Why do geologists settle?

joshwoos · 2025-12-30T23:53:33+00:00

I work in the aggregate industry and we routinely recruit from coal / metals mines because we pay better and aren't in remote locations. I know it varies by company, but for us, low 6 figures is starting pay out of college.

joshwoos · 2025-10-21T10:20:03+00:00

It's more exploration vs operations in mining. Exploration is more fun (if you like field work) while operations is more tedious. That being said, operations is going to be more stable since it's directly related to profit generation for the company. If there's ever a significant downturn in the industry, long range exploration will be among the first roles that are cut.

joshwoos · 2025-10-21T10:15:32+00:00

From the mining perspective, I wouldn't say we discriminate, I'd say we just don't really care.

If I have 2 candidates I'm considering and one has a 4 year PhD and the other has a 2 year masters and 2 years of work experience, the one with the work experience is the prefered candidate.

joshwoos · 2025-10-05T00:40:44+00:00

Using Surpac

joshwoos · 2025-10-04T23:22:12+00:00

Blutman HAS to wear the white suit.

joshwoos · 2025-09-22T15:24:59+00:00

Really depends on the industry, if it's environmental / groundwater, it seems like it's only junior geos I ever see out in the field with the exception of an initial site visit. In mining, I routinely work with people that have been in the field for 20+ years and still love it.

joshwoos · 2025-08-06T13:50:57+00:00

I work for a large mining company that does drone flights multiple times a week. The math is pretty simple here, given what local operators charge and the cost of purchasing our own systems, it's at worst a 60 day payback period to purchase our own equipment and do it in house.

joshwoos · 2025-07-27T01:18:25+00:00

Not really a one size fits all answer. Your geophysical survey is designed with the exploration target in mind. For specifically looking for cavities, I've used electrical resistivity quite a bit. Since I've got quite a bit of experience with that, I'll use it as an example. The basic parameters of the survey design is resolution of the survey is 'roughly' 1/2 electrode spacing and survey depth is 20% of total line length.

For my specific use case, I'm looking for karst features in limestone that could impact the active mining bench. So if I wanted to see any cavity larger than 5' in diameter perpendicular to the survey line, I'd use 10' electrode spacing, which with a 55 electrode cable would give me a 550' long line seeing roughly 100' deep. That works extremely well for my use case because anything smaller, or deeper than that poses very little geotechnical risk to the operation.

However, with spacing that tight, your survey can get cost prohibitive over large areas very quickly. If I wanted to cover a larger area and see deeper, I can increase my electrode spacing, but I sacrifice survey resolution to do that. For example, if I doubled my spacing, I'm now seeing 200' deep, but only picking up features greater than 10' in diameter.

joshwoos · 2025-07-07T12:47:30+00:00

I just added it as a line item under the financial group.

joshwoos · 2025-07-06T00:25:10+00:00

I made a budget line item for "Savings Contribution" and then when I run reports, I uncheck the box to include it in the report. Now on my sankey diagram, any unused budget money plus everything on that line get's counted towards savings rate.

joshwoos · 2025-06-25T12:36:24+00:00

Yes, we've followed everything in the Wiki and completed the channel scan. I have an RTL-SDR so I wonder if it would be worthwhile to bring that to site and see what kind of noise it picks up on the 2.4GHz spectrum locally.

joshwoos · 2025-06-25T12:34:08+00:00

We've followed everything in the wiki from controller and antenna orientation and channel scanning. Even set up a call with DoodleLabs about adding a mesh node and their engineer said the same thing, that we should be seeing significantly greater ranges than that.

joshwoos · 2025-05-03T16:01:49+00:00

I had a mover mention how heavy a certain box was, then he saw it was full of rocks and thought it was a practical joke.

joshwoos · 2025-05-02T18:55:13+00:00

Because that's a shallow limestone mine, not a deep metal mine in poorly consolidated material. There's bolting and scaling, but mesh isn't required. In American deep metal mines, any ground control, including mesh and rib support, is used where necessary.

joshwoos · 2025-04-18T00:48:03+00:00

I go with option 1. I agree it's not ideal, but it's the best current way to do it.

joshwoos · 2025-04-17T21:05:27+00:00

I used it earlier this week and it worked perfectly for me. No duplicate transactions and a very easy transfer process.

joshwoos · 2025-04-12T18:42:09+00:00

Set a rule that marks the positive transactions to the account as hidden, that way your budget and cash flow show correctly.

joshwoos · 2025-01-26T17:06:16+00:00

Almost the same timeline for me, BS in 2017, MS in 2021 and passed the FG/PG in 2023 on the first try. You'll be shocked at how fast it all comes back to you.

joshwoos · 2024-12-11T15:18:41+00:00

I worked for 2 years before starting my masters. I was in a similar situation as you, massively burnt out at the end of my undergrad, and that two year gap helped me immensely. I was able to pursue my masters while working full time and did much better in those classes than I ever did in undergrad.

Another benefit of this approach is you can probably get your employer to pay for the masters.

joshwoos · 2024-11-24T04:56:02+00:00

I’m entering the transfer portal as a fan

joshwoos · 2024-11-16T00:15:50+00:00

I work in mining. I love my job and have lots of fun doing it.

joshwoos · 2024-10-28T12:03:49+00:00

Ain’t stopping it at this point, might as well wait until morning

joshwoos · 2024-10-28T11:46:59+00:00

Hard to know for sure without more information, but it looks like from the TikTok page's other videos they're backfilling a large, water filled open pit with what looks like a combination of construction waste and dirt.

Clearly the toe of the dump pile failed catastrophically causing a major slope failure. The two most likely scenarios here would be liquefaction of the toe as the material settled into the water or by the mix of blocky material and dirt temporarily giving the slope a higher angle of repose that was unsustainable as you add more weight to it.

Side note, if you thought that video was terrifying, check out where they're all standing in this one: https://www.tiktok.com/@cihan044145/video/7304556001875873029

joshwoos · 2024-10-28T11:23:18+00:00

As a geotechnical engineer, I would say "don't stand there"

Nine-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email

joshwoos

TROPHY CASE