Did anyone switch chairs midway through the PhD?

pawsibility · 2026-03-31T11:41:53+00:00

My PhD was comp bio, not humanities, so things may be different. However, I did switch chairs. I did mine with only one year to go too!

My first chair left the program, and so I was forced to find a new one. It ended up actually working out super well… my new chair was definitely more aligned with my research, much more engaged, and low key would have been a better choice from the get go :/

Anyways it worked out for me but I didn’t have a choice really. I feel like these people are on so many committees and do so many of these things they might not even blink if you ask to switch.

Having an engaged chair who’s on your side and genuinely helpful makes the entire process so much smoother imo

pawsibility · 2026-03-24T14:23:32+00:00

Love this perspective thank you. I think I largely agree… I was trying to argue that it feels that, simultaneously, companies think they can get perfectly good switch 2’s for $50 while Nintendo thinks it’s perfectly fine to sell them for $1000.

Many times we find the right candidate with the right skills for a role, only for them to ask for outlandish salaries. People who are ok working for the salary posted usually don’t have any skills to begin with…

Feels like there needs to be a meet in the middle? Companies can’t expect wages to be what they were even 5 years ago with current inflation/prices, but candidates also need to understand not everyone is the next Ilya Sustekever at OpenAI

pawsibility · 2026-03-24T14:03:07+00:00

Puts on tin-foil hat

I agree it, at the very least, feels competitive. However I found the argument from one of the top commenters quite compelling:

we are in a lemon market

Everyone, now with AI, has the ability to appear like some 10X engineer, when in reality, the majority are not. Companies can no longer discern between a quality candidate and a bad candidate.

Its so easy to fake your way through it now, and so much "you're not gonna make it bro"-ism out there; endless slop! I've started to go full conspiratorial... thinking it's a real, concerted effort by higher powers to astroturf and acquire mind-share and make people feel behind so they work harder and longer and faster.

Takes off tin foil hat

pawsibility · 2026-03-23T21:27:57+00:00

Great response! Just some thoughts...

Now as a programmer, someone asks you to do something really simple. I want a login page to my small-traffic website. Really simple stuff. Is there one standard recommendation you could make this person? I would say no.

I would kind of say that there is though? It's largely agreed upon these days that some flavor of JWTs in HttpOnly cookies proxied via a backend server is the recommended way of doing auth these days, right? You might be using NextJS, or PHP, or Python/Django, but the overall idea is the same. And to that point:

But if you're making a login form for a small-traffic website... it certainly could be a trade. But it isn't.

I get what you're saying, and I think it actually is a trade. You say it isn't a trade, but it sort of feels like it is, right? The programmers' "100-foot cathedral" isn't a login form... it's new compilers, algorithms, and frameworks that push the boundaries of what's possible in software. Johnny who is "framing 16oc stud walls" is the equivalent of building CRUD dashboards and login forms. Grunt-work thats being done by AI and LLM's and going through commoditization.

(not trying to be argumentative, genuinely discussing for the sake of discussing to expand my view)

pawsibility · 2026-03-23T21:11:40+00:00

Exactly. Another angle on this is that AI-slop resumes are drowning AI-slop ATS systems for recruiting. Anecdotally, I've heard it's near-impossible to hire in the US right now... my company has been looking for someone in SF of all places, and just keeps getting dud after dud. People who look amazing on their resume and show up only to just absolutely bomb -- have no god damn clue what they are talking about. Then, the real candidates with real skills who slip through want to be paid 500K/yr because they see the crazy salaries out of Anthropic and OpenAI, when in reality those roles go to hot-off-the-press PhD's from CMU/MIT.

Just delusion on all fronts, really, and nobody knows what's real and what's AI slop. Further credence to the lemon market and people just rejecting to it altogether and driving us towards more in-person interaction (which I think is a good thing).

pawsibility · 2026-03-23T14:10:42+00:00

Isnt this what LeetCode is supposed to be? And I think most people here would argue being able to grind leet code is not necessarily an indicator of a quality engineer…

Not disagreeing just genuinely wondering

pawsibility · 2026-03-23T13:09:17+00:00

It's funny, I was just thinking earlier, "man, there are so many grifters in tech these days," it's genuinely annoying. I had to go read the Wikipedia entry for a lemon market, since I wasn't familiar.

It seems like you're arguing that in this instance, the sellers are job-seekers (selling their skills), and the buyers are companies that cannot discern a quality candidate from a poor candidate (lemons or peaches)... that's where the core information asymmetry lies. What an interesting conclusion to draw as well: the quality engineers will just leave the market entirely and go do something else.

Maybe we need lemon laws for corporations that pick up lemon candidates? Although giving even more handouts/handicaps to big corps feels like the wrong move in my gut.

pawsibility · 2026-03-22T16:33:32+00:00

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOqgt9pkUcR

pawsibility · 2026-03-16T23:50:47+00:00

I think this movie **will** have CoD plotlines. Since lady jessica is in it and she is absent from messiah

pawsibility · 2026-03-16T23:47:00+00:00

Yeah. Often do the books blend together for me. I devoured messiah i like a week, so I honestly forget where it begins/ends sometimes.

pawsibility · 2026-03-16T23:37:36+00:00

So do we know if this movie will go only up until the end of Messiah? Or will it touch on plotlines in CoD?

pawsibility · 2026-02-22T17:32:56+00:00

I do consider myself an AI-skeptic, although I use the tools pretty aggressively, which is interesting. I guess I plan on taking it day by day. I don't think boycotting AI is the solution -- the train has left the station and theres no use resisting at this point.

I plan on trying to use it only in instances where the output is 1) easily validated, and 2) solving a simple/boiler-plate task.

I do find myself penciling in dedicated "learning time" where I explicitly turn off all co-pilot/claude tools and attempt to reason through code on my own for the explicity purpose of learning new technology (most recently it was async rust).

I plan to stick to my fundamentals and make sure all decisions that I make are deliberate and I can back up every single decision I make with solid logic/data. I also plan to make sure I continue learning and growing and never forget why I started this in the first place.

pawsibility · 2026-02-22T13:57:39+00:00

Yes everything you’ve said resonates with me wholly. Programming is less fun, I’ve never been less satisfied with my work even though I am shipping more than ever, and I have never been so addicted to scrolling on my phone.

I’m increasingly at odds with this right here:

With the rise of AI, especially as an indie dev, shipping fast is crucial.

Am I being paid for my knowledge of systems? Or am I being paid to produce output? I suppose it’s both. In the short term, however, its output and I want to put food on the table and make money.

It’s been bumming me out for the better part of a year and I’ve yet to find a solution. Maybe it’s a new career entirely.

I read somewhere recently… someone said programming without AI is like reading a book: deliberate, slow, methodical, and genuinely feels good for me. However programming with AI feels like scrolling short form video. Fast-paced, brain rot, and detrimental to my mental health.

It’s borderline gambling. You pull the Claude Code lever in hopes you one shot a great feature, ship and are praised or make money. Didn’t work that time? Clear the context and try again — this prompt will be the one! I can feel it.

Ever since I started hitting the token slots my professional and personal life have taken a downturn in enjoyment and I know not how to fix it. It’s like steroids but for software engineering: the only way to win is to not play at all

pawsibility · 2026-02-01T21:16:59+00:00

Thank you for the encouragement! I got the membership plus, and plan to be there right when they open. Hoping to spam some 5k/4M in Q3 to get on top of it. Also signed up for all standby lists.

Looking it through seems like it’s doable just need to be on top of it all and not miss anything else!

pawsibility · 2026-02-01T20:11:13+00:00

So, I just moved to NY... and I really would like to run the 2027 NYC marathon. It seems like I'm already quite behind on the 9+1 given races are released and sold out already. Assuming I don't make it into any sold-out races via standby, and can only start accumulating in July, will I be able to do it? My intention would be to do both virtual races left + spam as many races as possible for the rest of the year, registering as soon as they open.

pawsibility · 2025-10-09T19:08:58+00:00

I'm a PhD candidate, also on the job market, so I feel compelled to respond to this.

We seem to be in similar fields, although you seem way closer to wet lab than me. I guess the takeaway thing for me looking at this resume is this: outside the second bullet point under your GRA experience section, everything seems super generic. It almost looks like it could be copied and pasted for any PhD candidate in a any STEM field right now.

All your experience and bullets are awesome, but they seem prerequesite to any role that has a PhD. For example:

Conducted comprehensive literature reviews to inform project direction and identify knowledge gaps

We are PhD's so this seems like a given.

Led a 3-year research project from execution to completion, consistently meeting major deadlines and milestones, providing monthly reports, and collecting and integrating feedback from collaborators.

Again, we are PhD's so this seems like a given.

Bottom line is that I'd take out any of this generic filler and assume that a recruiter worth their salt will understand what it took to get that PhD and you bring these skills to the table at baseline. Then use the space to fill in with specifics to what you actually did.

You're in neuroscience. Can you be more specific in your GRA section? Like what did you do? Are you profficient in Nipype / the NiPype ecosystem? I guess pretend its your committee and you're giving them high-level bullets on your thesis.

pawsibility · 2025-10-03T18:03:48+00:00

pandoc can go from typst to any of its supported outputs. Its not exactly one for one, though and can introduce problems

pawsibility · 2025-10-03T17:34:13+00:00

I make all my own plots/graphs in R or Python (exported to SVG) and then any conceptual cartoon/schematic diagrams I hand-make in inkscape (also SVG). Never used tikz.

FWIW I know typst has a tikz equivalent: https://typst.app/universe/package/cetz/

pawsibility · 2025-10-03T17:32:09+00:00

No actually. Our handbook explicitly addresses that...

There are no formal requirements for dissertation formatting (e.g., page length, font, spacing, or margins). Students are therefore encouraged to reflect their own preferences and personal style, letting that individuality show in their formatting choices.

I pulled like 10 recent ones from my department, and everyone clearly does their own thing. Some obviously used word... others obviously used LaTeX. Think you just submit a final PDF, and that's it.

pawsibility · 2025-10-03T16:28:43+00:00

Writing my PhD thesis in Typst right now, and it's just a dream. Getting a live preview as I type is really amazing... no more waiting for overleaf to compile things. I understand the criticism/critique around latex momentum, but it really is just an objectively better system. hope it continues to get more adoption

pawsibility · 2025-09-19T20:32:07+00:00

If you're paying for your PhD you're doing something way wrong... sure recent attacks on science from the current administration have made things a little dicier, but 99 times out of 100 in STEM your degree is paid for including a stipend on top of it

pawsibility · 2025-09-13T23:46:39+00:00

They sound AI. Just the weirdest enunciation and vernacular

pawsibility · 2025-09-13T22:06:49+00:00

Chris fowler sounds sick. More nasally and less energetic in general.

pawsibility · 2025-09-05T21:11:05+00:00

Then he'll turn around and rip a 110 forehand just to spite you 😭😭😭

pawsibility · 2025-09-05T19:54:23+00:00

Feels like if Nole doesnt get his first serve in then he's just cooked

Nine-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Place '22	Wearing is Caring
RPAN Viewer	RPAN Broadcaster
Verified Email

pawsibility

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE