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Ask HN: Are any of you IEEE members?
70 points by 52-6F-62 on Nov 16, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 54 comments
I'm considering membership, but thought I would also inquire to the community about recent experiences.

Do any of you hold IEEE membership? Is it worth it in your mind? If not, why not? If so, why so?

Likewise, do any of you hold any other professional organization memberships? Which, and why? Or if not, why not?

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I searched through the archives and couldn't find anything younger than about 8-10 years old with few comments. It would be interesting to hear updated information from others in the field.




I was a student member, but cancelled after I graduated. For $200, I somehow expected that I'd have complete access to their publications, but it turns out that you don't get that. You've to pay extra for access to their digital library (which you can't get without a membership), and even then, the access is limited - something like 25 articles a month (which don't carry over) for $44/month, with a minimum commitment of 6 months. The only reason to keep their membership is access to their journals (especially those published in the '70s and '80s), and since I already had access via my workplace, I didn't think it worthwhile. You're basically looking at $733/year for limited access to their publications.

Another option is to join a society within IEEE (in addition to membership). This gives you a substantial discount on subscriptions to publications sponsored by that society. However, I found that I needed to join multiple societies to span the publications I was interested in, and it was just not worth it.


> You're basically looking at $733/year for limited access to their publications.

Not to mention, you should be able to get free access via the library system anyway.


Strange. I'm not a member, and at my university we have free access to the IEEE digital library.


Most universities have special access to both IEEE and ACM publications (as well as many others). They pay for this access.


I don't know where you are getting your numbers from wrt ACM at least. Last time I checked it was ~£100 without DL access, and £200 for membership + full DL access. I think that is a pretty good deal. It costs money to run a digital library, and you have to remember ACM isn't really comparable to profit driven publishers such as Elsevier etc.


> Do any of you hold IEEE membership?

>> I was a student member, but cancelled after I graduated

>>>I don't know where you are getting your numbers from wrt ACM at least


> It costs money to run a digital library

What does this mean? You're surely not talking about bandwidth and storage costs, those are on the order of pennies.


"We hold the copyright on a bunch of stuff you'd like to read" has never felt like a compelling sales pitch to me. They and the ACM do a fair job of hiding information from people who could use it, many of whom don't know it yet, but I don't think that sort of thing should be rewarded.

I was almost ready to make the jump and join one of these until I realized how many extra fees I'd incur to read everything I was interested in. IIRC with the ACM it's papers presented at conferences that are extra, but it sounds like IEEE has similar problems.

I can see how membership could have some other benefits, but it's hard to justify the expense, and just distasteful to contribute to the academic gatekeeping involved.


This is the same reason why, every time I’ve considered joining, I opt not to. I’d rather see my funds go to support broader access to the content, scholarships and other research grants, and the like, not gate keeping.


IIRC, libgen.io has a collection dedicated to specifications, a la sci-hub. I recall seeing a lot of IEEE stuff there.


I was for a year or two while I was in college. I stopped because it felt like I was paying the membership fee for the privilege of possibly paying a second membership fee for one of the field-specific organizations... for what I still have no idea. Several years post-college one of my fellow classmates noted to me that he stopped his membership as well, and for similar reasons.

In the last year or so of college I was asked if I was interested in joining the Society Of Women Engineers [SWE]; engineering activities for Girl Scouts, field trips to engineering-related museums, actual stuff going on. I'm now a lifetime member. Once in a while these days I go to an event or meeting. I enjoy the magazine.


I have it and its mostly useless except that it gets you discount at few top tier conferences. If you go to lot of their conferences, the membership will almost pay for itself. The free stuff that comes with membership is virtually useless and many times borderline spam.

I'm however considering cancelling this as my protest against their mostly pay walled publications. Interestingly even if you have membership they still don't give you access to it! In many ways they are as bad as Elsevier but have managed avoid attention because technically they are "nonprofit" on paper and they run lot of top tier conferences.


  do any of you hold any other professional organization
  memberships? [...] Or if not, why not?
I can understand the value of a professional organisation before the advent of modern communication. There's genuine value in having a forum for discussion with your peers, keeping technically up-to-date and knowing what other people in the industry are doing.

This has been made obsolete by the rise of the internet.

I can understand the value of a professional organisation like the that has useful power to enforce professional standards, preventing employers from forcing employees into unethical behaviour. And I can understand the value - though I don't much like it - of a professional organisation constraining the supply of qualified workers to keep wages high.

Professional organisations in IT don't seem to achieve either of those things.

Some professional organisations run journals and standards committees and publish academic research and standards. I can appreciate the value of that.

Being a member of the organisation doesn't grant you access to all their publications.

Joining a professional institution would allow me to call myself a "professional engineer" which, in my country, is a protected title.

But the distinction between "engineer" and "professional engineer" is lost on most people. When I want to signal a higher social status other things are easier and more effective.

About the only thing of much value I can see from professional organisations is accrediting university courses. It's good for universities to have an incentive to provide quality teaching to balance the incentive to focus on research.

In other words, while professional bodies provide quite a list of benefits, the list of benefits I care about seems quite sparse.


I've been a member of the ACM from 2009 to 2012 for the only reason that it was a prerequisite to get the printed version of the CACM (which you have to pay in addition to the membership fee).

I cancelled my membership the day I realized I had one year of unread issues sitting on my desk. I'd found for long that the quality of the publications in CACM was no better than what I was reading on specialized blogs. It only had additional prestige — or so I thought at the time.

After I had cancelled, I developed a growing uneasiness with how much effort (and money!) was spent in getting me renew my membership, with a lot of (international) mails on high-quality paper. No wonder the membership was so expensive.

I'm still wondering about the actual benefits of such associations.


Me too, and for approx the same period. I ended up with about 2ft of CACMs realising the amount I'd actually read was tiny. They're fascinating to dip into though. Worth the ~100 USD/y to someone, but, I concluded, not me.

I think these decisions are interesting for early career software engineers. Then, sometimes life takes you a direction where a professional affiliation makes sense, sometimes it doesn't.


I briefly was a member back in 2000. Basically, at the time they had an extremely complex process and I didn't get what I wanted, which was blanket access to their online publications. So I cancelled. Honestly, I thought it was a bit of a scam. Here I was trying to do the right thing and basically couldn't get access to anything. Already then, Google was very helpful in tracking down pdfs.

My impression is that membership is entirely optional these days but probably recommended if you frequently attend their conferences and other events and depend on networking with people in IEEE professionally. I'm no longer in the academic world so haven't looked at them recently.

But if I would, my membership would probably be conditional on open access. I'd consider paying but not for access to their publications. A condition of my membership would be full open access to every letter of everything ever published under their name. It would be the single most beneficial thing they could do to further the community they represent. I'm pretty sure they have gone most of the way there already, But just making the point here that access to published materials should not be a reason to join.


There's no other company whose emails I've tried to unsubscribe from more. I even managed to break away from LinkedIn's membership spam, but I still get IEEE.


Is this legal?

Here in Germany, after having terminated business relations with an organization, you can force them to delete all personal data they hold about you unless they are required to hold the data for legal compliance reasons.

(And before you say that's because of GDPR, it's actually been like this for as long as I can remember, so at least 20 years. GDPR mostly just standardized existing laws and added some potentially hefty fines to make it harder for international corporations to ignore them.)


I share the pain. I get emails, mostly call for papers from some conference organizer (not IEEE directly), to addresses that haven't been on file with IEEE for more than 10 years. All with an "reply to this email to unsubscribe from my personal list" (not the IEEE main list).

It's as if the IEEE had shared a spreadsheet with emails with all of their members, with no process going to update or revoke this information.


Can't this be reported? This is unacceptable.


> no other company

How about Tau Beta Pi?


I have been an ACM and IEEE member for several decades. Over the years the journals and transactions I subscribe to have changed along with my professional focus. I find that the quality of articles is generally higher than what you can find by random searching on the internet.

Several HNers have commented on the high cost of membership. I agree that that at times I have been tempted to cancel my memberships. But it is a tax deductible expense and in most professions the membership fees for their respective bodies is comparable.


In addition, if you are a freelancer in the US you have access to group healthcare.


IEEE member since 1995; joined because my company paid for it (also joined the IEEE Computer Society, ACM and even APS, American Physical Society, at that time for the same reason.) Continued my IEEE membership at my own expense after retiring because I didn't want to lose my @ieee.org alias that I had used for many years, also wanted to continue to have access to publications and articles of interest. With that said, I would not recommend starting an IEEE membership at your own expense unless you can afford it and want to establish yourself in that community. I think they still require a sponsor for membership.


I'm an IEEE Computer Society member, not a full member. It's a line on my resume but has never provided a lot of value for me or my career.

I was once also a member of the ACM, but since I worked in the embedded computing field (which is dominated by EEs) it wasn't as useful on a resume as the IEEE. When I had to cut back spending when kids came along I dropped it in favor of IEEE.


I'm an ACM member, mostly for access to the ACM digital library to read papers.

Most computer science papers tend to be available in the ACM library, while the IEEE one leans more towards EE/hardware/networks.

As for other advantages conference tickets are cheaper for members, but usually your employer/group should be paying these anyways.


IEEE has several software specific publications, e.g. "Software".


I kept my IEEE membership from 1996 to early 2000s, because I wanted to switch career path, but had not landed anything that felt sustainable for me.

Then I did get my "forever job", and kept the journal subscriptions for a bit because I wanted to see how the research related to my work.


I was a member for a couple of years back around 1985. It was a complete waste. Even though that was before the Internet took off, I found that they didn't provide any real sharing of information or sense of community. So I'm not quite sure why they exist. And with the modern Internet, I wouldn't even join if they offered to pay me a small salary every month.


I was a student member during my undergrad.

It was fun because they (or, more precisely we) organised a lot of events, even at national scale (I'm from Europe). I met a lot of different people from different parts of my country who were also studying EE or similar and had the same interests I did. A very wide network I now sometimes rely on because those people now work in very different places compared to the people who were in my class and now mostly work in the same city our university was.

However, I still remember a day someone asked for a paper and I was disappointed when I found out I had no access as a Student Member. Luckily I had access through the university library but it pissed me off.

No longer a member because it's not really useful in my field and I would have to pay it myself. Membership fee in Europe is around 80% of USA but my salary (I'm a junior) is around 30% of that of an average EE in the USA.


I am because my employer pays for it. I like it, but ACM probably is better. ACM often organize webinars that I really find insightful. For instance, the next one is "Succeeding with Large Scale Software Development Measurement Programs". Often these webinars are hosted by both academic and practitioners.


Was a Senior Member for years until they backed software patents and I quit. I didn't get tons from it honestly, although it was fun to read Spectrum.


I am, but only because the non-member registration fee at a conference at which I was presenting was more than the membership + member registration.


IEEE membership is worth it, if you value being a member of professional organizations, the opportunities for networking, and having a personal library of magazines from the IEEE Societies.

Similarly, ACM membership and the Special Interest Groups.

Financially, ignoring any sentimental value, it likely isn't worth it unless you are a student or work somewhere that pays for your membership. There are occasionally conferences or seminars that you'll find worth attending that will come at a reduced (or no) cost.

If you value being an active professional, then IEEE (or ACM) have plenty of volunteer roles that span public speaking, administration, standards body, or if you are so inclined and experienced, executive level work.


I work in a company that sponsors membership of professional organisations. I haven’t pursued these because it brings no benefits that are aligned with my career goals. YMMV. Membership would not help me get assigned to more interesting projects. I am not a second class citizen as a result, and at this point in my career not looking for this type of kudos.


I've been a member for around 7 years. I'm not all that sure I get the most from it, however the magazine and articles are interesting and I'm happy to support the organisation as I feel it does do good work overall. I'm not a scientist nor do I have any scientific training/background. Just a very interested outsider.


I do and it's not really been anything special, but my company pays for it. Having an @ieee.org email address is kinda nice, I guess, their Spectrum magazine is very well produced, and the journals I get in my disciplines are OK. I like being a member but don't feel I get $400 worth or whatever it is.


I am an IEEE member. I am not sure why anymore, mostly I think it is important to support the industry.

I am also an ACM member and I find that very valuable. The community is good, the policy engagement is good, the publications are excellent, and their employer subsidy program is excellent. I work at Circonus and we pay for everyone's ACM membership as an employee benefit (including the digital library) and it makes each and every one a more valuable employee -- such an easy investment to justify.

I am also highly active with the ACM. I am currently an ACM Member at Large, so if anyone would like to see any changes within the ACM (and you are a member) I'm here to represent you practitioners! The ACM Turing award (amongst all the other distinguished awards) and very important to rewarding innovation and progress in computing. The ACM is aces.


The industry is booming, it doesn't need your support besides what you actually contribute in your work.


I am a member of ACM and BCS for few years. BCS used to have access to EBESCO host with few CS related databases where I used to read papers often, but the service is now discontinued.So, I feel BCS is not worthy of subscribing. ACM has Skillsoft and Safari online access which I use almost every week that has LIVE and on-demand training on almost any tech subject. Although access to ACM digital library is provided as a separate subscription which is available for members at extra cost ($99), it's up to the member to see if it benefits them to pay extra.I considered IEEE too, but it seems almost same as ACM interms of member benefits, but it might be more inclined towards other engineering disciplines than CS.


I was an IEEE member as a student for a while, partially because it gave me significant discounts to certain conferences. Now that I have to pay the professional membership fees, it doesn't feel worth it to me. I'm hanging onto my ACM membership however.


I used to have access to their publications as a student, provided by my alma mater.

My sister got the most value out of this when she was writing her thesis, since apparently IEEE also has a decent amount of material on agricultural engineering.


I'm not at the moment, but I have been on an on-again / off-again basis over the years. Same for ACM.

What I'd kinda like to do is rejoin both and really work to get more people to join who dislike the current way those organizations price access to their archives of journal articles, conference proceedings, etc. and try to elect leadership that will move more towards an open access model and make this stuff more accessible to everybody.

If anybody is interested in joining such an initiative, please drop me a line. prhodes@fogbeam.com


I’m chiming in because no one has mentioned yet that the $100/yr ACM level includes complete access to Safari. That’s so valuable to me it almost feels like a glitch in the matrix.


I am a subscriber to all their publications through my library. I enjoy reading these.

I don't think the membership is worth it. Or at least it's unclear what are the benefits.


I’ve been a member for at least 5 years because they offer group rates on disability insurance. I was also a member back before ACA for group health insurance plans.


As an electrical engineer that actually does electrical things they publish some immensely useful information, eg The Color Book series.

Additionally they are regularly publishing information at the forefront of contemporary thinking and practice.

They are at least 1000 times more useful than the national body in my country, Engineers Australia.


I’m not a member of ieee. Being in a tech centered urban area I found there are users groups on Meetup that were giving interesting talks and meetings. Though they seem to be slightly on the wane I found the talks and meeting other developers interesting.

Acm announces there talks on meetup


Was as a student, and then one year as a professional. But I didn’t really seem to get anything out of it, so cancelled it...

I’d love access to the journal, but I don’t think that was included.


I get access to most scientific publications through my employer, but I'm not a member. I used to be a member of the Biomedical Engineering Society as a student.


I did after graduate school for a year or two. If you want free access to their publications, and don't have that through work, then it seems worthwhile.


And the problem is that the membership doesn't give you access to their publications. You've to pay separately for that.


I have membership in IEEE and Computer Society just for SkillPort access (e-learning+books). Otherwise don't get any other benefits from it.


My degree is in EE, and I'm not an IEEE member nor do I ever plan to be, even if it was free. IEEE is one of those "pay-for-status" groups like National Honor Society is with high schools. They're in the pocket of military-industrial cubical farms like GE and Boeing and don't do much that's interesting to me, and their recruiting during undergrad just gave me a bad feeling.




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