Engineering as a whole is now diluted with a bunch of money-hungry STEM’s who were never even that good at engineering. Their parents probably pushed them into the degree. It’s sad.

[–] rwrwefwef@sh.itjust.works 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

diluted with a bunch of money-hungry STEM’s who were never even that good at engineering.

That's all the STEMs now. The actual competent ones are on Wall Street.

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

Yep. why struggle doing research when you can make 500K a year writing stock trading algorithms.

i had a roommate who was a physics PhD. He quit after 4 years and went to work for a Wall St and his starting salary was 400K, this was 2009, after the crisis. had he completed his PhD he'd have been lucky to make 60K a year and then after decades of work he might have made close to 200K. I would guess today he's probably making well over a million a year.

[–] rwrwefwef@sh.itjust.works 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Yep. why struggle doing research when you can make 500K a year writing stock trading algorithms.

...because research contributes to make a better society for everyone compared to scamming people with overhyped stocks?

But yes, in reality, the trend seems to be finance first, if you can get in.

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

only a tiny minority of researchers get to do that.

most research is lots of work with poor pay, often to the point where are per hour making less than working at a fast food job.

very few researchers are lucky enough to get rewarding work, and hardly anyone gets to do rewarding work that is well-paid.

and most well-paid research even in industry is working for corporations that are seeking to enrich themselves rather than better society. most pharma research goes towards high profit highly specialized drugs, for example, that will mostly only benefit the small slice of society that can afford them.

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 3 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

god forbid well-off parents want their kids to be financially secure...

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

It entirely depends on if the parents being well-off allowed their kid to get a degree they aren't really qualified for because they could use money as a crutch.

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world -2 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

parents money has nothing to do with if they get a degree... you have to complete the coursework regardless.

colleges will prefer to admit kids who can pay full tuition over kids who need financial assistance... if that is what you are complaining about?

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And AI is going to put that into overdrive.

For a little while, I helped with some intern and recent grad interviews and holy shit some people didn't have a clue. Had one guy on a remote interview that had a friend there helping him answer questions. It was obvious because he didn't even mute his mic and we could hear them. And it was extra pathetic because his friend wasn't even feeding him anything useful, like Bevis was helping Butthead with a software engineering interview.

We had a short break and when we resumed, he had at least figured out to mute his mic between questions (not that that helped, as muting yourself frequently when you're one of the main speakers in the meeting alone is a red flag without some reason that should be obvious when it isn't muted). Only resumed because I was fairly new to interviewing, if I got one of those today (and still did interviews), I would have ended it early.

[–] musubibreakfast@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago

Tell them to bring in the friend, then hire the friend on the spot and when they spin out of control say you were only kidding and end the meeting.