# Intro

Welcome to the weekly career discussion thread, where you can talk about all career & professional topics. Topics may include:

* Professional career guidance & questions; e.g. job hunting advice, job offers comparisons, how to network

* Educational guidance & questions; e.g. what engineering discipline to major in, which university is good,

* Feedback on your résumé, CV, cover letter, etc.

* The job market, compensation, relocation, and other topics on the economics of engineering.

> [Archive of past threads](https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/search?q=flair%3A%22weekly+discussion%22&restrict\_sr=on&sort=new&t=all)

---

## Guidelines

1. **Before asking any questions, consult [the AskEngineers wiki.](https://new.reddit.com/r/askengineers/wiki/faq)\*\* There are detailed answers to common questions on:

* Job compensation

* Cost of Living adjustments

* Advice for how to decide on an engineering major

* How to choose which university to attend

1. Most subreddit rules still apply and will be enforced, especially R7 and R9 (with the obvious exceptions of R1 and R3)

2. Job POSTINGS must go into the latest [**Monthly Hiring Thread.**]((https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/search?q=flair%3A%22hiring+thread%22&restrict\_sr=on&sort=new&t=all)) Any that are posted here will be removed, and you'll be kindly redirected to the hiring thread.

3. **Do not request interviews in this thread!** If you need to interview an engineer for your school assignment, use the list in the sidebar.

## Resources

* [The AskEngineers wiki](https://new.reddit.com/r/askengineers/wiki/faq)

* [The AskEngineers Quarterly Salary Survey](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/search/?q=flair%3A%22salary+survey%22&include\_over\_18=on&restrict\_sr=on&t=all&sort=new)

* **For students:** [*"What's your average day like as an engineer?"*](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/wiki/faq#wiki\_what.27s\_your\_average\_day\_like\_as\_an\_engineer.3F) We recommend that you spend an hour or so reading about what engineers actually do at work. This will help you make a more informed decision on which major to choose, or at least give you enough info to ask follow-up questions here.

* For those of you interested in a career in software development / Computer Science, go to r/cscareerquestions.

My employer produces a lot of tube weldments from 304 stainless steel. In general they fit within a 4' x 2' x 1' envelope. We currently bead blast in order to remove heat tint around the welds and to leave a uniform matte surface. We cannot have any reflectivity. Blasting is proving to be a massive bottleneck in production.

I may be fixating on a solution, but I have this feeling that we could find some sort of acid bath process that would accomplish mostly the same thing. Some cursory searches have led me to investigate pickling, which allegedly can remove heat tint and result in uniform matte surface finishes.

I have also read some accounts saying that pickling is unreliable and not particularly controllable. I've reached out to some vendors and so far have found only one galvanizer that would potentially offer it. He didn't seem to think it was a good idea but couldn't really articulate why. I am continuing to talk to vendors.

Anyone here have any experience with different acid wash processes? I would like to get away from bead blasting.

Does anyone here do something similar, for non software, IT, computer engineering roles?

Their unique internal geometry reduces friction, minimizes vibration. The joints are shown via a 3D model in PTC CREO Parametric with kinematic analysis.

Human finger replica i made with legos.

The Robotics team from Wissahickon High School in Ambler, Pennsylvania built a robot Miss Daisy XXIV that picks up balls and shoots them into a container.

I have no idea how I missed this because it's one of the most beautiful, practical pieces of engineering I have ever seen. There's so many applications I could use this for it's literally breaking my brain.

I would HIGHLY recommend watching the entire video to understand what's going on but it's extremely clever. I'm not affiliated with this guy at all but holy crap I would buy this thing as soon as it's released.

Edit: It seems I have been bamboozled. Even though this is a beautiful piece of engineering, it is not what the creator makes it out to be, and hides certain parts of the transmissions construction - mainly the fact that the planetary gears driving the output would HAVE to be ratcheted, decreasing overall efficiency and function by a lot.

This piece is called The Gateway. It’s a kinetic sculpture made from an array of 91 independently actuated infinity mirrors, driven by 182 motors and illuminated by nearly 11,000 LEDs.

The fully custom structure, mechanics, and electronics were designed from scratch and built in-house, along with the bare-metal firmware and software to drive it.

Happy to answer questions about the build!

As a reminder, /r/AskEngineers normal restrictions for career related posts are severely relaxed for this thread, so feel free to ask about intra-office politics, salaries, or just about anything else related to your job!

Im an engineer myself, this is just a sanity check.

I had this discussion with a colleague, most likely not a trained engineer.

We were having a discussion about saving gas, due to the iran-trump energy crisis.

He claimed that his ICE had a sweet spot around 120km/h where it used less gass than going slower, lets say 100km/h, because his engine had a more optimum rpm at a higher speed. When I mentionned that at those speeds air resistance becomes important he acted like I made some mental mistake like a 3 year old saying a kilo of feathers is lighter than a kilo of sand.

Im aware that ICEs have an optimum rpm range at which they are more efficient, but this unlikely to be a factor at speeds higher than 100km/h, seeing air restance increases exponentially.

I went on to say air resistance is even more at play for EVs and he reacted in such a way I could have said that the earth was flat. He said that for higher speeds EVs use more power because their rpm is so high they lose almost all their effiency.

I know this aint so, just looking for some advice on how to deal with such know it all dunces that are so confident in their twistedly incorrect understanding of engineering and physics. where do these ideas come from? and why?

I am interested in making anti fragmentation protective equipment for foxholes and shelters, that can help infantry protect against smaller explosives used by small drones.

One of the issues I am working on is weight reduction, to allow for any potential protective equipment to be light enough for infantry units to carry and deploy where necessary.

Given the nature of the design, back face deformation would not be much of an issue, so I have wondered if this means I can reduce the number of layers of kevlar/polymer used to stop fragments, and if so, by how much.

Most of the soft armour research I have seen was designed to assess wearable soft armour, and takes deformation into account, so it is not particularly useful.

Are any of you aware of any research on soft armour blankets/soft armour that does not take deformation into account? And if not, do any of you have any insights into this issue that you think might be helpful that you would be willing to share?

Thank you for any help you are able to provide.

If you switch a four wire Kelvin sense on a sheet metal, such that the current passing wires are the inside two wires and the sense wires are the outside two wires, will the measured resistance be higher or lower than the actual value?

I'm thinking about dropping a large rock on them, but that might crush it lopsided. I was also hoping to avoid any sounds of the initial impact.

Good morning, i need to know from the pros. I have a 15Nm Direct Drive wheel base and I want to build a custom wall-mounted structure for it. The idea is to fix it to the wall and have it extend over my desk so the base 'hovers' in position, because my MDF desk isn't strong enough to handle the torque.

My wall is finished with ceramic tiles and the structure underneath is standard orange hollow brick. Is this feasible? My plan was to run steel supports from the wall starting behind the pedals, extending up and under the desk, and then shaping it to hold the base where a standard desk mount would be. My main concern is: how do I do this without the 15Nm force pulling the wall down? 😅

(Here in Brazil we use “tijolo baiano”, pls help me)

Idk why i can’t send a pic, so: https://imgur.com/a/HYq0i3C

I watched a video on using a string trimmer (weed eater) to edge a lawn. One thing many pros do is take off the protective guard (which has a built in blade to cut the line to a maximum engineered size).

In this video, they show how just a "little" more string trimmer line can cause the engine to bog down.

1:28 minute mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN8mp4o7mXk

Trimmer head in video:

Why does just a "little" more (maybe few inches I would guess from the video) trimmer line cause such a noticeable reduction in power from a seemingly powerful gas engine? In my mind this trimmer line is so light (maybe 10g as a total guess?) and many trimmer head spin in excess of 10,000 rpm (which was shocking in itself). I would've thought (incorrectly) that just a small increase in line would be imperceivable on performance.

Curious about the physics behind this. Is this centrifugal force related that somehow magnifies the demand on the engine exponentially or something?

I saw a research paper which used speaker oscillations to produce air through a rubber tubing and fed it to water to cause waves. I tried this, I covered the top of a 5" speaker with a wooden slab (sealed tight) and put a hole in the center where the tubing (4mm outer diameter) protrudes. I think the diaphragm oscillations are enough 1-2 cm but I still feel no air coming out. Am I doing something wrong? The frequency I used is 3-10 Hz. I am using an amp and the speaker oscillates visibly strongly. Thanks.

Book recs to learn about computer architecture

I landed a job where I will work with a client which designs chips and other things like memory hierarchies, etc

I was told any prior knowledge wouldn't be compulsory, but a bonus, so I'd like to start learning about it.

Any recs of where to start? I was hoping for a book so that I can read it before bed

Hello!

I’m looking for help designing a push-to-release latch. I’m not sure if that’s the correct term, but I’ll try to explain it as clearly as I can below.

• I have an aluminium pipe that should lock in place when inserted into a plastic part, without falling out.
• When the tube is fully inserted, it should be secured by a latch-like mechanism.
• The pipe will have a specific shape so that it can only be inserted in one orientation. I’ve included an example shape in the images below.
• When a button is pressed, the latch should release so that the pipe can be removed.
• The pipe is approximately 0.5 mm thick, and the plastic part is intended to be injection moulded, with a thickness of 1–5 mm.

Here are some images where I’ve tried to illustrate the parts:
https://imgur.com/a/yYhb68i

How can I find a solution to this problem?
Are there any guides that show different kinds of mechanisms like this?
Should I contact an engineering firm to help design this?

I’ve tried searching online but can’t find what I’m looking for—probably because I’m not sure about the correct terminology.

Hi!! I'm looking for a software or website that tells me if compression molding (composite) can be accomplished.

I am a designer, but don't want to send every design to the engineer to check feasibility, just so I can ideate quicker. I've seen many sites for injection molding, but not compression.

I want to see where the part is most likely to fail.

Further: my product requires 90 degree angles in the middle of it (picture if a car door panel was all one part, specifically the arm rest), and because the product is tall and narrow, most variations of the design are not feasible. I cannot post pictures, but if anyone has tips for how to accomplish this, please let me know.

I'm currently building a machine for a print process in which I want to transport an upright coffee mug over a small distance with a slide. The mug drops onto the slide from a (currently) horizontal conveyor belt.

Which material should I use for the slide so I don't need a huge angle? I tested steel rods, Teflon tape and some PTFE-Tubes from my 3d-printer. PTFE-Tubes are so far the best and I'll buy some solid rods for the next experiments.

And would it help to align the end of the conveyor with the slide so the mug might get some horizontal velocity and does not get stuck in static friction?

Hi everyone,

I am trying to design a mechanism where a shaft follows this cycle:

Starts at the bottom

Moves straight up

Stops at the top

Rotates a small fixed angle

Returns to its original rotation position

Moves back down

Then repeats continuously

Important point: rotation should only happen at the top, not during the upward motion.

I want to keep it simple using one or two motors and basic mechanical parts.

I am looking for suggestions on:

What type of mechanism can achieve this sequence reliably

Whether this can be done with a single motor using cams or linkages

Or if using two motors would be better

Ways to ensure rotation only happens at the top

How to reset the rotation before the downward motion

If you have built something similar or know a mechanism that does this, I would appreciate any guidance, sketches, or references.

I keep seeing people jump in to defend AI with something along the lines of: “it’s early tech”,

How long does something get to be “early” for?

This stuff has been around for years now, and it’s not hidden away in some lab. It’s being pushed into everything. Phones, operating systems, search, work tools. People are being told to use it.

And the problem isn’t that it makes mistakes. Everything does.

The problem is it makes things up, says them confidently, and most people have no reason to question it.

The average person isn’t thinking “better fact check this AI response.” Why would they? It sounds like it knows what it’s talking about. That’s the whole selling point.

So people just trust it. And half the time they won’t even realise they’ve been given wrong information.

Then when you point this out, there’s always someone saying “well you should verify it.”

Why?

If a tool needs you to already know when it’s wrong in order to use it safely, that’s not a user problem.

And it’s definitely not an “education issue.” If you need to be trained not to trust something that presents itself as knowledgeable, maybe it shouldn’t be rolled out to the general public yet.

No one would accept this from anything else.

Imagine a sat nav that just sends you to random places rather than where you needed to go. Or a calculator that occasionally guesses. People wouldn’t defend that, they’d stop using it.

But with AI, people bend over backwards to excuse it.

At some point you’ve got to stop treating it like a cool experiment and start judging it like the product it’s being sold as.

Because right now it’s being pushed everywhere as something you can rely on… when you very clearly can’t.

There is little doubt on this sub that AI, robotics and other technology will have a profound impact on labor markets. When confronted with the implications, most AI leaders suggest that AI will also create a lot of new jobs. They usually draw a parallel with some historical technological disruption, handwavingly mention the Jevons paradox or the lump of labor fallacy, and suggest that workers who adopt AI tools will be able to stay economically relevant for a long time.

Intuitively, this didn't sit well with me. Why wouldn't AI disrupt those new jobs too? I've seen this argument everywhere but couldn't find any data-driven approach that actually tests whether the conditions for "new jobs will emerge" still hold. So I built what I think is the most comprehensive empirical analysis of the question to date. The attached image is the result.

Why "new jobs will emerge" has always worked — and why it might stop working

Every previous wave of automation left displaced workers with two escape routes.

Escape route 1: same skill, different job. A power loom killed weaving, but it didn't kill Manual Dexterity. The weaver's hands were still valuable in hundreds of other jobs. Previous technologies were narrow — they conquered a skill in one specific application but left the underlying ability competitive everywhere else.

Escape route 2: different skill entirely. When machines took muscle, humans moved to cognition. When computers took calculation, humans moved to judgment and communication. There was always an adjacent category of skills that technology hadn't reached.

New jobs emerged because there were enough uncontested skills to build them from. The web developer role didn't require a new human ability — it recombined Reading Comprehension, Critical Thinking, and Programming into a job that hadn't existed before. The mechanism worked because the raw materials (uncontested skills) were abundant.

What the data shows

I scored all 87 skills and abilities in the O*NET taxonomy — the US Labor Department's standard framework that decomposes every occupation into its component skills — against AI benchmarks expressed in the 0-100th human percentile at three time points: end-2020, end-2023, and end-2025. Then I mapped those scores onto 1,016 occupations. I've mapped the results in an interactive chart here.

The colored shapes show economic cost-parity — the skill level where AI is already cheaper than a human. Blue is 2020. Green is 2023. Orange is 2025. The dashed ring is the human frontier.

Some numbers:

• Average cost-parity went from the 18th percentile (2020) to the 56th (2025) — and it's accelerating: 7.1 points/year → 8.4 points/year
• 84% of skills are now past the point where a below-average worker is economically competitive
• Only 4 out of 87 skills still have the best AI system below the 25th human percentile. All four require a physical body.
• Every occupation in the database — all 1,016 — sits between 71% and 99% skill coverage

Both escape routes are closing.

Escape route 1 is gone for most cognitive skills. When AI reaches the 84th percentile on Writing, it doesn't displace one kind of writer — it pressures every occupation that uses Writing, simultaneously. A displaced legal writer can't retrain into marketing because the same skill is under equal pressure in marketing.

Escape route 2 is shrinking fast. AI is advancing on nearly all 87 skills in parallel. The frontier of uncontested skills isn't shifting to a new category — it's contracting. When there aren't enough uncontested skills left to recombine into new jobs, the mechanism that has always absorbed displaced workers stops working.

Andrej Karpathy launched a similar job-scoring tool two days ago (karpathy.ai/jobs). His caveat says "many high-exposure jobs will be reshaped, not replaced." I believe the longitudinal data shows why that conclusion is wrong — the escape routes that made reshaping possible are closing.

Full article: https://gertvanvugt.substack.com/p/the-final-frontiers

Spider chart / frontier map (full resolution): https://daity.tech/frontier.html

I also built an interactive tool where you can search any of the 1,016 occupations, see the skill profile, and get a displacement timeline estimate: https://daity.tech/jobexplorer.html

The dataset and methodology are published openly — I'm explicitly inviting challenges to the scores. If you think a number is wrong, tell me which one.

In the summer of 1914, enthusiasts for war were sure they'd be home by Christmas. The ancient ruling dynasties of Romanovs, Hohenzollerns, and the 700-year-old Habsburgs felt their thrones were safe. Five years later, that was all proved very wrong.

Five years is about the time span it may take to get the Persian Gulf's oil & LNG back online if it is destroyed. Iran & Israel/US are quickly nearing the point on the escalation ladder where that may happen. “History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” as the famous aphorism goes. This time, the casualty may be fossil fuels themselves.

As this war progresses, the world may soon find itself in a far bigger emergency situation than COVID. Rationing and economic chaos lie ahead. Like COVID, governments will scramble for alternatives and responses.

But something is different this time. There is an alternative. It's a world dominated by renewables and electrification - not fossil fuels. We were already transitioning to it anyway. Now, war may force people's hands and make this future happen far quicker. In 1918, no one wanted the old world back ; they wanted a new one. We may find the same is true for fossil fuels when the latest ME war is finally done.

This is obviously not something with likelihood of happening on a short timescale, but given the significant role that fossil fuels have played (and continue to play with everything currently occurring) in conflict and geopolitical relations for over a century try now, how would things be different if they were a non-factor? If every country’s energy needs were met by renewables, what unforeseen consequences would this have for the global stage? Is it likely we end up in that situation in a matter of decades? What do we expect the state of energy geopolitics to look like in 10, 20, 30, 50 years?

(Article is in Spanish, but Chrome auto-translate works fine)

a bit over 5 years ago I lost my right arm in a motorcycle accident.

i thought gaming was over for me.

I tried a bunch of workarounds, but none of them really felt natural or gave full control, so I started experimenting and built a prototype for myself.

i took the housing shape from devices like the razer tartarus / belkin nostromo, since they have been proven great ergonomic design, and mirrored it for ambidextrous use.

the idea was simple: combine a keypad and mouse into one device so a single hand can handle movement, aiming, and key inputs at the same time.

Some of the design features include:

• optical mouse sensor on the bottom so it moves like a mouse
• 30 +programmable key layout similar to a gaming keypad
• stabilizing strap to keep the hand aligned
• ambidextrous design so either hand can use it

It started as a rough DIY project just so I could use my PC again, but after refining it, it ended up working surprisingly well.

seeing it get coverage like this really highlights a bigger issue, most computer hardware is still designed around two-handed use.

>

i dont pay *too* much attention to politics but as a 15m boy i lwkenuinely am terrified of such a thing happening and panic a lot about it lol i just want a future man

Either due to it literally being impossible to achieve given it violating currently known science or practically impossible due to how extremely difficult it would be to achieve in the modern day. And, assuming someone somehow did realize it now, what theoretical good or bad could it bring with it?

Everything used to feel revolutionary. Now it’s just updates. Will something ever blow our minds again or are we just numb to it?

Please sort comments by 'new' to find questions that would otherwise be buried.

In this thread you can ask any space related question that you may have.

Two examples of potential questions could be; "How do rockets work?", or "How do the phases of the Moon work?"

If you see a space related question posted in another subreddit or in this subreddit, then please politely link them to this thread.

​

Ask away!

Ultra-short period (USP) rocky planets, which orbit their stars in less than a day, are rare, especially around red dwarfs. TOI-4552 b is a newly validated Earth-sized planet with a 0.3-day orbit around a quiet M4.5V red dwarf just 90 light years away.

https://www.stellarcatalog.com/news/toi-4552-b-an-ultra-short-period-rocky-planet

Taken On Seestar S50 Using 10:00 Video Stack.

Shot around ~6:50 PM just after sunset. You can see faint earthshine on the dark side. Single exposure on a Canon M50 with a 55–250mm lens. Only had about 5 minutes on my shift so I grabbed this quick before heading back in.

I usually make videos about Apollo, but I wanted to go back a bit further and cover the X-15, the rocket-powered plane that reached the edge of space and helped pave the way for human spaceflight.

I tried to recreate what that experience might have felt like using original-era narration and focusing on the feeling of the flight rather than just the facts.

Curious what you think, does this capture even a small part of it?

SOURCE

I'm not OP; OP is in Antarctica! It is very cold there.

Why do red-headed side-neck turtles need “murky” water? 🐢

Meet Mimosa, a red-headed side-neck turtle and one of the newest residents at the museum. Her tea-colored water is designed to mimic the Amazon’s blackwater rivers, where leaf litter and organic material release compounds that naturally support turtle health. While it may look cloudy, this environment is actually clean, intentional, and carefully recreated by animal care experts to help her thrive in conditions that mirror the wild.

Are we finally going back to the Moon? 🚀

NASA has rolled the Artemis II rocket out to the launchpad after key repairs. This brings the agency one step closer to launching its first crewed mission of the Artemis program, with a launch attempt targeted for April 1. Artemis II will send four astronauts around the Moon and back aboard Orion, a spacecraft designed to carry humans beyond low Earth orbit. It will mark the first human journey into lunar space since Apollo 17 in 1972, making this a major step toward a new era of Moon exploration.

https://reddit.com/link/1rzx5dg/video/zcsb218rmfqg1/player

The biggest error message in physics is the Singularity - the point at the center of a black hole where density becomes infinite and General Relativity breaks. But what if the math isn't breaking? What if it’s just branching?

​I’m sharing a new research paper on Recursive Spacetime Topologies that proposes the Recursive Singularity Hypothesis (RSH). Instead of a dead-end point, it models the interior of a black hole as a self-similar fractal manifold, modeled after the iterative logic of the Mandelbrot set.

​The Concept: Black Holes Inside Black Holes

The paper theorizes that Negative Energy States act as bifurcation points. As matter falls in, spacetime doesn't just crush; it branches into secondary and tertiary event horizons. This organized chaos allows for infinite complexity and data encoding within a finite volume, potentially solving the Black Hole Information Paradox.

​The Evidence: The Noise in our Detectors

This isn't just a mathematical exercise. It offers a physical explanation for a famous, debated anomaly in gravitational wave data:

​The 2016 Abedi Paper: Researchers (Abedi et al., 2016) famously claimed to find echoes in LIGO’s noise—periodic repetitions of the signal after a black hole merger.

​The RSH Link: Standard models struggle to explain why a vacuum would echo. But in a fractal interior, gravitational waves would reflect off these internal recursive layers. What we’ve been dismissing as background noise might actually be the scale-invariant signature of a branching interior.

​Why this needs urgent testing:

Our current Kerr templates (used by labs like LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA) are designed to filter out this specific kind of noise. If we apply Template-Independent Analysis or Bayesian Reconstruction to recent data runs, we might find that the noise has the exact fractal power spectrum predicted by the RSH.

​If the universe is recursive at its core, the center of a black hole isn't an end - it’s an infinite beginning.

​Research Links:

The Hypothesis (Sutskever et al., 2026): https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.31819723

The Supporting Evidence (Abedi et al., 2016): https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.00266