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huhu posted:Got a question about government jobs... Answer "C" and you might as well not even bother submitting the application; you'll be automatically rejected. grover fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Dec 28, 2012 |
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Dec 28, 2012 20:53
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Someone in here mentioned a podcast in the past with a name along the lines of awesome extreme gently caress yeah engineering. I can't seem to find it, anyone help me out?
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Jan 1, 2013 18:52
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gently caress Yeah Fluid Dynamics. Posting because it's awesome and on the off chance it is actually what you were looking for. http://fuckyeahfluiddynamics.tumblr.com/
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Jan 2, 2013 20:05
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huhu posted:gently caress Yeah Fluid Dynamics. Posting because it's awesome and on the off chance it is actually what you were looking for. That was the one, thank you former China goon.  Although it seems it's just a video blog. Does anyone else know of any cool podcasts about engineering? I've got a lot of driving to do. SB35 fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Jan 3, 2013 |
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Jan 2, 2013 22:00
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I've posted this one before and I love it. It has an aerospace/astronomy bent to it, but there is a bunch of random stuff on there. The 'How Apollo Flew to the Moon" episode is really awesome. There's an itunes feed as well. http://omegataupodcast.net/category/podcast-en/
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Jan 3, 2013 03:25
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SB35 posted:That was the one, thank you former China goon. ieee has a podcast which is quite good, although most of the episodes are only about 15 minutes long as I recall... http://feeds.feedburner.com/IeeeSpectrumPodcasts
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Jan 3, 2013 07:08
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Was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for internet tutorials or books on more efficient SolidWorks/general CAD design? I've been working at my internship for several months now and know the ins and outs of SolidWorks and now I'd like to become more organized. By this I mean, (and with a very simple example) instead of making a cylinder and then making an extruded cut to make a hollow cylinder, making both circles in one sketch with one extrusion. I find myself, when I get to the point of having lots of extrusions, resolved bases, cuts, etc, that I start to lose control of the drawing and things get sloppy. I would like to avoid doing this. Is there any tips besides practice more that would be helpful for this situation?
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Jan 3, 2013 19:39
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huhu posted:Was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for internet tutorials or books on more efficient SolidWorks/general CAD design? I've been working at my internship for several months now and know the ins and outs of SolidWorks and now I'd like to become more organized. By this I mean, (and with a very simple example) instead of making a cylinder and then making an extruded cut to make a hollow cylinder, making both circles in one sketch with one extrusion. I find myself, when I get to the point of having lots of extrusions, resolved bases, cuts, etc, that I start to lose control of the drawing and things get sloppy. I would like to avoid doing this. Is there any tips besides practice more that would be helpful for this situation? Practice is most helpful here, I think, but I think one tip that makes design a lot easier is aggressively pursuing the specs and needs of the person you are making the design for ahead of time. This let's you plan around what may change and what's good to build off of - I think project creep is responsible for my drawings getting sloppy more than anything else.
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Jan 3, 2013 23:36
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I have noticed Six Sigma showing up in a number of the job opening for a Mechanical Engineer. This made me wonder if it would be worth paying out of my pocket for a sigma six yellow belt training to be able to put it on my resume. Would this be worth the time and effort for getting a job?
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Jan 7, 2013 19:37
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Lean Six Sigma is retarded and outdated. Management loves poo poo like this, though, because it makes them feel like they're doing something. I wouldn't bother- you can go through it, but you'll hate every second of it.
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Jan 7, 2013 19:43
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I agree, though I think you would be well served by familiarizing yourself with it and with quality control systems/schemes in general. In the end, they are all pretty similar at heart...
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Jan 7, 2013 19:48
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Personally, Six Sigma translates to "don't work here."
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Jan 7, 2013 21:29
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Noctone posted:Personally, Six Sigma translates to "don't work here." Agreed, all it means is you'll constantly have to write reports for clueless management types to parrot to their bosses.
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Jan 7, 2013 21:36
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Don't worry guys! I have worked in a small engineering firm and now work for a large multinational technology company and the amount of waste in terms of middle management, process, stupid decisions just grows exponentially.  As for the whole Six Sigma stuff (I could whinge about this for days): I've got to do my six sigma green belt stuff but me and my workmate have been putting it off because we both know it is terrible. I mean, one of my engineering majors was manufacturing and management systems so all it was is lean/six sigma/process/quality control systems in that part of the degree. It's was effectively a little bit on "this is how you build a nut/bolt/thing", a bit on "this is how you recreate that nut/bolt/thing exactly the same over and over again", then alot more on "okay, forget about the nut/bolt/thing, lets do that with an entire system"; Anyway, I don't really get to apply it often, but you do see people doing their six-sigma accreditations in business who clearly just don't get it or are too afraid to actually try to affect a culture change (or incur a capital cost because we should be making things more cost efficient including capital outlay right?). For example: some mug wants to improve supply chain procurement from suppliers and manufacturers. He looks at the existing processes in place, sees that it isn't working and rather than breaking down the system to or basically shelving the entire monolithic system and starting with a simpler, more direct approach; he bolts on _more_ processes to handle the existing processes. Guy gets pat on back + promotion out of that department just before it turns out it was a really bad idea and all of the poo poo starts grinding into the fan (but everyone else gets blamed because they aren't applying the process correctly). What said mug has actually done is literally outsource the procurement work to another country. That is it. The extra process is to send the information to some people in another country who then chase up the supplier. I haven't got a problem with this if I don't have to do it, as I've got other poo poo to worry about; but the additional process is so broken I end up having to chase up the people in another country who are chasing up a supplier (when previously I'd go direct to the supplier). What was the metric they used? Reduce labour spend on procurement. There are plenty more examples like that. e.g. "increase business positive cash flow" as a metric; which just means we end up putting sub-contractors on 120 day payment terms (they don't get paid till after 120 days of submitting an invoice) and having our own payment terms as 30 days (we get paid by our customer after 30 days of invoice submittal). Cool, what does this mean? More money is flowing in than flowing out in any given short term window. This is great if you're basing your entire performance on a quarterly results as it looks good to get paid, and not have to pay in that window. Long term potential consequences are not good: if the sub-contractor is smaller they usually don't have the capital to pay staff (especially after supply chain has screwed them down on price) if the project blows out time wise, contractor goes bust before the job is complete and the project delivery teams will have to pay someone hand over fist to pick up the slack. The delivery team KPIs on gross margin / profit on a project takes a hit all because the KPIs of another part of the business were to try to extract as much money before the actual game has begun. You've siphoned cash off into one department that has declared a good result at the expense of another department who has to declare ultimately a greater loss than that earlier gain; yet both departments are part of the same business. This is one such internal competitive conflict that results in a lot of tears, but the system (business) is so large that to change that would require a massive overhaul that no one is willing to do, nor outlay the capital to change (both time and money to analyse the overall system correctly and implement the required changes). Yes; it is nice to know how to make things simpler; more efficient; higher quality. But know that the majority of people applying the tools to a business system will gently caress it up. They're either measuring the wrong metrics from the beginning or they're tweaking the system to suit those metrics at the expense of others that aren't captured in their overall picture. As systems get bigger, this becomes more frequent. On the surface it'll look like it has improved things (this is what goes in a report and is pushed up to superiors) but underneath it'll either be the same or worse of a clusterfuck.
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Jan 7, 2013 23:16
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Any suggestions on how to find what engineering companies are located in an area? I'm looking for jobs but would like to just see what engineering companies are in the area.
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Jan 14, 2013 05:05
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Are there any good drafting programs available free or at a reasonable cost? I'd like to be able to put together drawings and plans at home for personal use but I don't want to/can't afford to shell out the bucks for full AutoCAD.
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Jan 14, 2013 15:28
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Google Sketchup?
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Jan 14, 2013 17:41
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Canadian Tapeworm posted:Are there any good drafting programs available free or at a reasonable cost? I'd like to be able to put together drawings and plans at home for personal use but I don't want to/can't afford to shell out the bucks for full AutoCAD. If 2d is okay, autodesk has a free app for the android and ipad and whatnot. Google Sketchup would have been my next guess.
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Jan 14, 2013 18:15
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Canadian Tapeworm posted:Are there any good drafting programs available free or at a reasonable cost? I'd like to be able to put together drawings and plans at home for personal use but I don't want to/can't afford to shell out the bucks for full AutoCAD.
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Jan 14, 2013 23:16
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Canadian Tapeworm posted:Are there any good drafting programs available free or at a reasonable cost? I'd like to be able to put together drawings and plans at home for personal use but I don't want to/can't afford to shell out the bucks for full AutoCAD. DraftSight is a fantastic free software that is functionally very similar to AutoCAD and can perform most of the main functions.
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Jan 15, 2013 07:33
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Noctone posted:Just shooting from the hip here, but surely IEEE would be a good resource to check, no? which is why I looked there first  (forgot to mention that in my post!)neibbo posted:Maybe give IMAPS a try. We do RF/Microwave engineering and manufacturing where I work and it seems to be the most relevant and useful group. They do a number of classes and seminars at their annual conference. I've been told that it's less academic and more geared towards industry than IEEE for what it's worth. Thanks! I am looking into this one in more detail, hopefully I can find some tangible link to what I do so I can get it approved.
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Jan 16, 2013 01:22
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huhu posted:Was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for internet tutorials or books on more efficient SolidWorks/general CAD design? I've been working at my internship for several months now and know the ins and outs of SolidWorks and now I'd like to become more organized. By this I mean, (and with a very simple example) instead of making a cylinder and then making an extruded cut to make a hollow cylinder, making both circles in one sketch with one extrusion. I find myself, when I get to the point of having lots of extrusions, resolved bases, cuts, etc, that I start to lose control of the drawing and things get sloppy. I would like to avoid doing this. Is there any tips besides practice more that would be helpful for this situation? In the PropertyManager for the extrusion there is an option to make it a thin feature. The thin feature allows you to define a thickness and on which side the of the line the extrusion will be, instead of it being solid you will create a hollow shape. The thin feature has to be chosen the first time the extrusion is made. As for tutorials, I doubt there is a single must do tutorial, just start doing ones you find online.
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Jan 16, 2013 13:06
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As a recently mechanical engineer graduate currently looking for a job, what is the best ways I can fill my time to help the job hunt? Outside of applying for jobs and trying to network I have been trying to gain some skills through classes and volunteer work. The free online classes I am taking are one on calculus to refresh my memory, a programming languages course, and two data structures courses. I know that programming isn't mandatory for a mechanical engineer but it is something I both enjoy and would assume would be impressive to discuss at a interview. For volunteer work I have started helping Habitat for Humanity to get some hands on experience working on houses. I don't expect to get a job with home design, but exposure to hard labor and construction is something I have never really done before.
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Jan 16, 2013 21:43
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There is always studying for the GRE 
totalnewbie fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Jan 17, 2013 |
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Jan 16, 2013 22:36
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Let's begin with why you haven't been able to find a job. Location and GPA?
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Jan 17, 2013 04:13
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NomNomNom posted:Let's begin with why you haven't been able to find a job. Location and GPA? Tacoma, Washington and 3.33 GPA. My largest issue is that I didn't have a internship during school, which gives me little hands on experience. I worked on making up for it through my involvement with Solar Splash (was even president for a semester) but that is nothing compared to a paid internship.
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Jan 17, 2013 07:14
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Is ageism a factor for entry level hiring as a mechanical engineer? I want to go back to school but I probably won't graduate until I'm 33.
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Jan 17, 2013 11:29
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borodino posted:Is ageism a factor for entry level hiring as a mechanical engineer? I want to go back to school but I probably won't graduate until I'm 33. From what I've seen, not really! I graduated last year with a guy who was 30, a guy who was 34 (I think) and a guy who was in his mid-40s. All of them had multiple entry-level offers. These were all MEs as well. It's still relatively tough to find a job compared to pre-recession but none of these guys seemed to think age or having a wife/kids hurt their employability.
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Jan 17, 2013 11:36
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I've been going through engineering with a generally crappy GPA around 2.2 to 2.5. This past semester I finished 18.5 credits and got a 3.55 and dean's list. It brings my major GPA to a 3.03 and my overall GPA to a 2.96. How do I best advertise this?
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Jan 17, 2013 15:26
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huhu posted:I've been going through engineering with a generally crappy GPA around 2.2 to 2.5. This past semester I finished 18.5 credits and got a 3.55 and dean's list. It brings my major GPA to a 3.03 and my overall GPA to a 2.96. How do I best advertise this? Upward trend. Overcoming some sort of block. Getting into more advanced subjects that draw your interest rather than weed-out courses.
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Jan 17, 2013 17:21
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huhu posted:I've been going through engineering with a generally crappy GPA around 2.2 to 2.5. This past semester I finished 18.5 credits and got a 3.55 and dean's list. It brings my major GPA to a 3.03 and my overall GPA to a 2.96. How do I best advertise this? Post it on your resume as in-major gpa 3.0. I don't think that is uncommon. Bring it up as a point of pride in the interview, know what your gpa is in the last x number of credits. IE, my last 30 credits I went from gpa of 2.6 average to 3.4.
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Jan 18, 2013 01:25
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huhu posted:I've been going through engineering with a generally crappy GPA around 2.2 to 2.5. This past semester I finished 18.5 credits and got a 3.55 and dean's list. It brings my major GPA to a 3.03 and my overall GPA to a 2.96. How do I best advertise this? Do this: Pander posted:Upward trend. Overcoming some sort of block. Getting into more advanced subjects that draw your interest rather than weed-out courses. And this: Dead Pressed posted:Post it on your resume as in-major gpa 3.0. I don't think that is uncommon. Bring it up as a point of pride in the interview, know what your gpa is in the last x number of credits. IE, my last 30 credits I went from gpa of 2.6 average to 3.4. We didn't do GPA at my school when I was there  but the difference in my marks in my last 2 years vs my first 2 years was hilarious (~62% average vs ~93%). I talked about why in my interviews, (health issue in 2nd year + way more interesting course as things got more difficult + being able to choose courses that interested me) and for the most part it was a complete non-issue after it was explained.
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Jan 18, 2013 03:05
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If it comes up, don't be afraid just to chalk part of it up to immaturity. "Yeah, I over the last year, I've really grown up a lot. I've realized that *insert how I turned a weak point into a strong point here*."
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Jan 18, 2013 05:44
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borodino posted:Is ageism a factor for entry level hiring as a mechanical engineer? I want to go back to school but I probably won't graduate until I'm 33. It shouldn't be. I graduated EE at 34 and had a job lined up 5 months before I graduated. You may not be in the running for jobs with long iternships for 22yo no work experience new grads, but chances are you wouldn't be happy at a place like that anyway (you'd be too old to fall for "grooming").
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Jan 18, 2013 06:48
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huhu posted:I've been going through engineering with a generally crappy GPA around 2.2 to 2.5. This past semester I finished 18.5 credits and got a 3.55 and dean's list. It brings my major GPA to a 3.03 and my overall GPA to a 2.96. How do I best advertise this? If you wanted to get really fancy and impress some business dudes you could use an inline Sparkline. That's what I would do--but I learned halfway through my junior year that I have an enthusiasm for technical writing that some would consider... unnatural.
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Jan 18, 2013 17:36
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totalnewbie posted:If it comes up, don't be afraid just to chalk part of it up to immaturity. "Yeah, I over the last year, I've really grown up a lot. I've realized that *insert how I turned a weak point into a strong point here*." This. My true freshman-sophomore years (2000-01) saw my GPA go 2.88, 2.42, 1.90 per semester. By the time I graduated I had switched majors (Nuke Eng -> history) and got up to 2.99 with about 130 hours. When I restarted Nuke Eng (2009-2012) my GPA has changed from a 2.99 to 3.10, with about 180 hours behind it. It gets harder to change when you have so many hours, so I can show anyone interested in GPA that I've done well enough as an engineer to keep raising my GPA from where my LAS degree got it. Upward trends, increased self-accountability, those are natural things in college for people learning how the world outside their hometown works. *note: being a military officer makes GPA rarely important for me. significant outside-classroom achievements help mitigate GPA concerns a lot.
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Jan 18, 2013 17:45
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You would think there is an error in the data at point 2 but there isn't. 
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Jan 18, 2013 19:57
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Mine did the same. I coasted through first year on high-school knowledge and did nothing, then it all hit me like a freight train in the first semester of second year once we covered significant new knowledge.
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Jan 19, 2013 04:18
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Nam Taf posted:Mine did the same. I coasted through first year on high-school knowledge and did nothing, then it all hit me like a freight train in the first semester of second year once we covered significant new knowledge. Not directed at you, Nam Taf, but in general: Are you an overachiever? Do you think you're pretty smart? Was high school a breeze? Then this. This will happen to you when you go to university. First semester will be easy, but don't let that fool you. You'll hit a brick wall second or third semester. That's what you need to be careful of.
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Jan 19, 2013 04:25
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totalnewbie posted:Not directed at you, Nam Taf, but in general: Combine that with pledging a fraternity second semester and choosing to skip a calculus midterm to get more sleep will destroy your GPA. The priorities I had...ugh.
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Jan 19, 2013 05:17
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