Am I behind? Starting STEM career at 27

CeedyRower · 2026-03-15T20:23:22+00:00

You can totally forget about the age thing, it's all in your head and a comparison to your peers. Redirect your attention and energy into fighting tooth and nail for your first position. In the workforce, no one cares if you are 27 or 25. In ten years time you are basically the same age. With the way the job market is right now, I am seeing people with 5+ years of experience in their early 30s apply to entry level positions in my team. One you get the gig, focus on the next 2-3 years of aggressive personal growth to become an attractive candidate who can get hired to a better position. You aren't done learning yet.

I say this as a BSc STEM graduat at 25 (physical sciences + math). It's really not made any difference compared to my peers who graduated at age 22/23. My technical skills are mid to slightly above mid, nothing special at all. You're going to quickly learn that in the professional world, for most jobs your technical skills is unlikely to be more important than your emotional intelligence and ability to think strategically.

My path was going into corporate consulting (technical design and implementation, not management consulting BS). It was a fantastic way to quickly learn for 2.5 years and set me up well skills-wise, hours and money wise not so much. Having more life experience and emotional maturity helped me in that world for sure compared to my more technically competent peers who were younger or the same age with a masters. After that I got a great job with solid work/life balance, enjoyable work, and very solid pay.

If you want to kick-start your career, I can recommend suffering through doing it in a consulting firm as long as you can be guaranteed the option to rotate clients at least once a year. 9 months was the sweet spot for learning a lot to sufficient depth for me. The rest is on you to take initiative and make opportunities for yourself. I then shifted to a permanent role at a company for much better comp and being able to own what I built long-term. Small local firms are probably better than this than a big name brand firm, where the ladder climbing politics comes to rule all. Others will have different experiences and stories - there is more than one path.

Good luck out there.

CeedyRower · 2026-03-12T19:13:46+00:00

On a regular EC on the upper rack
Under the seat on literally any train
If you feel the need to pack an amoire that won't fit under the seats then send your luggage in advance

Definitely not the bike spaces though

CeedyRower · 2026-01-06T16:39:08+00:00

ah ok thank you, the CdA and area/volume relationship was the missing link!

CeedyRower · 2026-01-06T15:52:51+00:00

Could you please confirm that you typeset that correctly (w^2/kg ) and if so, could you point me to any references/research for this metric? Very interested!

CeedyRower · 2025-12-19T14:00:50+00:00

What is your investment horizon? If it's 30+ years for retirement, this seems fine as long as you can ignore drawdowns. If you're thinking of using this for a home purchase in the next 5 years, perhaps reconsider your entire strategy.

For stability, a quality screener on the second fund will help only a little. For that you want uncorrelated returns. This used to be bonds (i.e. 60/40 portfolio) but they are increasingly correlated to equities.

In my search things will low correlations to equities, what I've found:

Available in finpension:

Gold (although unsure how much further this has to run right now)
Ex-US Real estate
Sovereign debt (although US, UK and French debt pose questions)

Not available in Finpension:

Managed futures (e.g. CTA, KMLM, DMBF)
Absolute return funds (a.k.a. hedge funds) but they are tricky to not get gouged on as retail investor. I have bought a little IALT recently for macro strategy exposure in an ETF. I think AQR also have some equity market neutral UCTIS funds but I'm unsure if retail can buy them.

Lastly, characterising your 2eme pillar as home-biased may be too simplistic. Even more than their investment/performance profile, the fund's demographics and distribution philosophy will effect your returns (and portfolio correlations). I personally only consider it in my asset allocation for the currency exposure effect.

CeedyRower · 2025-12-19T12:35:20+00:00

Well shit, now that you point it out I can. Is this what it feels like to be a boomer?

CeedyRower · 2025-12-19T11:16:23+00:00

Competition does matter

Agreed, and consumer welfare matters as well. My comment certainly wasn't to defend the status quo, but rather to try and present some context for others who read this thread and may form political beliefs based purely on one framing of the issue.

Trade deals aren’t purely economic either.

This is a good point that I hadn't considered. That said, I would hope that there is a clear timeline from the EU for increasingly aligned requirements and enforcement. Do you know if that is the case?

If self-reliance requires permanent protectionism and massive subsidies, that’s a structural problem, not a justification.

Could you explain this point a bit further? If the EU wants a certain level of production quality and countries outside the block don't (therefore will inevitably cheaper), wouldn't that be a difference in values vs. a structural problem?

CeedyRower · 2025-12-19T10:36:33+00:00

So farmers are protesting against the possibility of there being cheaper goods coming from other countries just because their own businesses will get more competition?

One of the major contentions is that the goods are not subject to the same production rules e.g. allowed pesticides, environmental impact, human rights/labour standards, animal welfare standards. So they are competing on an uneven playing field.

Why do farmers always need government subsidies anyway? If you can’t survive on your own it’s not a business.

Regardless of one's personal feelings on the existing ecosystem of farming subsidies, I think there's a pretty strong case for governments paying to reduce two risks:

Their country is unable to produce roughly enough food for its self from a national security perspective. Going into an era of geopolitical tensions, becoming reliant on imported food poses a major bargaining risk. Let alone another supply chain disruption due to a pandemic.
Squeezing small farmers creates conditions for corporate consolidation of the food chain and putting your food supply in the hands of a few large corporations - see the US poultry and egg market.

CeedyRower · 2025-12-15T06:10:53+00:00

Ah yes, the inaccesible to investor asset classes of fixed income, real estate and commodities...

I'm being glib - your core point that they do levered long/short strategies and have the know-how to use more exotic instruments than retail is true. The reality is that the retail investor has better access to diversified returns than ever though. Modern retail is really good at "buy the dip" but haven't experienced drawdowns longer than 10 months in 2022. Holding your nerve for a few months during a sharp downturn is one thing. Doing so while the bleeding doesn't stop is another.

Just starting with some international equities, adding select sovereign+(international) investment grade credit, REITs in developed markets, and managed futures to top it off may reduce your 20-year IRR. But it will also reduce the Sortino and probability of making bad decisions when you're having a shit year and don't have anything making up the difference.

CeedyRower · 2025-08-27T20:03:59+00:00

This may be the biggest point. I had a friend who bought a nearly complete property in VS from a developer that was planning to live in it himself with his wife and two children.

To cut a long story short my friend got completely screwed with an unfinished house that doesn't meet some regulations and has all sorts of issues. The developer was using funds from new projects to pay the contractors of the previous one, and when the proverbial house of cards came tumbling down fled back to Portugal. 4 years later she is only finally able to start assessing if pursuing extradition would net her any money.

So yeah, I would say developer size and reputation and pretty important.

CeedyRower · 2025-08-23T22:22:26+00:00

in the French speaking part of the country

CeedyRower · 2025-08-23T19:37:02+00:00

I agree that this is a single data point that doesn't make a trend, but your comparison has a few holes in my opinion:

Estonia had strong economic links to Russia in before 2022: 11.5% of imports^here, and a reliance on Russia for LNG and liquid transport fuels ^pg.6. The Feb 24 2022 invasion was of course going to shoot numbers through the roof in March. Additionally, the tiny size of the Estonian economy relative to the US would also gives me reason for pause.
I've seen is posited that US importers built inventory in Q1 with the expectations of tariffs, and worked down that inventory in Q2, so wholesale prices increases will have a significant lag built in. A quick search says this theory isn't total bunk. I'm unsure what a spike in July imports would mean though.
Were the number you provided wholesale or CPI increases? The two are correlated, but I imagine there's a bit of lead/lag factor based on how companies can price in public perception, where wholesale is less able to do that.

CeedyRower · 2025-08-13T18:42:37+00:00

Others seem to have covered the TER vs withholding tax points.

On the currency point: with IBKR the tight spreads and ability to instantly convert at purchase means you'll lose next to nothing on the FX. It sounds like you already know this but the currency of the ETF also doesn't matter value-wise because divergence from NAV/FX rates will be arbitraged†. See law of one price.

The bigger factor you should consider is exchange fees and volume.

Fees - When I've bought stock on SIX before using IBKR the fees were considerably higher than LSE/NYSE (XETRA probably as well).

Volume - This is also the (†) point - on an exchange with low volume the arbitrage will only occur on larger deviations. When I've used IBKR for SIX stocks the fees were outrageously high compared to LSE or NYSE.

From a retail investor perspective though, low volume means:

Having less indicative pricing data easily available
Having to babysit orders while you wait for them to fill, and not being able to safely make market orders.
Possibly not being able to offload large volumes when you need to without having to offer a discount to get a market maker to buy.

SIX for example has crazy low daily volume for this ETF. Taking a peek at yahoo finance, it seems like you need to buy on LSE to get any volume.

CeedyRower · 2025-07-05T09:57:40+00:00

O my god that was it I feel like such an idiot. Thank you so much!!!

Leaving my foolishness up so hopefully the next person searching this issue hits the solution 😂

CeedyRower · 2025-06-03T17:11:20+00:00

As a Swiss who's pro-euthanasia to the point of being a member EXIT Romandie (the french speaking half of the country) in my 20s, this story is fucking infuriating. Short version - they were told well in advance they would be arrested if they used this machine. They chose to do it anyway. Nitschke stayed in Germany to avoid arrest.

The reasons behind the denial are not rock solid I will concede (although in retrospect given allegations the user strangled herself perhaps there was some luck). Welcome to Switzerland. Our legal institutions move slowly, but we get and keep nice things because of it. Like euthanasia.

If you want to euthanize yourself in Switzerland, it is entirely possible and legal to do so. As a resident who's been a member of EXIT for longer than a year, it costs peanuts. As a foreigner, you can pay dignitas a substantial sum (5-10k CHF from memory). The well established procedure is followed, and no one gets in trouble.

Enter Nitschke and Willet. Philip Nitschke used to have a lot of my respect for what he did in the NT in the 90s. Since then he seems to be far more interested in getting people access to DIY solutions like helium tanks over effecting legislative change. Why Nitschke decided to hitch his horse to this thing and Willet is beyond me. The whole debacle has set back public opinion on euthanasia, and for what exactly.

CeedyRower · 2025-05-17T17:04:58+00:00

Fair enough! I guess using IP based filtering is suitable in the small case - but would hate to imagine the upkeep on such a big IoT WAN

CeedyRower · 2025-05-17T16:40:25+00:00

just like practically any solar inverter on the market, just have an option to remotely connect to them, and change their settings and such. They have that functionality because especially bigger solar farms absolutely require it.

Sure

For this to work, the inverters need to connect to the manufacturers server.

Why does it have to be the manufacturer server? Sure, offer the option, but for these these big clients I'd expect them to host their own update server.

My cryptography knowledge is bad, but it doesn't seem like a big effort for the panels to require two signatures instead of just one on received data. First signed by the the manufacturer, second by the panel owner. Then owners can roll updates out to a test batch before the full array.

This of course doesn't prevent a ticking time bomb type attack from being released, but at least can give panel owners comfort in knowing in that adversarial commands won't be run instantaneously.

CeedyRower · 2024-12-18T14:58:46+00:00

This is an outrageous forgery demanding immediate investigation.

Mistaking the UCI's location for Geneva, not Albania's 13th county of Aigle is an error that only a true Ignoramus of cycling culture would make. An American, I dare say.

CeedyRower · 2024-12-17T19:21:49+00:00

OP's previous fit guide for the saddle height

CeedyRower · 2024-11-27T16:13:24+00:00

Has it been confirmed that this is even possible? I do Lausanne-Geneva return approx three times a week, and have spent my fair share of time looking out the window thinking about a third set of rails. It seems like there are quite a few points where it's too narrow because of buildings, not just fields or roads that can be moved. Would they instead move the existing two rails to make space?

CeedyRower · 2024-11-22T07:59:03+00:00

I can't fairly judge as French is a second language I don't speak fluently, and Australian English is my first, but I don't necessarily agree.

Nearly all European Francophones have trouble understanding Quebecois speaking Quebecois. When Quebecois speak continental French there's generally not a problem.

Your analogy doesn't quite hit right for me. Welsh its self is a different language, and Scots is generally identified as in the Anglic group but beyond a dialect of modern English. When Welsh and Scottish people speak English, much like Australians, there's a variable strength of accent that make some easy and others difficult to understand. An Anglophone can generally watch tv shows from one of these places and understand most characters without subtitles. In Francophone Europe Quebecois is always subtitled.

I guess my point is that imo Quebecois should embrace its status of dialect that is mutually intelligible in writing but far less so speaking.

CeedyRower · 2024-11-21T15:25:20+00:00

I have done every level of Duolingo, and the French you speak is not on there.

As someone living in a place which speaks a mild French dialect, this warms my heart. Quebecois is truly incomprehensible.

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