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I used to be an ECE professor at UBC, the #2 school in Canada. At that school, ECE is part of applied sciences. And do you know what else is part? Yeah, nurs
by systemBuilder 8y ago
I used to be an ECE professor at UBC, the #2 school in Canada. At that school, ECE is part of applied sciences. And do you know what else is part? Yeah, nursing. The nurses earned the same pay scale as the ECE professors. And the bus drivers also earned the same pay scale at age 30 but had been working 10 years by that time and had no student loans to pay off.
When I left my pay raise was 133%. There is no word in the Canadian language to describe my salary level, it still beats every professor in every department, 20 years later ...
What kind of challenges did I leave behind when I left UBC? Research into forestry robotic Feller-Bunchers (giant tree snippers); Optical Systems for cutting Lumber in Sawmills. Computer architecture? No. VLSI? No. Compilers, Operating systems, CAD tools? No. Nothing core to these fields was ever done in Canada ....
- robotresearcher 8y ago> Compilers, Operating systems, CAD tools? No. We have to make do with Deep Learning.
- jpambrun 8y agoI was a postdoc in EE/CS trying to make my way into academia in Montreal. Now I work remotely for an American company and make more than most professors at the University I left.. It's unfortunate really..
- ryanobjc 8y agoHey that was my Alma mater. My wife went to Berkeley and I am profoundly jealous of the quality of her education. UBC is fine but it has a local view and doesn’t deserve to be called world class imo. It doesn’t develop a worldly viewpoint in its students. And why would it? It’s mission is to educate British Columbians. This is a hard topic for me because I was forced to move to Seattle in 2001 right after I graduated. Initially I was only semi willing, but the job market in Vancouver for new grads just didn’t exist then. It’s hard to find fellow Canadians who share similar viewpoints. I’d love to chat more about this with you, somehow!
- entrypoint0 8y agoFormer postdoc in Ontario, in a very similar field. I confirm that fundamental is ignored culturally. By the end, I mostly saw it as a place of business, and not a very good one at that either. Time past since has only solidified my view.
- ttul 8y agoThat’s just not true. Some of the core VLSI innovations came out of the semiconductor lab at SFU. You just went to the wrong school, professor.