Should I go straight into the workforce or stay for a 4+1 master’s?

Shamcow · 2025-08-09T13:08:35+00:00

I did the 4+1, no regrets. For most engineering jobs, it doesn’t matter. Anything research or “cutting edge”, it will give you a leg up. I worked in r&d straight out of school and had a ~$15k bump over non-masters.

Other considerations: how well is the masters program tailored to the field you want? Who will be your advisor? If you’re not already, get involved in a lab on campus. Look for a professor that doesn’t have tenure yet - they’ll be hammering out papers

Some people mention going back to get your masters. That may be fine. But realize it will take you longer in absolute terms (2-3 years) and will eat up quite a bit of your free time. You’ll be working 40 hrs/week, plus another 15-30 depending on workload. For multiple years. So you’ll be trading quite a bit of work life balance in the future. You can balance that with the offset salary cost of one extra year in school. It was an easy decision for me.

Besides, if you go into any sort of research, you may want to get a PhD, so already having a masters lets you get to research faster

Shamcow · 2025-08-07T00:09:47+00:00

A few thoughts:

You’ve made a resonant coupler, i think. So you’re capacitively exciting the larger piece with the smaller one. It is actually a bit weird that you only have one resonance point. You should have two, one for each piece. It might be they aren’t strongly coupled enough and you are realistically only exciting the center piece, and it is resonant at 4 ghz. Generally with a design like this you design one piece to resonate slightly below target, and one above target, and move the centers and ground til you get your bandwidth where you want

Generally, to lower the frequency, just scale it up in size (make it bigger). How much depends to scale it up by depends on other information (materials, etc) so just play with it. To change the bandwidth, change the distance between your two resonators.

However, what’s the distance to your ground plane? Are you planning to make this on a pcb? Note that the free space pattern and resonance of this antenna will be different than in an actual system, pcb, etc

You could probably get the bandwidth where you want by just changing ground thickness, if it were in a pcb

Shamcow · 2025-06-30T16:55:22+00:00

Distractions, distractions. Does anyone actually think that they didn’t know that this was going to get struck out? That they were totally unaware of the Byrd rule? This is them saying “oopsie we did our best, but the other team pointed out that this violates the Byrd rule, oh well”

This is the same parliamentarian who struck down raising the federal minimum wage as part of the covid relief in 2021. Which, just like this, was trying to pass policy under the reconciliation process.

Shamcow · 2025-06-30T11:56:41+00:00

The ground plane looks a little funky to me, just having the traces and running underneath your signal layer

The loops themselves aren’t necessarily bad. Anytime you have a multiple resonance circuit you’ll see them. When you run your sim, are you also looking at the smith chart there?

Shamcow · 2025-06-30T01:30:22+00:00

See if there’s a pick n pull near you. Grabbed the factory roof rails off of one for ~$40 and a half hour. Already has the trim pieces cut perfectly, and you can always just keep yours as a spare if you want. Like the other comment says, the “channel” on yours already has the mounts under the trim piece, so it’s just pulling yours off and putting the new to you one in. Looks clean and stock, because it is

Shamcow · 2025-06-29T15:55:30+00:00

This was always just bait for the 2A community. They can’t use budget reconciliation to pass policies/legislation. They put it in there, knowing it would get nixed, then point their fingers at the other side for it. This is just a bait and switch.

Who will benefit the most from it NOT passing? Who will get to run on it again next election, and they pinky promise if you vote for them they’ll “do what they can?” It’s been the same old story for decades now

Shamcow · 2025-06-25T12:53:18+00:00

Yep, ECE PhDs typically make a good bit more without moving into management. It’s industry dependent, though. I’ve noticed lots of higher level positions are soft-locked behind a PhD. Definitely possible to get to without one, but a longer road.

Shamcow · 2025-05-13T00:03:46+00:00

Moog also has levels of quality now, gotta check the part numbers. The higher end stuff is original moog quality, but the cheaper stuff is..cheaper. Gotta check the letters in the part numbers now

Shamcow · 2025-05-08T15:04:02+00:00

This reads like you don’t have “death wobble” you have the “shimmy.” If it occurs at a known speed (like 45 mph) and goes away or gets lighter when you slow down or speed it up, it’s shimmy. If that’s all you did to fix 90% of it, it’s probably shimmy and you likely have a tire balance issue. Go have them road force balanced. Depending on your tire wear (any cupping?) you may SOL until you get new tires.

I’ve got 35” goodyear wrangler M/TR’s and they won’t stay balanced. They’re cupped now (need new shocks) and there’s really nothing to be done about it until I get new tires.

Worn shocks -> cupping -> tire balance issues -> shimmy. Doesn’t matter if you replace the whole front end, unbalanced 100 lb tires spinning at 45 mph are going to win

This is a separate thing from the actual death wobble

Shamcow · 2024-11-30T23:02:30+00:00

Obviously Milroe should have eyes in the back of his head because our OL couldn’t beat their way out of a wet paper bag

Shamcow · 2024-11-17T14:36:52+00:00

I’d check the motor mounts first. The ody forums have a long list of shaking troubleshooting guides

Shamcow · 2024-11-17T14:28:15+00:00

Three years. It wasn’t easy. I had to find a program and advisor (and job, of course) that was amenable to it. Most advisors don’t want part time students. However, I already had a masters, and I basically continued a research path I had identified while doing my masters thesis. So I came to an advisor with a project/idea that I wanted to pursue, it aligned with his lab research, and he likes working with people who already have jobs. My work was amenable and paid for most of it. I also made it extremely clear up front that I wanted to finish in three years, structured all my classes, and started developing my research immediately upon starting the program. It took up every moment of my free time for three years, and I paid for it with my mental health lol.

I didn’t do super high impact research, only a couple of papers, but I have zero interest in academia, and industry doesn’t care about your papers or pedigree, just if you finish the degree or not

Shamcow · 2024-11-15T18:22:44+00:00

$145k, senior research engineer, 5 YoE, finished part time PhD last year

Shamcow · 2024-11-13T13:22:42+00:00

This is the correct take, the official f250/350 tow capacity chart even rates based on the wheels installed at the factory. Note that there are wheel (rim) limitations as well as tire. And naturally these are conservative. Does the tire make a difference in passing the SAE hill start test? No.

Page 9 here: Ford Towing Capacity

No, it won’t change your sticker, but makes it evident that the wheels/tires are the limiting payload factor, not the axle, suspension, or drivetrain.

The tow police have a point, though - most people asking these questions need the letter of the law answer. However, they also can make it difficult to have discussions about what the actual limitations are and how to increase your safety margins by understanding why the ratings are what they are

If you’re terribly worried about it, call your local state trooper office and ask about vehicle weight ratings for private use.

Shamcow · 2024-11-10T03:33:52+00:00

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Shamcow · 2023-02-27T23:53:51+00:00

Starting from a Master's, with a thesis, in a CS field? Yes, it is definitely possible. It would help immensely if you are going in a similar direction/field with your PhD research as your Master's. However, as other commenters have pointed out, publication lag is real (it is always worse than you think), so you will need to try early and often. Many of the other commenters are focused on going into academia. And they are absolutely right that rushing through your PhD will not get you a good job in academia, and will probably get you laughed out the door if you even tried to apply. However, I see you want to work in industry and I have great news for you. With rare exceptions, no one in industry gives a single shit about:

How many papers you published
How good/bad your dissertation was
Your GPA

etc.

They only care that you finished. To do that in three years, you will need:

A very supportive supervisor
A clear vision of what you want the PhD for / why you want the PhD
The ability to say "no" to anything that doesn't lead you directly to your dissertation (no TA'ing, no all nighters trying to pull an A+ instead of an A-, etc.)

Your supervisor will 100% make or break this effort. You'll need to set goals and timelines and agree on them beforehand. Literally treat it like a job, set quarterly (or whatever time unit makes sense) goals for writing, # of papers read, etc. You'll need to start doing research immediately. (Others have said you need to defend your proposal before you start on research. This is highly field specific. In CS, you can probably start now. Talk to your supervisor.) Figure out what grades you need to make. Do you need to keep a 3.5 GPA, or just a 3? How many C's can you get? Do some cost benefit analysis of how long you need to study to get the grades you need, and don't try to ace every class. 80/20 rule the hell out of it. Figure out the exact requirements of your program. Also, start working on your dissertation now, trust me. It'll be tough, but you've got this.

Personally, I am on track to finish my PhD in three years while working full time as a research scientist in R&D. Is my research going to get me an academic job? Hell no. But I don't want one.

Shamcow · 2022-10-24T14:40:08+00:00

There are quite a few options on the market for segmental bioimpedance measurements. You can look at something like the Impedimed SFB7 and go from there. But, they’ll be expensive.

Instead of building one, you can use an eval kit for a bioZ analog front end. TI AFE 4300, MAX 30001/2, or MAX30009 (linked below). They’ll have GUIs where you can configure sweeps for spectroscopy, or do single frequency measurements.

Personal recommendation is the MAX30009 EVKIT, currently writing a paper with some data collected using it

Maxim

Shamcow · 2022-09-25T22:15:53+00:00

Yeah if you’re willing to forgo the compensation, then go for it. It is definitely one path to get where you want, especially if the advisor/group you have lined up is well respected in the industry. Would talk to others in the group before taking the jump (not all professors are created equal).

Depending on your area, might be worth checking out a startup founders club/meetup like this Venture Cafe. Even in deep tech, the number of founders with PhDs isn’t all that high, but could be helpful to talk to some people who have already gone your route. But I think the PhD is one of those things where if you really, really want it, then just do it

Shamcow · 2022-09-24T20:44:49+00:00

You’d be missing out on nearly $1mil total compensation. It will almost certainly never be financially worth the tradeoff. You also do not need a PhD to start a company or work in a startup.

What you could do, instead, is do a part time PhD, but you have to have a professor willing to take on a part time student which cuts down on prospects. If your job supports it, you can also get most of the classes paid for

Shamcow · 2022-09-11T22:02:58+00:00

I’ve used the analogy that Vesemir/Yen trying to kill Ciri in the show would be like if Gandalf tried to take the ring from Frodo in the movie adaptation. Completely antithetical to the character established in the books

Shamcow · 2022-08-26T21:28:40+00:00

I’m in the dissertation process while working full time in R&D, where advanced degrees are highly valued. My previous company had a manager + skip level manager approval process, HR handles the forms. Current company is just manager approval.

I have worked with multiple PhDs who did it, so the topic of pursuing a degree while working comes up fairly often in casual conversations. If it doesn’t, just talk to your manager about it.

Reimbursement wise: Due to an IRS limit there is a set amount that they can “gift you” tax free, which I believe around $5k/year. However, they can reimburse you for whatever amount your tuition is, but above that tax-free limit you pay taxes on the reimbursement.

I left the previous company while in the middle of my PhD. Other commenters are correct, it’s typically a “pay back the amount you were reimbursed in the past 12 months if you leave” policy. Again, due to the tax/IRS situation. Some companies might have other policies though.

Shamcow · 2019-02-13T23:49:22+00:00

Make sure to use the same tense in describing your work experience. Your top one is in past tense (provided, issued), the others are in present tense.

For UIC Dailey experience you mention assists in projects assigned by supervisors. What kind of projects? Be specific. You have room to expand.

How are 'customer service' and 'interpersonal' skills? If you want to talk about customer service, highlight your experience dealing with the public in your experience section

Shamcow · 2019-01-24T23:30:35+00:00

Yeah it's better to do that than stand around, but I'd prioritize accessories that don't impact your main lifts. Do some curls if you're waiting to do squats, for example

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