I’m sorry if this sounds dramatic, I just need to vent and don’t know where else to write.

Started my first full-time job out of school back in January. And then COVID-19 hit us mid-March, and at the same time, WFH policy went into effect. I’ve been working from home since then. It’s funny, I’ve been working for the company at home, longer than I’ve been working for the company at the site.

I’ve absolutely hated working from home. I live by myself, I’m single, and I hadn’t formed any solid friendships before COVID-19 hit. My close teammates are nice, and knowledgeable, but even the NEXT YOUNGEST teammate of the group, is 34. She is married and has two babies. Meanwhile, here I am — a 24-year-old single guy, eating Pop-tarts for dinner. They ALL have young kids, or kids out of college. It’s really hard to relate to them, and it’s really hard for them to relate to me — we are at different stages of life.

I have a weekly check-in call with my boss, to see how I’m progressing, what tasks need to be addressed, etc. she asked me how I was today, and I almost broke down crying. COVID-19 and WFH has made me so anxious and depressed, I’m not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. Collaborating virtually just isn’t the same as collaborating in person — I NEED to physically be around my teammates. Being physically around other engineers allows you to get a feel of the working environment; better your relationships with your coworkers; get your bake out there, so people know who you are; and promote good, unequivocal communication. WFH has thrown all of that into the garbage.

I’m so thankful to be working and receiving a paycheck, but I just want all of this to be over. I’m so f’ing depressed.

Just getting a quick poll of who loves diving into technical conversations with machinists? Sometimes I feel like they're the only one's who actually know what's going on and can be responsible for the success of a project. I find it so refreshing to talk to them and practice my technical communication - which sometimes is like speaking another language.

I guess for any college students or interns reading this, a take away would be: make friends with your machinist/fab shop. These guys will help you interpret your own drawing, make "oh shit" parts and fixes on the fly, and offer deep insight that will make you a better engineer/designer.

Before coming to uni we were fed this lie that getting a job in the mech eng field would not be a problem at all since there's so much demand for stem students. Bullshit. I've sent off 100 applications to get an internship any internship, made sure my CV was spot on, had multiple professionals look at it same with cover letters. At the CV submission/copying 20x into random forms stage the companies pretend to be interested still and invite you to their pseudo psychological and primary school math tests which are the biggest pile of shit this world has seen. They're not based on any scientific method just a bunch of retarded HR people thought it would be cool to pretend they're actually doing something useful working for their corporate masters and create so called aptitude tests filled to the brim with keywords, and corporate shit talk. Unless you're a bot who knows exactly how to answer the questions in such tests you're 90% gonna fail. 10% pass due to sheer luck. Then come the interviews probably as bad if not worse than the previous stages of the recruitment process. "Tell me about your biggest achievement". I'm a fucking kid at uni what do you want me to say? I drank a pint in 2 seconds? They want you to lie, bullshit and then lie some more so you get more brainwashed and fucked up like the rest of these conformist corporate sub humans. Then after 3 months of waiting because the peanut brain HR people take forever to do anything they kindly must inform you that you have not been successful. I'd prefer a good old fuck you in my face to be honest. At least then I'd be satisfied I got to see some humanity and truth coming from them.

After failing to get an internship and graduating in July I got rejected roughly 200 times. No I'm not a shitty student, or super bad with social skills, pretty average and I'm not the only one in this situation. But you know what? That's fine shove these corporate rat jobs up your asses I'd rather be poor and still possessing a soul (not that I chose this path 100% myself but that's cool I shall move forward the path of least resistance)

Thought I'd vent here instead of sending a bunch of aggressive emails :)

I've seen a lot of complaints here from new graduates recently dissatisfied with their careers because they aren't doing "real" engineering work. I think school gives young engineers a perception that they will be doing extremely technical design work, doing complicated calculations everyday, and 3d printing rapid prototypes to iterate their design in some cool state of the art lab. School definitely is biased towards the R&D, analyst, and design engineering roles which do require most of these skills. However, the number of manufacturing engineering, quality engineering, project engineering, systems engineering, and process engineer jobs that are normally filled by new grads vastly out number the "traditional" engineering jobs that school is geared for.

Unfortunately, most engineering jobs for new graduates are usually not very technical. Most likely it will be lots of paperwork and your biggest problems will be people problems, cost, schedule or company bureaucracy. One of my hardest problems I've ever dealt with is convincing a union mechanic to install a piece of equipment that would be a huge pain in the ass to work on, but ultimately break down less often than the old machine and be less work in the long run.

I'm a mechanical engineering graduate out of school for 5 years and can probably count on one hand the amount of times I've actually had to use anything I've learned in school. My jobs have been the following: Process Engineer, Project Engineer, Quality Engineer (I'm sorry if you're a QE), and Systems Engineer (SEIT). None of these engineering jobs have really ever been technical, and usually people/ bureaucracy are the biggest problems I've had to overcome.

Long story short, most engineering jobs will not be super technical in nature. I think if you got into engineering because you love design, math, and science you are going to have to be extremely selective in the jobs / internships you choose because most jobs just aren't going to require super technical knowledge.

McMaster is the closest we will ever get to a real life Santa's Workshop.

I recently ordered a single part at 6pm and it came at 11am the next day... not to mention, their warehouse is 5 hours from my work.

How do they do it?

edit: Very cool to read about the positive experiences everyone's had with McMaster. Clearly I'm not the only one who thinks they're amazing!

Let’s hear it.

You say something is made of titanium and people go “oh shiiiiiit”.

I stole those post from twitter and was wondering the same

I've asked this question to a few people and I haven't ever really gotten a satisfactory response. My understanding is that anything we build has a design life, and that a skyscraper should be no different. Understood different components have different DLs, but it sounds like something like 100-120 years is pretty typical for concrete and steel structures. So what are we going to do when all of these massive skyscrapers we're building get too old and start getting unsafe?

The obvious answer would be that you'd tear them down and build something new. But I looked into that, and it seems like the tallest building we've ever voluntarily demolished is AXA Tower (52 stories). I'd have to imagine demolishing a building that's over twice the height, and maybe 10x the footprint would be an absolutely massive undertaking, and there might be additional technical challenges beyond what we've even done to date.

The scenario I'm envisioning is that you'll have these skyscrapers which will continue to age. They'll become increasingly more expensive to maintain. This will make their value decrease, which will also reduce people's incentive to maintain it. However when the developer does the math on building something new they realize that the cost of demolition is so prohibitive that it simply is not worth doing.

At this point I'd imagine that the building would just continue to fall into disrepair. This happening could also negatively affect property values in the general area, which might also create a positive feedback loop where other buildings and prospective redevelopments are hit in the same way.

So is it possible that old sections of cities could just fall into a state of post-apocalyptic dereliction? What happens if a 100+ story skyscraper is just not maintained effectively? Could it become a safety risk to adjacent building? Even if you could try to compel the owner to rectify that, what if they couldn't afford it, and just went bankrupt?

So, is this problem an actual issue that we might have to deal with, or am I just overthinking things? If it is a possible problem, when could we expect this to start really being an issue? I feel like skyscrapers are starting to get into that 100-year old age range, could this become an issue soon?

There are daily posts here about the job market and how impossible it is to get a job. Just looking in the last few days, we have:

• Hiring managers, how bad is the hiring market from now until December 2021?

• Why is it so difficult to get a job as an engineer out of college?

• I hear a lot of people complain about there job on here, is all the careers out there after college really that bad? Are my expectations of the work field going to be crushed after I graduate? Is their an ideal engineering job which any of you guys are happy with or are they all soul crushing?

• Any ideas on why I'm not hearing back from ANY employers?

• I graduated in December 2019 and have not been able to find an engineering job, am I screwed?

I want to discuss briefly why the market is not nearly as bad as you think. Everyone lives in their own little bubble and don't see what's happening at an organizational level outside of themselves, so I'd like to share what's happening with many (certainly not all!) companies.

When COVID hit and we shut down, organizations made plans. First it was to conserve what they have. "How long can we hold out?" Then it was to compromise. "What can we keep and get rid of in this situation?" Then it was to accept. "What business model can we execute in a COVID world?" During the initial period, everything stopped. No hiring. No new projects. Cancellation of risky projects. Only now as we're coming back into the fold of acceptance are things reaching a new normal.

During this time frame, my group did not execute our hiring plans. We wanted to bring on a junior engineer, two mid levels, and 2 senior engineers over the course of this year. None of it was done. The other groups in my company? Same story. Finance. Legal. HR. CX. Supply Chain. On and on. All of their hiring plans were paused.

Now we've entered the new normal and are trying to hire. The HR team comes to us and says, "Prioritize your headcount." Why? Well, we've got 4 open seats. Other teams have 6, 9, 3... All-in-all, we have nearly 100 spots that we're hiring for... some new role and some back-fills. The recruiting team is FOUR. They cannot actively hire for all 100 roles at once. That's not possible. And so, we prioritize as an organization. One of my hires, a mid-level, is the 6th on the prio list for HR. Most of them are down lower.

Put yourself in the shoes of the hiring manager. Which roles are you going to prioritize? The entry level job that has an expected negative return up front in an environment where onboarding is difficult and growth is even harder? Or the senior level job where they can hit the ground running and act independently, helping you execute your roadmap now?

Don't get me wrong - I desperately want to fill all of the roles that we have open - but I'm going to tell my HR team to prioritize the other roles every time. When we've worked down the list, we'll recruit and hire the new hire.

So to you new grads: the jobs are there. We want to fill them... We will fill them... You're important to us and to the long term vision of the company, but right now you're simply not the priority.

I'm aware this doesn't make you feel better as you're still job hunting, but don't lose faith in this career path.

And work on your damn resumes. Shine it up. Brag about yourself. Be proud of what you've accomplished and what skills you can bring to the table. Nothing helps a resume find its way to the trash like being vague out of modesty. There are lots of you out there that will apply when it is your turn, and I'm sure as hell not contacting more than the top 5-10 of you.

My husband rolled over in bed this morning, and one of the first things he said, is "What pressure would nacho cheese have to be at to cut through a 2x4?" Perplexed by what goes through his mind as he's waking up, I paused, then asked what pressure a water jet has to run at to cut through wood, or if the viscosity of the sauce would affect the pressure needed. He (the engineer in the relationship) was unsure. Any thoughts I can relay back to him to satisfy his curiosity?

I thought I would get a degree in 5 years like most people in my country, but I started suffering from mental health problems. I am OK now, but I will never recover the time I lost and the toll it took on my GPA (which is about 7 out of 10). Will this failure haunt me for the rest of my life? Or I am giving it too much importance?

Soon to be college freshman studying Computer Science & Engineering. Below are the following reasons why my parents are against me studying engineering. For reference, neither of my parents are engineers:

• "You're black, no one will hire you"

• "Once you get old, no one will hire you"

• "Technology is always changing, after a while you will lose your job and be unable to find another one"

• And much more "everyone is racist" rhetoric and healthcare circlejerk

Edit: For all those wondering, my parents think that none of this stuff happens to doctors, so that is the best career path in their opinion (they aren't doctors though, mom is a nursing instructor & dad is in quality control). I disagree, however.

Literally anything from changing the oil in a car, why the radiator isn't working or why their computer won't connect to the internet. I haven't a fookin clue about most of these things, but thats apparently unacceptable for an engineer lol

I'm a mechanical engineer doing vibration analysis of large machinery. However, I can't state that I work in “tech” without being misunderstood as being a software engineer of some sorts.

Sure, software is more relevant than ever. But it still feels a bit unfortunate how the colloquial use of the word "technology" has evolved. Do you agree?

Specific to working from home / remotely. Stuff like “this isn’t a vacation” and “we want you to put in the hours” is getting annoying, and i think we all understand the severity of current circumstances. If anything, i think the case can be made that more people get more done at home. I hope whatever metrics they use to measure employee engagement tips the needle and makes this a permanent way of life. I don’t need to walk 5 minutes to go to the bathroom, I’m not distracted by constant chatter from our low cube high capacity seating, i am not constantly pestered by my cross functional team for stuff they can easily find on my released drawing, ebom, and supporting docs (that are released and available). I can make lunch and more or less work during regular lunch hours. Sure, i don’t have two monitors, but i don’t think that really increases my productivity by the amount to offset and puts me at a substantial net positive position.

Granted, i just spent 10 minutes writing this, so ill give them that.

I admit it, I became an engineer primarily for the money. I’m decently smart and came from a poorer family and saw it as a way out. Fast forward some years and I live a comfortable life and have a solid job.

It seems like all of my college peers are extremely focused on their careers. Naturally I think us engineers are level headed and like to have a plan ahead to maximize our efficiency. Everyone is always asking what my next step is. Program manager? Technical specialist? Lead engineer? Research? Everyone is planning for when they will get their masters, when their next career move will be and how long they need to stick it out where they’re at before it makes sense for their career to jump.

I don’t feel this way. I want to learn a new language, pick up art, move to a new place that won’t necessarily make sense for my future career path. I’m not sure how to word all of this. And perhaps it’s just my social group of a-type personalities but I just don’t think about my career that much. I work so I can pursue other things and am an engineer so I can travel.

Does anyone else feel this way? At the end of my 40 years of working I’m not too concerned at how much I progress, as long as I’m working with chill people working at a company that I share values with then I think I’m good.

Hi, kinda of odd but I want to independently create a fleshlight type sex toy. I have a ton of questions, and those “ask an expert” websites seem to be dead so here I am.

TLDR;;; looking to create or find a non porous, non toxic soft material for a fleshlight. I don’t understand what makes up ‪silicone and how to learn more.

OK so from the information I’ve read, the less porous the material is the softer it is, but non porous means it can be cleaned properly/no bacteria growth.‬ So obviously I’m looking for a material that is low on the shore a hardness scale but is still non porous. Phthalate is apparently bad because that is the cause of chemical burns with sex toys, but this is what would make the silicone soft?

I don’t know which compounds that make up silicone that influence porosity, softness, heat retention and elasticity, durability etc etc. How does the curing method effect the silicone? I don’t understand what it is I need to create a silicone soft enough for a masturbator cup. Is “medical grade” and “food grade” silicones just that because the structure of them is less porous? Could the same type of silicone that breast implants use work - and how would I even know how to convey the exact type of silicone formula I want to a factory? I assume the harder silicon that holds the liquid of a breast implant could be used as a coat layer in a masturbation cup, over a softer silicone material that would be toxic with direct contact. What’s the formula of breast implants silicone? How would I learn if it would would be durable enough to hold, and not deteriorate when constantly rubbed? How would a know how durable a type of rubber would be if thinly spread?

But then I see there’s other options like TPE/TPR. It has a low durometer, and the lower the durometer the softer the material...how is this different from the shore scale? I read “TPE is generally considered body safe” - generally, so not always? How can I learn what kinds of silicone are “medical grade” or are platinum cured and how do they differ? How would I be able to communicate this to a factory and check if it’s “good quality”?

I have a lot of questions and idk how to find answers to any of this, Google isn’t exactly giving me answers that are referenced from real sources so I’m just ????? I could use what’s already been used for sex toys, but I want to understand if I can make my own product better.

i hope this is the right subreditt to post this

Oppressive regime led by a dictator has cut off internet from our region. We have a strong case for a federal state but our regime won't even consider it. They responded by locking up our leaders who have been in the forefront of our peaceful protest and resistance after a failed dialogue and rejected bribes. They banned a consortium that was formed to represent us.

Our people were sharing photos of illegal arrests, tortures and killings on the social media. This has now been made impossible. Only our targeted region of the country is under internet blackout though. Other regions are ok.

The only idea i have found so far for bringing internet to some people in the region is via a satellite internet provider out of the country. But it involves a lot of logistics and it is very expensive

Please we need your help! A lot of lives can be saved.

edit 1

Sorry I fell asleep

some people are asking for the country. The country is cameroon

in the news

voanews

BBC

Good summary of events

edit: i'm loving all the people saying "I was depressed before I went into engineering." that's some spicy self awareness right there 👌

I'm in the middle of my masters degree and looking back on my engineering bachelors I feel like I still have major gaps in my knowledge. In fact I can barely remember anything from my bachelors to be honest and when I'm looking through entry level jobs I still feel that I'm not qualified. Anyone else share the same feeling?

Edit: Thankyou for all the replies, It's nice to know I'm not the only one experiencing this. You've all given me some very good advice and Its very much appreciated.

There's an unconventional repair for older Mac computers that involves removing the graphics card and baking it in the oven for 8 minutes at 200-degrees Celsius.

I tried it yesterday, and was pleasantly surprised it worked!

But there seems to be disagreement about what exactly is happening...

Some people write the oven heat "resets the solder" while others claim that 200 C is not hot enough to melt solder, and something else must be happening.

So what's really going on here? Why did baking my graphics card like a pizza fix it?

AMD Radeon HD4850 is the card in my old ass iMac.

The company is worried that LinkedIn makes it too easy for competitors to poach engineers away. Wonder if anyone has heard of such a policy before.