Ask HN: Are any of you IEEE members?

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 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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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'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.

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.

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.

  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 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.

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 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’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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.