly 300 papers reviewed and summarized.
Any advice for how to get my proposal done? My uni has a guide but its pretty barebones and I'm not sure how much I should focus on my methods and software I'm going to be utilizing (Its a computational study)

[Anonymous No.15467001]

Incoming undergrad student here. College apps were brutal this year. Waitlisted, then rejected by MIT; waitlisted, then accepted by Cornell; accepted by and committed to Carnegie Mellon. Can't believe I'm locked out of HYPSM. Is it over for me? (I'm into biomedical, materials, electrical, and chemical engineering, robo, and bioinformatics.)

[Anonymous No.15467013]

>>15467001
CMU is still good for stem, you can 100% have a good career after university.

[Anonymous No.15467017]

>>15467013
it's definitely mediocre-okayish at stem but it's disappointing going to a school like CMU after getting baited by MIT waitlist.
JHU BME was my dream program, and i'm still incredibly salty they rejected me. similar for UPenn BE.
How much should I regret choosing CMU over Cornell? how are CMU BME PhD placements in your experience (am aiming to get tenured)? and should I sell out to CS or EE--ie only two subjects CMU is actually okay at?

[Anonymous No.15467191]

>>15467017
CMU is viewed as an amazing school and on the same level as Cornell, most professors I know at universities don't have a HYPSM degrees anyways so if you try hard you should be able to get tenured but being a professor takes a while and doesn't pay good. You can try to get into a PHD program at an HYPSM, but if you want to work a normal industry job CS or EE would better.

[Anonymous No.15467301]

>>15439902
Can you negotiate your salary? My first ds internship was low pay but I didn't negotiate. Looking back, would do it again because I learned a lot from startup internship + your networking goes a long way.

[Anonymous No.15467519]

>>15465846
sounds like cope or something

[Anonymous No.15467520]

>>15463953
get your corny ass back on the construction site.

[Anonymous No.15467536]

>>15467017
Penn & Hopkins are both located adjacent to negro ghettos. Nobody in their right mind should attend either school because of the high likelihood of physical danger, same goes for UofChicago. CMU is pretty bad off too, did you look at RPI?

[Anonymous No.15467591]

>>15467536
CMU is actually located in a pretty safe area and UPenn is far from Kensington. RPI is fine and all, I just didn’t apply because I wanted my degree to actually mean something

[Anonymous No.15468155]

>>15466987
bump for this, I'm also trying to write a proposal

[Anonymous No.15468306]

>>15467001
I would have killed to get into Carnegie Mellon. Are you fucking serious?

[Anonymous No.15468309]

>>15466295
Blow up wagie, I need to buy a third condo on downtown Manhattan.

[Anonymous No.15468326]

>>15439648
I am looking to prestudy Physical Chemistry and Instrumental Analysis this summer.
Can anyone give me some advice?
Also, what are some good chemistry grad programs for people who hate chemistry?

[Anonymous No.15468386]

>>15456457
>You can usually find these stats at your school of choice or on the specific lab website
How do you go find them? I am looking at NYU's just to see if your tip works and I can't seem to find it.

[Anonymous No.15468736]

>>15468386
NYU kids are terrible, it's all lower upper middle class girls that were so dumb that their parents couldn't pay their way into a better school.

[Anonymous No.15468798]

>>15468736
Sure, but where do I find the stats for average GPA, publications, etc?
>lower upper middle class girls
Still mogs me. I only have one research experience and only a 3.7 GPA.

[Anonymous No.15468809]

>>15468798
>nyu hard
congrats youre retarded
>>15468306
and i would have killed to get into mit or princeton. different tiers of people

[Anonymous No.15468863]

>>15468798
It's in the top 3 results when you search "nyu average gpa" on google you fucking retard, holy fucking shit off yourself

[Anonymous No.15469009]

>>15468863
i use bing not jewgle

[Anonymous No.15470953]

>>15468306
Same.
I sadly didn't care too much about my grades in high school because I fell for the "a degree is a degree" meme.
Got extremely lucky to have been give the chance to prove myself and work my way up to doing a PhD. Most people in my shoes would've just been fucked working a shitty low level job for the rest of their life

[Anonymous No.15471700]

>>15470953
Nice, I'm also looking to get into a PhD program. I'll just be happy if I get into any at this point.

[Anonymous No.15471825]

>study engineering they said
>its better than a physics bs > software path they said

[Anonymous No.15471971]

>>15471825
>fell for the meme
You only have yourself to blame

[Anonymous No.15472308]

I'm so happy. Suck me, suck my cock. I will have an AI degree funded by Google-kun next year, I intend to leave the academic hell scape and make huge bucks (starting $250k), see you later physics-eng-math losers.

[Anonymous No.15472374]

>>15471825
So after 2 years worth of studies you get at least $20 per hour, with no work experience required. How is that something to whine about?

[Anonymous No.15472553]

>>15471825
Bro that isn't even a graduate job, they're hiring dropouts

[Anonymous No.15472674]

>>15472374
No you fucking retard they want two years of INDUSTRY experience, not school.

[Anonymous No.15473024]

The proposed future for UK graduates:
https://archive.is/P8n6a

[Anonymous No.15473169]

>>15473024
When I turn 50, someone is footing the bill for paying off my loan and it's not going to be me.
T. Successfully fled to another country, much like all of my peers

[Anonymous No.15473289]

>>15471700
Honestly I feel like if you show hard work ethic (as much of a meme as that sounds) to a good professor, they'll give you the world. I'd recommend emailing a few and trying to make it personable. If you haven't already, look for student research opportunities. That's what lead me to all this happening.
If you've already graduated, not sure what would help other than really acing the GRE for whatever school you apply to.

[Anonymous No.15473417]

Got an internship at a power plant (EE junior). I feel absolutely overwhelmed and stupid. I hope this is normal because right now Im having a hard time imagining doing this all my life. Its a combination of stress, boredom and not knowing all the in-and-outs of engineering. What did I expect though going into engineering lol. In the worst case I can always become a coder or IT

[Anonymous No.15473428]

>>15473417
Yeah dude you're a junior don't feel too bad about feeling like a retard. A lot of the power classes are senior classes and on top of that, most of the classes will only teach you the very basics. Everything else will be learned on the job. What I'd recommend doing right now is learning AutoCAD, Revit, and start preparing to take the FE in your senior year if you're serious about being the Power Engineering world.

[Anonymous No.15473440]

>>15467001
>>15467017
>people fell for this bait
there is not a person alive that knows enough about the uni admissions system to use the acronym 'HYPSM', chose CMU over Cornell for BME, and is unhappy with the decision.

I know one guy at MIT and a few at Caltech -- they're all super humble and would have been happy at our state flagship. on the off chance you're serious, grow up.

>>15467536
>RPI
Troy is a shithole.

[Anonymous No.15473449]

>>15473428
Thats reassuring. Guess Ill grow into it. Whats interesting too is I can see now that I can focus my whole career on power plant stuff and become an expert in it. Dont need to know about the breadboarding circuits or computer hardware, just focus on power stuff.

[Anonymous No.15473528]

>>15439648
What are some programming languages that are must know? In my job I mostly use python, sql etc. I know basic C and MATLAB from uni. Should I learn anything else? C++?

[Anonymous No.15473559]

>>15473528
nobody can answer this question without knowing what your job/field is but also the answer is always lisp.

[Anonymous No.15473575]

>>15473449
It goes deeper that that. With power you can do utilities, you can join up with a CE firm and do consulting, you can join up with a private company and focus on their power needs. There's a lot you can with it.

[Anonymous No.15473628]

Hi guys. I took this picture with my phone. M13
>Inb4 it's beginner trash
I'm new.

[Anonymous No.15473636]

>Be Math/Physics major graduating next year
>Look for jobs that have my degrees
>All of them are statistical analysis jobs
>One (count: 1) researcher position

Am I going to be an office lackey? Considering applying to NASA because my school has a ton of ties with them but idk

[Anonymous No.15473644]

>>15439650
nice, I happen to be a virgin myself

[Anonymous No.15473647]

>>15467001
if your serious somebody needs to take you out and beat the shit out of you

[Anonymous No.15473651]

When it comes to admissions, my GPA is unremarkable but I have a bunch of experience working as a machinist and programmer. Do colleges like personal projects and jobs?

[Anonymous No.15473673]

>>15472374
Problem is I can make 30 an hour managing a mcdonalds

[Anonymous No.15473681]

>>15473559
Yeah. Was kinda of open ended. Currently I work as a ML engineer. I hope to continue in this for the foreseeable future. Just was kinda thinking of applying to those high paying quant jobs. So what are the languages that'll give me an edge.
Lisp sounds like a /g/ meme or are you being legit

[Anonymous No.15473718]

>>15471700
>Nice, I'm also looking to get into a PhD program. I'll just be happy if I get into any at this point.
determine the top 10 guys in the field you like by reading arxiv all day and start learning crash courses on the field, then email the 20 top guys in the field ask them if there is an opening, saying you have been interested in the field for a few years and you wish to pursue it. You can even talk to them if they attend some big conference soon

[Anonymous No.15473790]

>>15473636
You do know that research jobs expect/require an MSc or PhD, right?

[Anonymous No.15473928]

>>15473528
>>15473681
You basically want to pick up the skills that the data scientists, data analysts, and data engineers have. Especially now that companies are downsizing, they much rather hire for example a data scientist who can make his own visualizations and doesn't need to go ask the data engineer to do all of his aws queries for him.

So AWS, Tableau, PowerBI, Cython, etc. are good complements to your skillset that would give you an edge. Big data stuff like kafka and spark are a must these days.

I'd also recommend looking into different query variants, they're all basically SQL but for example one company I worked for used Vertica, which had enough differences and quirks that it was worth spending time learning the documentation a bit better.

For actual languages, Cython is basically a way of writing C within python to get better performance, if you know basic C already then I think you'd get more value applying that to Cython and optimizing your python code rather than picking up C++ which you most likely wouldn't use in the future.

>>15473651
Yeah if it's relevant to the program it helps

[Anonymous No.15473944]

>>15473928
I wanna be a nuclear engie, i did OK in some science fairs too, but GPA is barely at a 3 and that was after working my ass off to make up for a bunch of stuff I fucked up.

[Anonymous No.15473948]

>>15473944
forgot to add, i could easily become forklift certified due to my unusual skillset if they would like that

[Anonymous No.15474086]

>>15473928
Those are good suggestions. Thanks.

[Anonymous No.15474114]

academiabros, do you think a CS fag can transition to MSEE? i realized this year that swe is lame as fuck and i want to be a real engineer. Like, no hard feelings to those in cs but I'm not gonna make REST APIs and keep up with bloated frameworks for the rest of my life, and then get fired after I turn 40. I want to be in a role that actually takes skill and requires higher education so some retard bootcamper cant come in and steal my job after memorizing some leetcode hard.

I'm planning to study my EE prereqs part time at SJSU while working my sweshitter job in the bay and hopefully apply for a masters elsewhere (looking at schools like ncsu, udub) since I heard SJSU aint so good reputation wise and master's school reputation is kinda important (correct me if I'm wrong). My undergrad GPA is 3.45 from UIUC which is pretty dogshit. Anyone have thoughts on whether this is feasible?

ffs i hate my life. I wish I cared more back then. My parents pushed me so hard in high school (super retarded parenting strat because turns out it doesn't matter where the fuck you do your undergrad) and I put in minimal effort during college in rebellion. My parents even told me to do engineering and I didn't listen cus I hated them at the time. Now I'm locked out of academia even though I know I would've thrived in it since I genuinely love to learn and do side projects. Everytime I see a real engineer I feel mogged. When I read of mass layoffs in tech I know I'm next. Because I am replaceable. Coding isn't hard.

For anyone who this applies to, don't pick computer "science" unless you're comfortable being a swe. It's the janitor job of the tech industry. It's not engineering, and its definitely not science. Even my chem major friend laughs at me. Yes, it's the most competitive and highest paying degree. But don't fall for it. Even at "good cs schools", you learn fuck all. All my knowledge is from my side projects. Pick an engineering degree and learn programming on the side.

[Anonymous No.15474331]

>>15474114
Can a CS do MSEE? Yes. However you're going to be behind on some concepts. What you could do is take a fundamentals of engineering for EE prep exam to learn all the fundamentals. If you're able to take the FE exam, I'd recommend it. With that you can easily prove to graduate programs that you can do EE shit. However all that being said it's probably not necessary.

[Anonymous No.15474463]

>>15474114
>I'm not gonna make REST APIs and keep up with bloated frameworks for the rest of my life, and then get fired after I turn 40

CS PhDs can do actually fun stuff @ corporate labs. think IBM/Microsoft/Google/Meta Research.

I'm in the same not-wanting-to-be-a-codemonkey boat, and that's my current plan.

[Anonymous No.15474483]

>>15446725
I graduated undergrad in math with like a 2.4. Not proud of it. I know I fucked up.

Im in a math masters program right now with a 3.8. Eveyone on this board said it wouldnt be possible. Its possible.

[Anonymous No.15474582]

>>15439648
This year on a random impulse i decided to switch to a Biology Associates.
Is there any lab work i can get into with an associates, or do i need to get a masters to even think about using my degree?

[Anonymous No.15474640]

>>15472553
Yeah that might be why they're not requiring a degree for a full time job

>>15472674
Lol no, that would mean that they'd be looking for someone with engineering job experience, with no education mandatory. That sort of people don't exist

>>15473673
Not with out some experience and proof of competence you can't. Most people working at md don't end getting 30/hour. And how's that a problem anyway? You go do that then, if that's what you prefer.

[Anonymous No.15474979]

give me one fucking reason not to switch to a fucking economics major

[Anonymous No.15475305]

>>15474979
because you could become an optometrist instead

[Anonymous No.15475473]

>>15446215
at least they didn't ask for your gpa lol, there are chemist positions looking for recent grads that pay 6 figs but need a high gpa minimum 3.0.

[Anonymous No.15475477]

>>15446725
same here bro depressed by my 2.8 in bio every single job asking minimum 3.0

[Anonymous No.15475630]

Most top AI labs (public and private) demand people with PhDs. Is theoretical ML good to prospect those or will I get stuck, especially if I choose a theoretical topic away not related to neural networks (topological data analysis for example)?

[Anonymous No.15475749]

>doing masters right now
>working on thesis
>have to use software
>turns out my PhD students don't actually know anything at all
>have never used the software themselves despite having multiple students write papers with their names on it
I'm not even sure what to do at this point
If I complain and tell them they don't know shit I'll have to start over again. So I'll keep quiet and not say shit I guess.
>>15475630
Most ML PhDs don't know shit. Just apply.

[Anonymous No.15475779]

>>15475749
>doing PhD
>need to use equipment
>postdocs don't know anything, break my stuff and are generally useless
>become postdoc
>permanent research staff have no idea how their experiments work
It goes up the entire way, my entire field is faking it and floating by on the research of the three people who do know their shit.

[Anonymous No.15475947]

>>15467001
You should be doing your undergrad at a shitter state school.

[Anonymous No.15475956]

From which portion of physics commercialized technology can be made ? Condensed matter, solid state, optics or any other ?
(In other words, which physics PhD can be most employable ?)

[Anonymous No.15475974]

>>15475956
English Communication I.

[Anonymous No.15475982]

>>15475956
Any branch of physics (even particle memes) can have commercial offshoots. Your most directly commercia/industrial (and sometimes employable) branches will be semiconductor physics. There is a lot of work in telecoms semiconductors, optics, transistor and other silicon work, photovoltaics, laser communications. You also have non-semiconductor condensed matter sensors and devices, superconducting amplifiers arguably quantum technologies but they're a bit of a meme.
If you want to be employable from a PhD, there is also the nanofabrication branch. MBE experience is particularly desirable but plenty of industry and labs want fabrication monkeys.

[Anonymous No.15476297]

>>15475982
Thanks anon, any words on photonics ?

[Anonymous No.15476606]

>>15475956
Solid state is fairly safe but also encompasses a lot. It includes semiconductors which is a safe field as well as superconductors, where High Tc cratered gruesomely with few survivors.

>>15476297
Photonics has been the technology of the future for 50 years, and will remain so for years to come.

[Anonymous No.15476670]

>>15476606
Gotta laugh at the high TC people every time I see them at a conference.
Observing a step in resistance of a near-irreproducible material under 200 GPa of pressure then trying again with some other random crystal is not real science.

[Anonymous No.15476696]

I applied for a peculiar job and I don't know what to think of it after several interviews.
It's heavily NDT/NDE based (visual, UT, MPI, EC) and the company pays for your training, but they don't hire technicians, they only hire people with engineering degrees. The work is basically inspection/quality engineering. They said they don't hire technicians because technicians cannot make engineering decisions (e.g. to clients), so instead of hiring engineers and technicians separately, they get engineers to do what technicians could do. The pay and benefits are good, but I am just wondering how this will work out long term.
Career wise I would like to go into fatigue engineering and structural integrity in general. I am so confused right now.

[Anonymous No.15476959]

>>15474640
do you really believe a mechanical engineering new grad should make less than a mcdonald's worker with 5 years on the job?

[Anonymous No.15477039]

>>15475956
Those two questions aren't exactly the same. In principle you'd be looking at any branch of physics which deals with technologies used in current products. So semiconductors (organic/inorganic) and optics would be the easy answers. Following this kind of reasoning I went into research on organic semiconductors. I then realized that the skillset I developed is not really employable. Industry wants engineers at the end of the day and most of the lab experience isn't really useful outside of academia. I would have been better off trying to weasel into a more coding-heavy PhD and becoming a codemonkey after.

I guess what I'm saying is if you just want an industry job don't do physics. I would say don't do physics more generally but some people are sick like that.

[Anonymous No.15477243]

>>15439648
Good evening. I’m a geologist in environmental consulting. Plan is to get my PG and then switch to client side or B4/MBB to do risk or real estate work.

>>15446725
Depends on your major. I got a full ride/TAship for my masters with a 2.95, but had good research experience during undergrad

[Anonymous No.15477262]

any good books on learning optics? i know the basics for mirrors, galilean telescopes, etc, but i'd like to learn more.

[Anonymous No.15477267]

Got hired out of college as an RF engineer cause I did a combined bachelors/masters, have never really worked higher up than an intern before. Company is of course a contractor of sorts, sometimes directly other times as a subcontractor of Lockheed and similar. Handbook says business casual, can I get away with keeping my long hair if I keep it tied up or does this style of work mandate a boomer professional cut?

[Anonymous No.15477520]

>>15471825
>robotics

this is the problem with you fucking guys. anything to do with rockets or robots or anything remotely "cool" is gonna pay shit because everybody and their fucking brother wants to be the next tony stark. design toilets and screws ffs and you'll make good money.

[Anonymous No.15477945]

>>15476670
>high TC people
Are there any left? The stuff under monstrous pressure has been questioned and few answers are given.

[Anonymous No.15477994]

>>15477267
Just ask HR if you're in doubt. Chances are you'll be fine with just tying it up though.

[Anonymous No.15478117]

>>15477945
A foolish few, still harping on about cuprates and UTe2

[Anonymous No.15478248]

>>15477994
Good point, I should probably just do that.

[Anonymous No.15478334]

>>15477267
>long hair
even if it's allowed, anyone older than 30 will look down on you for being a gay hippie.

[Anonymous No.15478355]

>>15476696
bump

[Anonymous No.15478380]

>>15478334
Also true, though in the past my superior competance has allowed me to get by it. How long would you say is too long? I've got it down to a bit below my armpits right now.

[Anonymous No.15478537]

>>15478380
shoulders-length max should be fine with most people as long as it's well-groomed/not disgusting, but even then it can still be too long and gay for some people.

[Anonymous No.15479069]

>>15478537
I see, makes sense. It's definitely groomed enough currently that I've been mistaken for gay by at least 3 men, but after testing how to keep it out of my face I've noticed the only ways make me look either even gayer or like a rat so I'll probably just go for the just-above-the-ear like it was a couple years ago. Thanks for the tips.

[Anonymous No.15479313]

>>15477267
Manbuns are usually accepted (as long as it's tidy), otherwise keep the length off the shoulders, preferably not past the ears. As long as you don't have long bangs covering your face during zoom calls they usually don't care.

t. had long hair

[Anonymous No.15479322]

Chemeng faggot here, 1 year remaining to my BA degree. Is there any hope for me or should I fuck off to compsci before it's too late?

[Anonymous No.15479566]

>>15478117
The latter day investigations into hideously toxic heavy metals and radioactive elements already then indicated desperation was building.
I am, like, sure that plutonium hexacyanate hyponitrate will work!

[Anonymous No.15479572]

>>15473651
If you're a mechE, you'll have zero issues getting a mechanical design position. Of you have projects it'll most likely be a legit design position, not supporting legacy crap or whatever. Most mechE new grads don't know the difference from their own cock and a crescent wrench, so I'd say you're set if you've worked in a shop.

[Anonymous No.15479881]

>>15479322
Would you be willing to switch to Chemical Engineering? You could get a relatively high-paying job with that, at about $100k/y.
In contrast, at Comp Sci you'd have to compete with hundreds of thousands of Pajeets and Mexicans with a portfolio full of FreeCodeCamp projects.

[Anonymous No.15480864]

>>15468326
>instrumental analysis
Its existence is only relevant since Undergrads are cheaper than an HPLC robot.
Physical Chem:
You can describe properties of shitty "promising materials" COF MOF and so....
Or if the program offers advanced math and phys, maybe you cab get into quantum.
t. fell for the phys chem scam, does not want a masters in labslaving for shitty materials

[Anonymous No.15481606]

First time using Excel at work here. I feel like most of the tasks can be done much quicker with shortcuts etc. Anyone got a good introductory video series?

t. first industry job

[Anonymous No.15481620]

>>15479322
Know chemical engineers making good money at BASF and Bayer. Why would it be over?

[Anonymous No.15481666]

>>15473718
>reading arxiv all day
I have no idea what they are talking about. Should I do some background research on some of the interesting papers, or just keep reading?
>email the 20 top guys in the field
Sounds like boomer-tier advice. Does this really work?

[Anonymous No.15481669]

>>15481606
This is likely a dumb take since I don't use Excel but I cannot think of a reason why I wouldn't just open the .xls file with Python and do whatever I need to do there.

[Anonymous No.15481680]

>>15473024
Can't wait to graduate and fuck off to another country

[Anonymous No.15481683]

>>15481606
Pivot tables are the biggest time saver, it's pretty intuitive so you could get by without a tutorial even.

>>15481669
The problem is that all the boomers and non-stem millennials use it. Their formatting is retarded, it takes forever to format a typical financial model spreadsheet so that I can load it into Python. See picrel, a lot of the information is based on color codes, and they'll mix in charts and have different tables in the same sheet instead of different ones and it's all one big clusterfuck.

When it does work I do exactly as you said and load it into a dataframe where it's much easier to get what I want. I probably spend about 10 hours a week just dealing with all the bullshit spreadsheets I get from the finance department.


>>15481666
Not that anon, but the people in the field ARE boomers, so it works.

Also if you don't have any idea about what they're talking about then that's a bad sign, since if you're going to do a PhD in the field the you should have the prerequisite background to understand at least one quarter of it.

[Anonymous No.15481684]

>>15481683
forgot picrel like a retard

[Anonymous No.15481688]

>>15481666
Not that anon, but I'll give my two cents.

>I have no idea what they are talking about. Should I do some background research on some of the interesting papers, or just keep reading?
I think by the time you can properly understand the ins and outs of the papers you read you're probably a few years into your PhD already. You should do some background research on the topic though, context is very important. Review articles are very helpful, though usually lag the bleeding edge a little bit.

Going through recent high-impact publications has two upsides: first, you can try to figure out who the relevant people in the field are. Second, you get some understanding of which direction research is being pushed, what the open issues are. Based on this you could hopefully give a somewhat-sane pitch of what you would like to work on, how that would fit into the field generally and the research group/your skillset specifically. It's probably somewhat field-dependent, but usually professors have their own projects thought out and you're not expected to pitch a complete grant proposal or anything. Just demonstrate some interest and capacity for critical/original thought.

>Sounds like boomer-tier advice. Does this really work?
It can, but it's not ideal. The ideal case is that you have your foot in the door already, either through working for that person or someone whose judgement they trust. Hiring people based on CVs alone is a real crapshoot. It does happen, and generally positions are required to be openly advertised, but having an in is definitely an advantage. Even if you apply for an advertised position it would be a good idea to shoot an email first.

If you know any currently active researchers you could try to ask them for names or introductions/references. Networks are super important in research, it is massively political.

[Anonymous No.15482031]

>>15481683
Will look into this. Thanks anon

[Anonymous No.15482518]

>>15477262
Hecht is best for optics.

[Anonymous No.15482964]

I got my first internship out of college, currently enrolled in a Masters but figured I should at least spend 6 months in industry to get valuable experience.

I managed to get into a big tech company, currently leader in its sector, working as a hardware research engineer. basically R&D.

I am expected to produce or at least participate to a research paper which should be published at the end of my internship, but I am already 3 months and one week into my internship and my first two months were atrocious and completely unproductive because I was still figuring out everything, was given a codebase to work with little to no documentation and usecases, and tackling a NP hard open problem.

My supervisor is in another country, I'm actually working full time remote against my will for VISA reasons. My supervisors are constantly complaining about my work pace, they always make terrible remarks, or indicate me one way or another that they regret taking me in. They have no idea what I'm doing, they don't bother checking my code or repository, don't give a fuck about what I post on my confluence page, we meet twice a week over zoom and they just keep mentioning my "poor performances".

So far I'm working on a good project but I will never finish it on time.
I definitely do not have the necessary theoretical knowledge to enhance my work, prove its correctness beyond empirical results, and I'm slow at implementing everything.
I just feel terrible every single day, I do my full 8-5 shift and still leave feeling like shit as nothing was completed and I will have to get back to it the next day.

How do I tackle this? I feel very much alone and the guidance is scarce, my supervisor does the easy work, and he's not even working alone on his part of the project as PhD students from a math department of an Ivy league school heavily help him, meanwhile I'm left to my own devices. How do I tackle the next 2 and a half months?

[Anonymous No.15483023]

>>15482964
Short answer is keep your head down, do the work and get out as soon and as civilly as you can. Working on a project you know longer enjoy is very draining but it's only 2.5 months so try to rough it out.

Sounds like you've been shafted by a bad supervisor team. I've worked with more than a few useless masters students and the onus is always on me (as a supervisor) to work with them and help them do their best. If your supervisors are going to continue being obstinate then do the work required of you, don't cause trouble, but do keep a record of everything negative they say or do. Just in case you need to take it above them.

As for the paper don't worry about it, papers take a fucking age to get published. I got one accepted this week after 14 months of arguing with reviewers and earlier this year I got one accepted four days after submitting. Very slim chances of you getting one done in two months. Just make sure you have the data or results, start writing it up into a paper and hand it off to your supervisor if it isn't submitted by the end. Again you must keep a record. If they publish the work without you, you can make a complaint to their bosses, maybe even the journal and get them in a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous No.15483100]

how fucked am I as a programmer if I take an awkward amount of time to answer what 7 x 8 is for example. Also do people memorize the solutions to the multiplication table or do they calculate them on the spot? Am I retarded for not knowing?

[Anonymous No.15483194]

>>15482964

There isn't much you can do, but the other anon's advice is great. The 6 weeks will go by much quicker than you'd expect. It's good to deal with this type of office bullshit/disappointments early on in your career.

[Anonymous No.15483199]

>>15483194
>>15482964
>6 weeks
Just realized you're staying for two and a half months, sorry anon. Still, 10 weeks aren't bad.

[Anonymous No.15483257]

What a terrible, cruel life I subjected myself to for literally no reason.

[Anonymous No.15483392]

>>15483100
Programming is more about logic than arithmetic, so I doubt it matters much. If you forget tables, just simplify it into smaller numbers.
[math] 7 \times 8 = 7 \times (10 - 2) = 70 - 14 = 60 - 4 = 56 [/math]
You don't even need to memorise tables beyond 10 since you can always decompose it into a sum of a multiple of 10 and single digit.

[Anonymous No.15483515]

>be me
>apply to jobs
>tick every box
>have experience in field
>have required degrees
>have research in field
>no responses
>job listings still up months later
>turn on TV "NoBoDy WaNtS tO wOrK aNyMoRe"

fuck this job market and fuck these companies

[Anonymous No.15483532]

Are R&D jobs (mathematical statistics grad) a substitute for academia? I don't live in a country where R&D is a thing, so I have no idea about them. Every white collar job here is basically pencil pushing, excel reading, clerk, finance etc., stuff I couldn't care less for. Are they as fulfilling as research?

[Anonymous No.15483741]

>>15483532
They're an alternative to academia. Often with better pay and conditions, less stress, but less choice in what you research. It varies a lot, research institution is very different to commercial R&D

[Anonymous No.15483810]

>>15483023
>>15483194
Thank you for your answers.
I was just worried that having 6 months on my resume with no real outcome may look bad.
I think my ego took a heavy hit and I realize how much I have left to learn.
Also couldn't really do much about my remote situation (8 hours difference from the rest of the team) and asocial supervisor.

Better now than when I actually get into industry or a PhD I guess.

[Anonymous No.15483877]

>>15483100
In some countries they do, I was forced to memorize the multiplication table up to 10 kek,

For a programmer I'd argue it's a good thing, you're closer to the way a computer approaches the problem.

>>15482964
Other anon gave great advice. However what I would add, is figure out what you want on your CV afterwards. Sure you're not going to get a great reference, but you should still leverage it for all it's worth.
They clearly don't care whether or not you do a better job on your current task, so fuck that task, halfass it, and find a project that you'd want for your own portfolio to work on and focus on that instead.

Or pick up a task from a different department that you can get all buddybuddy with. If it's not a boomer company, I'd get in touch with their HR/talent manager/whatever lady and explain your situation with some modifications; explain that you're not being supervised as much and that you're not meshing with the team that well and that it's leading to a lot of deadtime. Ask if they know someone in a different department who has some task you can work on, finance or sales or whatever. Can help you get a reference.

I also had an internship where I wasn't able to do anything, so I just went and found my own project to work on. It's a gamble, but can turn out well.

>>15483532
There are other jobs that also fall into the same category. Most "data science" jobs are basically just doing some stats work on datasets so you can find some conclusions to tell management. Closer to academia than pencil pushing at least

[Anonymous No.15483913]

What jobs should I look into with a mechatronics degree with a ME focus ?

[Anonymous No.15483924]

>>15483515
You jus need to network bro

[Anonymous No.15483933]

>>15439842
You'll be an intellectual slave, you'll be trapped in the lab with people you may not like.

What do you study though?

[Anonymous No.15483958]

Does it make sense at all to try applying for my thesis internships at german company if I'm from another EU country?
Speaking german is not a requirement and not even mentioned as a preferred skill, but I can't help to think that the people who select the candidate will prefer to work with someone from there. Someone who's already well enstablished there, maybe from a nearby uni, and speaks the language. I have a good GPA and have taken relevant courses, but that's about it. My uni is somewhere in the 50-100 position of the european universities ranking. It feels like applying would be a waste of time, but my country doesn't have big companies like the one I'm eyeing

[Anonymous No.15484014]

>>15483810
There are plenty of PhDs with nothing but a thesis to show for it and still valid in their work.

I hope whatever you do next goes better.

[Anonymous No.15484021]

>>15483958
Yeah it's not that uncommon for larger companies to take international master thesis students, worth a shot especially if you're also from the EU. A ton of chingchongs and pooinloos apply and get immediately rejected, but as a euro you got pretty good odds.

[Anonymous No.15484071]

>>15484021
I guess I'll try then, thank you

[Anonymous No.15484140]

Been waiting 2 months for my background check to clear so I can start working. Not sure I can take much more.

[Anonymous No.15484348]

I'm nervous about starting a PhD. I feel like a retard. Some of my advisor's past students published some great work at neurIPS and ICML during their PhD and I don't know if I'm good enough to do that.

[Anonymous No.15484383]

>>15483100
beyond fucked. bur programming is for retards so youll fit right in anyway

[Anonymous No.15484384]

>>15483515
ticking every single box is a redflag for most employers. they want someone they can groom into their business

[Anonymous No.15484387]

>>15483913
PLC/factory automation

[Anonymous No.15484435]

>Be In North Boston area
>Get a chemical manufacturing job post COVID
>Sucks hard, use Nitric, hydrofluoric and hydrochloric acids unventilated on the regular, supervisor is a cunt
>Quit after 10 months, Get much cozy startup job as a QA technician
>Much better, better pay and benies get good experience with instruments, even if data analysis isn't part of the job
>Furloughed in December, come back in March, have to do analysis second day back, make a mistake.
>Get fired in May after getting put on a PIP
Am I fucked already? I've applies to 18 different places and have only heard back from 4. I know job hopping is frowned upon but this is only the second one and it was out of my control, if that even matters.

[Anonymous No.15484458]

>>15484348
You're underestimating your powers

[Anonymous No.15485057]

>>15461836
I learn a lot by watching professor leonard + calculus by james stewart

[Anonymous No.15485075]

>>15476696
Seriously bros, I don't what to think. They offered me the job yesterday and I have not replied.

[Anonymous No.15485140]

>>15483877
>Most "data science" jobs are basically just doing some stats work on datasets so you can find some conclusions to tell management.
Yeah but there's nothing novel or creative about it. Just press the right button on STATA and interpret the result according to what some textbook says.

[Anonymous No.15485306]

>>15484348
>I'm nervous about starting a PhD.
ill take your place

[Anonymous No.15485588]

>>15485140
There's a lot of creativity involved actually. Most companies have huge datalakes that they have no idea what to do with. It's fun to sleuth through and figure out what possible connections there might be, and then perform statistical experiments on them to validate your hypotheses.

Now if your job is actually being a data analyst then yes it's pretty boring. I've only ever seen economics ppl use Stata, while the other data scientists I've worked with (including myself) build everything from scratch in python themselves.

[Anonymous No.15486896]

I have a degree in Math, but had a shit GPA about 2.5, and ended up working in accounting for the past 2 years, my options are to take the CPA exam (I hate accounting) or apply for a MS or PHD in Math or Physics (Preferable), by fulfilling the course requirement to be eligible to take the CPA I was able to get a second bachelors in accounting in my spare time (just finished it this semester) and graduated with a 3.8. My ideal would be to get a PHD in physics and teach and write sci-fi books for fun. I took several Physics courses as an undergrad, but my question is how difficult would it be for me to transition into Physics and if it'd be even worthwhile. In America btw, Chicago area.

[Anonymous No.15486904]

>>15485588
>then perform statistical experiments
What do you mean? What kind of experiments? Every experiment I know costs a lot of money and time, I doubt any employer would care or believe in your abilities that much to fund an entire experiment for you.

[Anonymous No.15486956]

>>15477267
Are there any qualifications worth knowing about to get into something RF related besides your masters?
So far what I've read about the field is that
>u need to do machine learning + dsp work, and
>because it's apparently in-demand, any fresh grads willing to work in the field will just be trained (groomed) on the job
t. undergrad interested in RF & signalshit

[Anonymous No.15487031]

>>15486904
Well clearly there are some kinds of experiments you don't know about then. Dude, it's data science, haven't you had statistics courses with hypothesis testing and the like? There is an entire industry and career path built around this. Building and running experiments like these is 90% of the work I do.

An experiment in this regard can be something like variance decomposition GSA of customer spending data to see which features are the most significant, comparing the prediction performance of a new model the ML engineers made, or running Monte Carlo sims to see how a pricing strategy would perform under different conditions.

The computational complexity doesn't have to be that high, and you just add more RAM to your cloud environment if you need to. For simpler more exploratory work you can just run it locally and test beforehand. Most expensive problem I worked on was with a bunch of operations research people, so more complex combinatorial optimization kind of stuff. Then we had a piece of some cluster, something like 128 gigs of ram, running over the weekend costing somewhere north of 5 figures.

[Anonymous No.15487040]

>>15487031
Nevermind. The way you said, I thought you were talking about real experiments to generate new data, like literally changing company business practices and see how customers react and build inference from revealed preferences or something like that. I mean the kind of stuff you'd study in Design (not analysis) of Experiments course.

[Anonymous No.15487044]

>>15487040
That happens too but on smaller scales. Like a small subset of customers are used to trial a new marketing strategy or whatever and then you evaluate whether or not it actually affected e.g. conversion rate.

[Anonymous No.15487329]

>MSc from top 100 universities
>R&D Experience in F100
>plus 2 more in F200
>Recruiters keep spamming me for non-engineering roles (technician) because I have 1 month experience in a similar role

Not once I have been contacted for an engineering job despite having more than 12 months experience. Shits fucked.

>>15484384
I got rejected from a role despite ticking all the box including having the exact experience they were looking for. At this point I am beginning to think they're looking for impressionable fresh grads to put through the grinder.

[Anonymous No.15487501]

>>15487329
Recruiters on LinkedIn mostly filter by your previous jobs to find matches. If they want an engineer and they go on LinkedIn and type 'Engineer' they will literally get thousands of results. They get so many results that it'd be impossible for them to even interview all of those. So why do you think they would go out of their way and also interview you, who are not on the list?

This is why it is so important to take summer internships during your masters. All is not over for you though. Recruiters only use tools like LinkedIn for positions that they need to fill as fast as possible. Most companies have shit like 'leadership programs' where they look to specifically hire people from outside the industry/with no previous experience to fit them in ill-defined positions, usually rotating you around multiple times before you actually land an actual position. Again, many times these programs recruit directly from the infinite pool of masters students but if you look deep enough you should find some that have looser requirements.

[Anonymous No.15487512]

>>15484435
This is not entirely your fault. The economy is simply shitty at the moment and likely to get shittier. Companies know and that is why you hear so much about layoffs. I would advise that you be prepared to apply for jobs that are beneath your experience level or in fields you do not particularly like. It is better than not having a job at all.

[Anonymous No.15487554]

>>15487512
Thanks, so far this is what I'm preparing for Anon. Head, up, jaw out, back straight. It was a bit of a panic post but shit has gone downhill. I'm getting targeted by recruiting scams now, I'm quite sure some mudslime in Bengal has my resume, god bless. I've pivoted back to entry level positions for QC stuff, but that's were I got hit the hardest for scams. I REALLY don't want to go back to manufacturing and lock myself into that role.

[Anonymous No.15487576]

How hard will it be for me to find a job as a biologist with an MSc in Switzerland? I wanna go get that juicy 8000k euros average per month

[Anonymous No.15487981]

Fuck working in tech I get no bitches working in tech. I'm white 27 years old full head of hair go to the gym not fat fashionable and I shower but I get no bitches because when I tell them I work in IT they think I'm a nerd so I don't slay.

[Anonymous No.15488043]

>>15443891
not ones that aren't memes. Like Marine/Wildlife biology or some stupid shit like that.

>>15487981
at least you actually have a job in a lucrative field that has a reasonably high demand. Unlike me, the bio grad where this shit >>15446215 is basically your only option. And I seriously doubt they're rejecting you because they think you're a nerd working in IT. Any job will be sexy to a bitch if it makes bank. Maybe you're just a sperg because you work around tech bros all day/from home without any social contact.

[Anonymous No.15488314]

>>15452477
Can vouch for the apply to everything strategy. As long as you hit at least one qualifications in the job posting its free game. Took me a month and a half of getting denied for every position I applied to, but I eventually got called back and hired. Apply to job postings that are fresh, most job postings on job sites are dead ends if they've been open for more than 2 days.

[Anonymous No.15488951]

>>15487981
>when I tell them I work in IT
Back in the dot come era, "working in IT" was the hottest thing around. Women threew themselves at IT guys, expecting them to be grillionaires within max 2 weeks.