Author Topic: US Student Seeking Education Advice  (Read 10823 times)

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Offline sunnyhighway

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Re: US Student Seeking Education Advice
« Reply #25 on: September 21, 2014, 10:43:50 am »
The only way around this is to get some, any, experience of a workplace doing something roughly relevant to your field near to people that are working in your chosen profession (i.e. not bar staff, although a bit of that does give some useful "life skills" too!).

A reminder - anyone who puts their primary or high school and/or non-engineering related jobs or hobbies on their Resume gets marked down!

I disagree on the hobby part.
It often gives a good lead towards demonstrating your soft skills. How you handle dangerous situations, concerns, stress, mistakes and potential embarrassing situations. But also your learning and teaching capabilities in general. Especially people from HR and teamleaders like to talk with you about that during interviews. They do that in order to figure out if your personality would fit in their team/company.
 

Online tggzzz

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Re: US Student Seeking Education Advice
« Reply #26 on: September 21, 2014, 09:51:35 pm »
The exchange below plus followups is a good illustration that there is no single definition of a good CV/resume.

The corollary is that it may be useful to cast your CV in several different styles, and to see which work.

There's nothing stopping you from supplying different styles to the same company, provided you allow sufficient time for the HR-droids to have forgotten about the previous submission ;}

BTW, while I've previously indicated that I think hobbies may have a very minor place in a CV, a primary school is unlikely to be useful, and a secondary school is only likely to be useful if it is known by the reader as being significantly above average.

The only way around this is to get some, any, experience of a workplace doing something roughly relevant to your field near to people that are working in your chosen profession (i.e. not bar staff, although a bit of that does give some useful "life skills" too!).

A reminder - anyone who puts their primary or high school and/or non-engineering related jobs or hobbies on their Resume gets marked down!

I disagree on the hobby part.
It often gives a good lead towards demonstrating your soft skills. How you handle dangerous situations, concerns, stress, mistakes and potential embarrassing situations. But also your learning and teaching capabilities in general. Especially people from HR and teamleaders like to talk with you about that during interviews. They do that in order to figure out if your personality would fit in their team/company.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Online EEVblog

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Re: US Student Seeking Education Advice
« Reply #27 on: September 21, 2014, 10:59:17 pm »
Oh, that's a little simplistic! There can be relevant non-technical "life skills" learned in non-engineering hobbies, and HR-droids love those (partly because they can talk about them).
Example: one of my daughter's hobbies allowed her to demonstrate teamwork in dangerous environments, and that she could competently handle unexpected problems (that caused other people to visibly blanch) on her own.

Of course. And in which case you have to explain that on the resume.
I'm talking about the typical Hobbies sections people put:
Quote
I like sports, jazz music, and playing the saxaphone.
  ::)

I might actually ask about their hobbies in the interview, but I don't really care, it's just a way to suss out their personality and get them talking.
 

Online tggzzz

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Re: US Student Seeking Education Advice
« Reply #28 on: September 21, 2014, 11:22:28 pm »
Oh, that's a little simplistic! There can be relevant non-technical "life skills" learned in non-engineering hobbies, and HR-droids love those (partly because they can talk about them).
Example: one of my daughter's hobbies allowed her to demonstrate teamwork in dangerous environments, and that she could competently handle unexpected problems (that caused other people to visibly blanch) on her own.

Of course. And in which case you have to explain that on the resume.
Ah! Now there's an interesting dilemma. Should you explain on the resume/CV or merely tantallse? Explanation opens the possibility of of rejection whereas being tantalised might get you invited to an interview - which is, after all, the sole purpose of a CV!

Tomorrow, of course, I'll argue the opposite point :)
Quote
I'm talking about the typical Hobbies sections people put:
Quote
I like sports, jazz music, and playing the saxaphone.
  ::)

I might actually ask about their hobbies in the interview, but I don't really care, it's just a way to suss out their personality and get them talking.
If that's all they said then it is easily ignorable. But if they said "sax to international grand master level", then it might be interesting.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Offline SpillyTopic starter

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Re: US Student Seeking Education Advice
« Reply #29 on: January 05, 2021, 02:29:03 am »
Let me start off by thanking everyone in this thread.  Collectively, you have helped me to progress closer to my goals.  I hope the remainder of this post is coherent.  Sleep has been a commodity for the last few years.

Long story short, for financial and other reasons (husband with minimal income and an associates degree) I took the first embedded job I could get as a technician (technically engineer but they wanted to make sure the hardware and code I brought in to the interview was actually something I made...  thank you Dave for telling me to bring something for show and tell  ;D).  A few weeks later I was excitedly promoted to engineer.  I was more than happy to do 60-70 hr/week since I was so excited to have control and autonomy of my own project.

Sounds great/decent for someone in my position right?  Well lets just say that things were about to take a turn.

It turns out our engineering department is grossly understaffed (who would have guessed?).  While I have managed to keep my head above the water with my own projects, my boss has regularly pushed me into other's projects to help meet minimal requirements and/or fix issues at the last hour.  Excited with the prospect of getting involved with the interesting things my colleges are working on I've always obliged my boss.  About two years later I was promoted to CTO.

As CTO I am expected to continue doing everything I was doing before while also managing our engineering and testing department.  Needless to say, I am extremely close to being burnt out.  Is all of this normal?  Did I sign up for a life of not getting a good nights sleep until I retire?  I feel like I need to get out and find something else...

BTW in addition to my groaning/complaining, there is a bit of good news here.  Since we last spoke, I now have two beautiful daughters, a house that puts the shack I was living in to shame, and a wife has not left me (yet).  I blame you all for these wonderful things!
 
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Offline IanB

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Re: US Student Seeking Education Advice
« Reply #30 on: January 05, 2021, 04:14:39 am »
As CTO I am expected to continue doing everything I was doing before while also managing our engineering and testing department.  Needless to say, I am extremely close to being burnt out.  Is all of this normal?  Did I sign up for a life of not getting a good nights sleep until I retire?  I feel like I need to get out and find something else...

Ooh, this is tricky. I'm guessing this is a small company?

The truth is that at the CTO level you you should be delegating to other people the tasks you were doing before. When you get promoted, the position you used to hold should be filled by someone else, who should be doing the things you used to do. If that position was not filled by someone else within the company, you need to be looking at hiring to fill the gap. At the CTO level you should have very good access to the company finances and prospects, in order to tell whether there really is money to hire more people or not.

If the company claims it cannot afford to hire more staff, your advantage is that looking around for a better position while holding a CTO title is likely to be easier than you might imagine. Maybe put out a few feelers, make yourself visible on LinkedIn, talk to some recruiters. Don't feel you have to put up with a bad working environment without good reason.
 

Online tggzzz

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Re: US Student Seeking Education Advice
« Reply #31 on: January 05, 2021, 06:48:20 pm »
Thanks for reporting back on what happened. That happens too rarely!

It is good to see the progress you have made :)

IanB's points are all very sane.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 


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