Some Advice to Graduate Engineers

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Some Advice to Graduate Engineers

• Mikko H. Lipasti
• University of Wisconsin Madison

http//www.ece.wisc.edu/pharm
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Outline

• Why this talk?
• Experience counts for something
• Try to distill advice into one place
• General advice for graduate students
• Why become a graduate student
• How to become a graduate student
• How to succeed while a graduate student
• How to stop being a graduate student
• Specific advice for CMPE and architecture
  students at Wisconsin
• Tips for success in the workplace
• Finding a job
• Keeping your job
• Climbing the ladder
• Questions?

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Why Become a Grad Student?

• Academic ambitions
• Ph.D. a prerequisite
• Professional ambitions
• Career path shortcut
• Visibility, recognition, leadership opportunity
• Team to department to division to corporation to
  industry-wide
• Published Ph.D. work inverts this sequence
• M.S. to a lesser extent
• Bad reasons
• Financial
• Family or peer pressure
• Ego
• Because I can

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How to Become a Grad Student

• Youre already here
• Preparation
• GPA Coursework
• GRE Prepare, practice
• References
• Undergraduate research
• Get involved with faculty
• UW Hilldale and SURE
• Apply to many places
• Not much additional overhead for n apps
• Solicit advice from in-area faculty as to where

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The Road to Success -- I

• In the beginning
• Coursework
• View as opportunity, not burden
• Broaden your horizons
• Read
• Read 50 papers before you write one.
• Be proactiveseek out relevant, interesting work
• Identify top venues for your area, work backwards
• Breadth-first search of references
  (citeseer.ist.psu.edu)
• Write
• Not just project reports or paper submissions
• Attend outside seminars and talks
• Arrogance (areaism) kills
• You will never have (as much) time or opportunity
  for it again
• Use technology
• Google, citeseer, IEEE Explorer, ACM Digital
  Library
• Tools emacs modes, bibtex, gdb, cvs, IMAP, etc.
• Volunteer
• Be altruistic, find ways to serve group,
  department, area

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The Road to Success -- II

• Thesis grope
• Read critically and thoroughly
• Keep notes, start writing literature survey(s)
• Take note of weaknesses, incomplete solutions,
  unexplored problems
• Pay attention to presentation, structure,
  organization, style imitate the best!
• Teach your advisor
• We have a lot to learn, dont rely on us or trust
  us to know everything
• Think
• Thought experiments, what if scenarios
• Limit studies to measure bounds, potential,
  significance
• Extend observations to their logical extremes
• Challenge assumptions, conventional wisdom
• Find a new nail (application) or a new hammer
  (tool)
• But not both!
• Find analogous problems (this is just like) and
  search literature for solutions
• Or, hear about cool solutions and then find
  analogous problems
• Hack
• Learn by doing
• Discover via implementation

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The Road to Success -- III

• Thesis grope contd
• Write, revise, polish constantly
• Dont be deadline-driven and write at the last
  minute
• Benchmark against best papers you have read
• Participate in proposal preparation
• Its your paycheck!
• Learn how to write persuasively, motivate problem
• You will need this skill in industry as well
• Argue, debate, analyze
• With your peers, advisor
• Use visualization tools!
• Believe!
• Convince yourself first, others later
• Must have some level of passion for your work
• Give talks to critical audiences
• David Pattersons 10 commandments for a bad talk
• http//www.cs.wisc.edu/markhill/conference-talk
  .html
• Attend conferences and behave yourself!
• Meet people, interact, network, do your homework

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The Road to Success -- IV

• Have a life
• Work/life balance
• Limit hours
• Learn limit of productive hours/week
• Abide by it
• External stimulation, relaxation, exercise
• Let your unconscious mind solve problems
• Think through and formulate problem
• Dont force a solution but sketch possible
  directions
• Let it go, move on to something else or go run 5
  miles

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The Road to Success -- V

• Thesis
• Thorough, complete treatment
• Be prepared to put all/most of your intellectual
  energy into a single task
• Not to be taken lightly
• Iterate
• Hack, experiment, reduce/graph, analyze,
  synthesize
• Write, revise, write
• Solicit feedback from peers, advisor,
• UW writing center http//www.wisc.edu/writing

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How to Stop

• 3 necessary conditions Mark Hill
• Sick of your thesis topic
• Sick of your advisor
• Sick of ECE/UW/Madison/Wisconsin
• Write, revise, rewrite
• Defend your thesis
• Not a confrontation
• Persuasive document presentation

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Wisconsin-specific Advice

• Network
• Advisors/faculty are the present
• Your peers are the future
• Learn from many faculty
• Broaden yourself
• Dont fall prey to areaism
• Take courses outside area/dept.
• Participate in
• Seminars (Arch. Seminar, CMPE seminar)
• Mailing lists (arch, reading, os)
• Reading groups
• Lunch groups
• Affiliates meeting
• Architecture outings
• Pizza Fridays
• Help out (volunteer) with these events

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Finding a Job

• Resume/CV preparation
• Finding openings
• Engineering Career Services, on-campus interviews
• Advisor, committee contacts
• Internships
• Peer contacts
• Interview preparation, research/Ph.D.
• 30-second version (pigeonhole)
• 5-minute version (technical non-expert audience)
• 30-minute version (expert audience)
• Salesmanship
• Not everyone appreciates the essential beauty of
  your thesis
• Not everyone appreciates the importance of your
  research area
• Not everyone has heard of Wisconsin
• Dont be arrogant
• Interviewing
• Do your leg work, know who youll be talking to
• Be Interested! Or, at least pretend to be
  interested
• If you want people to like you, (act like you)
  like them!

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Keeping Your Job

• First impressions
• Better to be overdressed than underdressed
• Pay attention to dress code at your on-site
  interview (write it down)
• Be enthusiastic eager to learn
• Understand others jobs and interests
• Dont step on peoples toes
• Find a mentor
• Dont be afraid to ask for advice
• But dont be afraid to be independent
• Find out the proper channels
• Dont escalate
• Dont skip levels of management
• Be persuasive
• Be persistent
• Less pain to satisfy your request than ignore you
• Be generous with assigning credit
• Better to share credit and have everyone know you
  did the work
• Worse to claim credit and have everyone know you
  dont deserve it

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Climbing the Ladder

• Gaining visibility
• To first order, grad school is a shortcut
• Sometimes, toot your own horn
• Quid pro quo
• Gaining responsibility
• Dont be afraid to ask
• Live up to it
• Rewards proportional to risks effort
• Keep track of accomplishments
• Be fair, generous, honest to others
• Political battles
• Dont be naïve, life isnt fair
• Find allies, build networks
• Leverage accomplishments

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Questions?