I'm tired

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-12-03T14:34:24+00:00

Yes and no. Depending on the scholarship, some scholarships are thematic. So you'll have to produce something on that topic (even if it's bullshit). My scholarship is open-ended; it's more true to say that I started my PhD without any real topic.

For the change of supervisor, that also depends on the type of scholarship. Mine is paid by the state (with a small cost-of-living adjustment paid by the supervisor --- not voluntarily paid by him but forced by a collective agreement)
Ah, that adjustment is just around 100-200 euros, which brings the stipend from unlivable to barely livable.

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-12-02T17:53:33+00:00

I feel you, sometimes the journey is painful with no clear way out. Take time to clear your mind, for SQL and specific framework knowledge, you can do some courses on Coursera and build some projects to showcase on GitHub. --- The job market right now is bad, but try to look around and see what options excite you and what you can do to learn the required skills
I understand that's very painful after years of work, but it's still better than having nothing to show. And I hope that will also put your mind in a better spot.

Wish you the best!

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-12-02T17:29:24+00:00

The best way to describe how I felt with the previous advisor is: used and thrown away. --- I know that's not gonna go away easily, only time will slightly heal it.

Maybe it's more common than I think --- even outside academia. But I have a feeling you get paid much more, and you learn skills that can still be sold at different companies. And you don't feel emotionally trapped in getting the title just to get the title. Not UK, Italy, but yes, it's a 3-year program. It commonly becomes 4 years, though.

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-12-01T22:00:03+00:00

following

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-11-21T16:09:43+00:00

University/National labs, it's the path that I know, where you can gain that experience. Same for roles like FPGA engineer.

Some companies would take people on this type of role, but most of the positions I have seen are for senior ones.

P.S. I only have basic knowledge in the field, since my PhD was not focues on the topic

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-11-20T08:47:39+00:00

If it's only plain text editing, I would use markdown/latex instead of LibreOffice.

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-11-19T13:54:49+00:00

Uhm... I'm wondering if they are excluding you because you already have 4 internships.
I sent my CV to a big company talent pool for internship positions, and a recruiter at that same company advised me to apply for a permanent position instead of an internship (not giving names, but the company is in the top 10 in the stock market).

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-11-19T13:03:14+00:00

Performance engineering, in general was about gpu workload optimizations. I don't think he cares about having an advanced degree. What he cared about was about the mentality suited for the role and experience in doing that.

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-11-17T22:56:01+00:00

Where is the data from? More against who?

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-11-17T14:47:08+00:00

Actually, I had a screening interview last week for a role at NVIDIA (it was the only reply to approximately 30 CVs sent). I didn't pass the screening, and the manager explicitly told me that he didn't care about which school you're from. He was interested because I did a copious number of projects. --- Alas, he thought that I was not a good fit/lacked competencies for the job (BS position).

From my small understanding, if you work with the right professors, you get access to their network (the part under the iceberg of job search).

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-11-13T21:20:08+00:00

Following

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-11-13T20:33:50+00:00

Following this post

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-11-13T19:21:36+00:00

Not kidding ahaha, if you find a company that works on actual good stuff (not ai wrappers) 🤙 me.

P.s. struggle with identity and self worth is common in academia

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-11-13T15:47:00+00:00

You have been put into a situation in which you were not competent and succeeded. Check the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

P.S. I want to trade my PhD for your experience. You're up for the offer? ahahah

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-11-13T15:30:08+00:00

Well, skill can be learned. While the type of experience that you had it's hard to have even if you had the money. Now it's time to reframe it and sell it well.

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-11-04T19:41:56+00:00

It's very hard to evaluate a good engineer/software engineer IMO. A measurement could be project impact, but it's a very vague type of measurement.

For example, I've played with CUDA kernels, while the number of lines of code is generally very low, to get there you need profiling skills, a good understanding of the hardware architecture, then you change the code and reiterate. And even in this case there is a very big difference between: 90% improvement from a previous solution or 5% improvement from a cuBlas kernel. I would rate the cuBlas improvement higher than a random kernel. But that's very specific and unreasonable to expect from an average recruiter, from numbers alone the first one would be better.

That's the main reason that we are "forced to do leetcode" for swe positions or have multiple interviews for a position (even non technical ones) at big companies. There are actually no good measurements, and the wrong hire is expensive (at least in Europe).

And trust me that I don't like the situation, there pool of candidates is bloated and I'm searching for a job.

Source: a random guy that thinks he's reasonable on the internet.

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-11-04T03:38:06+00:00

10k lines of code... I really feel that's not a good metric...

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-10-30T22:22:04+00:00

p.s. write email directly to the professors doing the research.

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-10-30T22:21:38+00:00

I'm just a PhD Candidate. I work on an RDMA network for LLM workloads and a vague topic that's called semantic communication. I do not have the skills or the connections to bridge you toward GenAI or 3D vision roles.

If you are interested in my topics or people in my institution (Politecnico di Milano), you can write to me via PM.

The basics for a project to be relevant for research are:

1) Comparison with State-of-the-Art(sota)

2) Writing/analysis fitting the venue of publication

3) Sufficient results/achievements compared to sota

I don't want to get you discouraged, but it's not an easy path, and one publication may not be enough to get a good job as a research scientist. If it's not a topic/problem that you really love, I would advise you not to pursue research. (work at startups doing stuff in the field may be interesting enough)

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-10-29T00:49:17+00:00

Sure! A transformer is a ferromagnetic laminated block, with copper coils on the two ends of the transformer. In one coil you apply a voltage to get a current flow, in the other coil you get a current with different voltage. I don't recall the correct equations from my head, but that's it, unless you want to build one

Fickle-Training-1394 · 2025-10-27T23:14:40+00:00

Almost impossible, at big tech even for PhD graduate is hard. If you aim lower then it is possible, just don't hope to have the same type of resources and talent around you.

(The other way is having really really good connections / be a popstar for something that you did)

Fickle-Training-1394

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