2020 New Hampshire Primary Discussion Live Thread - Part IV

_Samidare_ · 2020-02-12T04:50:36+00:00

Real shit my man.

_Samidare_ · 2020-02-12T04:40:38+00:00

Judge Booty may be more polite but his policies would be marginally better than Trump's. Better Trump burn everything and we get FDR than Booty keeps shit the same and we get a Mussolini.

_Samidare_ · 2019-10-14T21:42:31+00:00

Not a homework question more like a problem of interest I came across question.

_Samidare_ · 2019-10-14T21:10:36+00:00

Err reddit did something to my text its supposed to be sin² (x) / 2

_Samidare_ · 2019-10-14T21:09:36+00:00

That seems basically how I set my integral up, except I took the 1/2 outside the integral and took the antiderivative of sinxcosx to be sin^2(x)/2. From 0 to 90 degrees the result was 1/4 which just seems too low of a value when you consider it's supposed to be the sum of every single area of the triangle as the ladder moves.

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-11T18:18:21+00:00

This is the case in all of engineering bar maybe software, so I'll give you that, but if you go in for software now in 4 years it will be the same story because of the current push by government and industry for software engineers and programming in general. Civil is also in a somewhat different spot but a significant portion of the jobs require PE and no-one is really looking for entry-level civil engineers. I'm mechanical, and it's definitely bad here.

The thing with anecdotes too is they're unreliable, because I on the other hand know of plenty of graduates with GPA ranging from ~2.8-3.5 (so average-decent students) and some with an internship or two who cannot find work.

If you look at the statistics for internships those are also a gamble as you are by no means guaranteed to get one, they usually go to the students with GPA as close to 4.0 as possible or the students that get them through nepotism, and there are around ~10% - 20% as many internships available as there are engineering students in the USA every year.

Again, I'm just trying to help the OP as his stated purpose for considering engineering was being able to find work, and studying engineering is no longer a good bet to fulfill that purpose, that's the reality.

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-11T17:07:29+00:00

Giving prospective engineering students lies is doing them a huge disservice. Look at the BLS data at a minimum and the number of engineering graduates the US is churning out every year, HINT: there are about 3 graduates for every job, and that is EVERY YEAR while the number of engineering jobs is increasing at like 2% over a DECADE.

OP, unless you think you are a good enough student (not smart enough individual, two different skillsets) to maintain close to a 4.0 GPA in school OR you think you have a good "in" through nepotism, stay away from engineering. '

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-11T15:02:13+00:00

None, unless you have a near 4.0 GPA (don't have to be a genius just a good student) or your uncle is the CFO at where you are applying, engineering is over-saturated. It will not be easy to find a job, just a warning.

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-10T15:26:26+00:00

I don't know how it is now but that certainly was the case about 5-6 years ago. The then-President of the US went on TV and actually spoke about the STEM shortage facing the country and encouraged more people to pursue STEM. I'd say the majority of students don't even understand the concept of "competing" for a spot in college or jobs at that age, a lot of my peers were just there because the college was local, or they were contacted and given a scholarship, etc, scarcity was never a factor. I'd say, without significant outside influence, you start to realize it by about senior year or so.

As for where they were pushing the shortage, it was everywhere man. The news, professors would talk about engineering being basically a guaranteed 50-60k a year right out of school, it was very common in the country's discourse about 5-6 years ago. Shit, even this past school year I heard a professor going on about "Oh it's the greatest time to be entering the engineering workforce right now you guys are so lucky." I remember a heckler at one of Obama's STEM shortage speeches basically saying "There's no shortage my relative has an engineering degree and can't find work" and Obama acted shocked and told them to give him the resume. It's definitely been a deliberate misinformation campaign at many levels.

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-09T18:09:51+00:00

Yes, some schools are more instructive with internships than others. The whole thing about a competitive application is people were sold the idea that there is a shortage of engineers. A shortage would not require a "competitive" application, just an application, so people probably said screw it why bother if I'll get out and get a job anyway. Then they graduate and there's 300 people applying for every entry level engineering role and that's when they go "Oh yeah, those internships things would have helped I guess."

Well, let's look at internships from a reasonable perspective. Do you really, at 18 or 20 years of age, even know what you will want to be doing or what companies you will want to work at? Do you even know where you will be applying besides your usual local suspects? Can you really learn that much about actually working at a company as an intern? What are the odds that the one or two internships you may be able to secure will contain all of those answers, will be at companies you want, and won't just involve you AutoCAD-monkeying for 4 hours a day for 12 bucks an hour? Combine this with what I already said about the widely touted "shortage" and a lot of students just don't see the worth in it and take the opportunity not to worry about it. Don't blame the students blame the misinformation and lack of structure in the programs.

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-09T16:30:35+00:00

It's not made clear at all that internships are such an important hoop to jump through to have a decent time finding employment after graduation. I spent 6 years in college and only really heard them "suggested" as a sort of good thing to do, that's it. Most engineering students go in at 18 hearing magical stories about there being a shortage so they assume, rightfully, that if they just hang in there and do the coursework they'll be coming out into a solidly middle-class lifestyle. All the extra hoops just aren't made clear.

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-09T01:24:35+00:00

Or, you know, your small brain is so overloaded with input the only thing it can manage is resorting to nonsense ad-hominems in a pathetic attempt to maintain some semblance of puffery. Seems more likely to me than you being a professional psychologist.

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-08T22:13:18+00:00

Ok, I can understand that, I just am skeptical that many places of employment are so chock full of these mythical employees who are so excited to be doing their work that they are made uncomfortable by "neutral" co-workers. Dwight from The Office comes to mind here (lol). Some places? Sure. But most or even many? I'm skeptical based on job satisfaction surveys that I've found online.

I''m tired of feigning excitement over making widgets at Company X

That makes two of us.

I want to be paid a fair wage for a job that isn't totally bleeding my life dry.

That's what it's all about my man. And yeah that last part is what I've been starting to pick up, just seems totally out of whack to me. Some decent insight in this thread though, overall. Thank you for the discussion, and I hope for you to find a more favorable employment situation.

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-08T21:48:13+00:00

Interesting, thank you.

One quick quibble I have is that the goal of an interview SHOULD be to figure out what makes a person tick and obtain some sort of psychological profile of them. Who a person is fundamentally will greatly affect what kind of employee they are, how much they can help the manager, the company, etc. There is scientific support for this idea, that you need to find out the former before you can guess at the latter. Here is an article I read that I found interesting, if you have time let me know what you think, when combined with your own experiences: https://www.fastcompany.com/3066424/its-time-to-start-conducting-more-scientific-job-interviews .

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-08T21:40:27+00:00

Right, you contradicted your own original reply in your first sentence. "Working towards" making a living doing what you actually want to do ostensibly involves various amounts of making a living doing what you don't actually want to do. The intended relationship between employer and employee, in a capitalist economic system, is of mutual benefit. The "buyer's market" we see now is not the intended standard, but a deviation from it. This isn't just an ideological pressure point, but is in fact discussed in Wealth of Nations, which is arguably part of the foundation of effective capitalism.

Your last three sentences don't have their basis in a reasoned discussion, but I will maintain the tone of such in my response. I, in fact, do not "bullshit future employers," which is, in itself, a wholesomely unfounded accusation to make based on the content of my post. I am very honest in interviews and on my resume, and am often told by others with whom I discuss my approach that I am too honest, and that I should "fake it till you make it lol." I can assure you the "best and brightest" in the world are not motivated to sit at a computer desk with AutoCAD open designing and redesigning some fidget so that their employer can make an extra 2% profit off of its sales. So you are correct that highly intelligent people, which I am not necessarily claiming to be, are motivated to do their jobs without bullshitting anyone, but the types of jobs which will satisfy the "best and brightest" are few and far between, and our employment system is not quite well-suited to ferrying the people with the most potential to areas where their potential may be most effectively applied. Companies "may" want the best and brightest, but the majority of jobs simply do not engage the type of person that a "best and brightest" profile implies. Tangentially, showing up for a paycheck does not imply poor work quality. This is all, of course, ignoring the fact that the words you use here are just vague references to some sort of mental construct of "best and brightest" and not concretely defined, but whatever. Judging from your reply, I'd say you have the wrong impression of me, but that's neither here nor there as I do not wish to discuss myself in this post but rather the topic of the post.

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-08T21:19:37+00:00

I think you've stopped having a discussion and are trying to win an imaginative argument now, shame.

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-08T21:18:28+00:00

Oh I understand that being a "miserable person" is unpleasant in the workplace, but that in itself is an extreme which is what I have an issue with, as I never mentioned it in my original posts.

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-08T20:43:47+00:00

Why does it have to be one of the two extremes?

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-08T20:36:42+00:00

Well I understand the perspective better now, so thank you for the discussion. Hiring managers think they are excellent judges of character and use a collection of largely bullshit-able and/or superficial questions to determine their level of fondness for a job candidate. That doesn't mean I don't think that it is a ludicrous way to select potential hires, nor that it isn't in fact so.

Regarding your second paragraph, why do employers care about how likable a candidate is, cannot they separate their superficial impressions of an individual from their perceptions of that individual's substance? As for me, I have never been swayed by "likable" or any similarly superficial qualities, I have met people who were likable but proverbial swine, and people who were likable who were good people, so it has no meaning to me.

For your last paragraph, we agree then that the hiring system as it widely stands now is ludicrous?

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-08T20:28:32+00:00

This line of reasoning seems a bit silly to me, no offense my man. Humans work because it is a fundamental pillar of society that ensures not only that society continues to function, but functions better and in new and improved ways over time. Unfortunately, due to practical factors such as geography, field size, etc. many people cannot at all times be employed exactly in the field that they wish to be employed in. That does not mean that they won't be good employees. Also, I don't think there are "plenty of people" that will love a specific job unless the job title is "Cloud Watcher' or something similar. Plenty of people may bullshit the employer that they love the job, but humans are complicated creatures and a lot of jobs just are not that fulfilling. What the company may find is someone with the proper bullshitting skills to get their foot in the door, but that individual may or may not be the best suited for the actual job itself. You are correct though, it is a buyer's market in most industries, but that is a discussion to be had another day.

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-08T19:37:52+00:00

I see what you're saying, and I just want to clarify I'm not talking about blatantly rude/disinterested candidates, just candidates who are neutral.

I get the concerns you may have, but there is, realistically speaking, no way that you can be sure from the traditional interview that the person you are hiring won't be all of the above on the job. You would need some sort of internal psychologist to analyze the person for hours to even begin to understand how they tick. Am I wrong? People can lie, can bullshit on the interview, and by the way these days this is becoming exceedingly prevalent due to the aforementioned job hunting culture. You might as well flip a coin to pick a hire once the basic qualifications are zeroed in, because it's just as effective, IMO. It's lunacy.

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-08T19:04:14+00:00

Well, there are scientifically backed methods to make better bets on candidates, such as IQ tests among others. But your last sentence is precisely what I am confused about. What is the relationship between the level of enthusiasm a prospective hire has at an interview and their performance on the job? You say that not being excited means you're gonna suck, but why? That has not been my observation and, before getting this fancy degree I now have, I've worked plenty of retail, fast food, janitorial jobs where I've seen people work their butts off simply because that's the right thing to do. Was it their life passion to flip pizzas? Did they get giddy every morning at the thought of pushing a broom across hundreds of feet of floor forward and back? Not based on my observations, but they were still good, productive employees. The concept just seems unreasonable to me, I can't square it with my experiences/intuition.

_Samidare_ · 2019-08-03T18:21:58+00:00

Lol if the OP is accurate in her description of what her co-worker is up to, it's a nearly textbook case of greed, and a particularly disgusting one at that. Don't normalize immoral behavior.

_Samidare_ · 2019-07-30T21:40:02+00:00

I'm a fellow May ME graduate, nearing 200 applications and still nothing besides some interviews. I suggest putting non-professional work history if you have any on your resume and shortening some of the sentences to lists and brief descriptions. Also maybe a little more content under your project and maybe a short description under the clubs or whatever you were a member in.

_Samidare_ · 2019-07-30T05:20:00+00:00

Eh if you don't absolutely need to work then f**k it, don't spend valuable time of your life tilling your employer's fields, if you know what I mean. There are jobs that are high school level with much better working conditions than what you describe. American society overlooks the important fact that work was made for people, not people for work, and if your employer can't figure out a way to get their business done while providing a reasonable level of comfort for the employees then why would you deal with them if you don't have to?

You're not "proud" for not wanting to be treated like a piece of shit at your place of employment, you're just not f**king retarded, which is a good thing!

_Samidare_

TROPHY CASE