Optikon

Umm.. I cancelled mine after years & years of membership? Why?
Well because it was utterly useless to me.

1) Subscribing to the journals & societies was slightly useful but I found it was full of graduate papers.. Lots of good theoretical stuff but very focused and no practical use.. research stuff...

2) Benefits packages they offered were good if you had no job. I had a job and my benefits were orders of magnitude better..

3) Basic membership didnt offer any real advantages in terms of getting ahold of IEEE standards documents.. still had to pay an arm & a leg for them.. maybe saved a finger.. don't need memebership to buy these.

4) Student branches were a joke when I was in school.. why bother, I had too many other things to worry about.. like graduating..

It seems that having the membership is only popular because people thinks its popular. I found no real use to me in any other aspect.. after years of paying dues(well employer did) I realized it was pointless.

IF your experiences have been different, please share!!

fsahmed

Couldnt agree with u more.

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F. S. Ahmed

_3iMaJ

An IEEE membership is useless to me by itself. I only like having access to the theoretical journals, which comes free through my school, so maintaining a membership serves no purpose for me.

The magazines are kind of cool, they keep you informed on the stuff on the horizon, but I don't think its worth the 30 dollars a year.

_3iMaJ

Thats where the practical stuff comes from!!!

DigiTan

I can't speak from experience, but I've got a cousin in the aerospace field who says the exact opposite. From a job recruiter's standpoint, these types of memberships are one of the first things they look for after coursework and what not. I'm 100% sure it wouldn't guarantee employment, but I'll take a tie-breaker in my favor any day.

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Optikon

Interesting example.

I've long since expelled it from my resume. There are too many other valuable experiences to put on there than to waste one line with IEEE membership.. Maybe it helps for new grads to get a job with no experience but otherwise, my feeling is that it is a waste of space. Unless, of course you were very active in developing IEEE etc.. and even then it's "if-y"

pop

Thanks for the info Optikon!

For the longest time, I was considering to join IEEE, but I kept putting it off all the way though school and now that I'm working I was if-y whether to join or not. Well I'm glad that's cleared up

On a side note, has anyone joined ISA (instrumentation society)?

How easy is it to get your hands on their standards?

Optikon

Great. Fill your resume up with as much experience as possible.