4 ms·

I totally agree with you. Nobody gives a fuck. I sweated 6 months on my CS Masters thesis. After the day of the presentation, I walked up to my Professor's offi

by dxbydt 3y ago

I totally agree with you. Nobody gives a fuck. I sweated 6 months on my CS Masters thesis. After the day of the presentation, I walked up to my Professor's office. As per the rules, you are supposed to hand a printed copy of your thesis to your thesis advisor. So I handed over the printed thesis proudly. Then we chatted, I said my goodbyes & left. In those days we had no github internet etc. All the C++ code for my thesis was on a 5 1/4 floppy. When I reached home I found the floppy. I was like, God I've forgotten to give him my code! So I picked up the floppy and trudged back to the university. Then I walk up to my advisor's office again & knock on the door. He is ofcourse surprised to see me. I say - Sorry I forgot to give you my code. Here is the floppy. I'll put it next to my thesis. Where is my thesis ? He doesn't say anything. I look around to see if my thesis is on his bookshelf, but no, it isn't there. Then I turn around & I find my thesis. It is in his trashcan. I was so stunned & shocked. My advisor says sheepishly - look its just a Master's thesis. Its not like you have discovered a new theorem or something. These results are well known in the literature. I just put my floppy in that trashcan and walked out. Its been more than 2 decades now but I still remember that incident like it was yesterday. Literally, nobody gives a fuck.

seabass-labrax 3y ago
That's a pretty gutting experience; I'm sorry for you. But especially with the internet, the are people who value Masters work. I sent an email thanking someone for their thesis, and mentioning that I had added it as a citation on Wikipedia, but I didn't get a response. Maybe there is a vicious spiral of apathy towards undergraduate and early postgraduate work.
- tasogare 3y ago
  [dead]
katbyte 3y ago
> Literally, nobody gives a fuck. you are taking a single experience and applying it universally - maybe most people don't care, but there are some people who do.
- lacrimacida 3y ago
  It’s true that some care but the great majority don’t give a duck so it’s almost universal
aatd86 3y ago
Wait, whaaat? I've had issues with my thesis advisor myself but that's a whole other level altogether lmaoooo. But yeah, Master's thesis are usually useless. (although if I had followed what I had written in my master thesis, I would be quite wealthy smh)
- fakedang 3y ago
  Hah, don't count on it. I worked on my master's thesis quite a bit, even worked on submitting a publication (it was in control systems and was only rejected because they wanted more empirical results). The stuff was extremely groundbreaking - we were able to get 2 orders of magnitude of better performance compared to existing solutions. Fast forward to a few weeks back, when I was talking with a process team at a multi-billion dollar biotech company (yes, it's a huge) somewhat casually, when that idea cropped back up. Their response was basically "meh, we really don't need that much higher performance". I'm sure if I were to start up around this, I would be able to get enough funding from the recent AI rounds from VCs. But I wouldn't have customers willing to buy this in the first place! I would be like the proverbial solution looking for a problem to solve.
brmgb 3y ago
> I was so stunned & shocked. My advisor says sheepishly - look its just a Master's thesis. Its not like you have discovered a new theorem or something. These results are well known in the literature. The gesture is unfortunate and I understand that you were shocked. I'm curious if your view of it changed with experience however? I mean, unless you actually discover something great - which very rarely happen, is frankly exceptional and would probably lead to a paper on top of the actual thesis - a master thesis is mostly something you do for yourself. The point of doing it is what you learn durint the exercise. It's not really intended for being read outside of your jury. An advisor might keep a few good ones to give as reference to future students but that's pretty much it. Hopefully, your advisor actually gave a shit when he was advising you. That's where he could have been valuable.

by dxbydt 3y ago

seabass-labrax 3y ago

That's a pretty gutting experience; I'm sorry for you. But especially with the internet, the are people who value Masters work. I sent an email thanking someone for their thesis, and mentioning that I had added it as a citation on Wikipedia, but I didn't get a response. Maybe there is a vicious spiral of apathy towards undergraduate and early postgraduate work.

tasogare 3y ago
[dead]

katbyte 3y ago

> Literally, nobody gives a fuck. you are taking a single experience and applying it universally - maybe most people don't care, but there are some people who do.

lacrimacida 3y ago
It’s true that some care but the great majority don’t give a duck so it’s almost universal

aatd86 3y ago

Wait, whaaat? I've had issues with my thesis advisor myself but that's a whole other level altogether lmaoooo. But yeah, Master's thesis are usually useless. (although if I had followed what I had written in my master thesis, I would be quite wealthy smh)

fakedang 3y ago
Hah, don't count on it. I worked on my master's thesis quite a bit, even worked on submitting a publication (it was in control systems and was only rejected because they wanted more empirical results). The stuff was extremely groundbreaking - we were able to get 2 orders of magnitude of better performance compared to existing solutions. Fast forward to a few weeks back, when I was talking with a process team at a multi-billion dollar biotech company (yes, it's a huge) somewhat casually, when that idea cropped back up. Their response was basically "meh, we really don't need that much higher performance". I'm sure if I were to start up around this, I would be able to get enough funding from the recent AI rounds from VCs. But I wouldn't have customers willing to buy this in the first place! I would be like the proverbial solution looking for a problem to solve.

brmgb 3y ago

> I was so stunned & shocked. My advisor says sheepishly - look its just a Master's thesis. Its not like you have discovered a new theorem or something. These results are well known in the literature. The gesture is unfortunate and I understand that you were shocked. I'm curious if your view of it changed with experience however? I mean, unless you actually discover something great - which very rarely happen, is frankly exceptional and would probably lead to a paper on top of the actual thesis - a master thesis is mostly something you do for yourself. The point of doing it is what you learn durint the exercise. It's not really intended for being read outside of your jury. An advisor might keep a few good ones to give as reference to future students but that's pretty much it. Hopefully, your advisor actually gave a shit when he was advising you. That's where he could have been valuable.