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Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

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Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

#241

Post by andrepd »

mjfl wrote: post #228
andrepd wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is a really bad attitude. I cannot stop them from selling out or doing whatever they will, but it is probably a good thing for people to "chastise" or "shame" people for selling out to activities that bring absolutely no net positive value to the world (and in many cases very much a net negative). Same goes for working in fintech and stuff like that. Plus, the parent never even "shamed" anyone, they just sai…

What do these people owe the world? Nothing. How much net positive does the average person due to for the world? Not much. Are intelligent people your slaves? You mean some smart person who's done some good for the world should be ashamed for trying to afford good schools for their kids? That's the worst possible attitude.

I didn't say any of those things, and I'm not interested in overly confrontational discussions.

Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

#242

Post by mjfl »

andrepd wrote: post #241
mjfl wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do these people owe the world? Nothing. How much net positive does the average person due to for the world? Not much. Are intelligent people your slaves? You mean some smart person who's done some good for the world should be ashamed for trying to afford good schools for their kids? That's the worst possible attitude.

I didn't say any of those things, and I'm not interested in overly confrontational discussions.

then precisely what would you say, to the scientist with children to feed?

Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

#243

Post by cozzyd »

batbomb wrote: post #73

BS in Applied Physics. I work at a national lab (9 years now, since I was 25) on astrophysics projects in a Physics division, but mostly I work on software for data management, workflow management, data access, databases (multi-petabyte distributed and otherwise), and sys admin stuff. Lots of python and java, lots of kubernetes as of late. I occasionally drop down to working on things related to data pipelines, mostl…

Some of us like ROOT :)

Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

#244

Post by jberger1613 »

PhD in 2012, Theoretical high energy particle physics.

Now I work optimizing fantasy sports teams and building websites that display betting lines. Don't even like sports and I have no idea what anyone in the office is talking about, but they are paying a lot for me to put buttons on their website I guess. Leaves me a bunch of room for my hobbies. Offered to do some actual math, maybe personalization algos or some AI stuff. Really just need these buttons on the site is all.

Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

#245

Post by jberger1613 »

PhD in 2012, Theoretical high energy particle physics.

Now I work optimizing fantasy sports teams and building websites that display betting lines. Don't even like sports and I have no idea what anyone in the office is talking about, but they are paying a lot for me to put buttons on their website I guess. Leaves me a bunch of room for my hobbies. Offered to do some actual math, maybe personalization algos or some AI stuff. Backtesting automation to determine if our data is at all valid that we're selling?

Really just need these buttons on the site is all.

Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

#246

Post by Falcorian »

jauntbox wrote: post #225

I got a PhD in 2013 (theoretical/computational astrophysics), did a postdoc for two years, and was a professor for one year. I’m now a data scientist at a large tech company in the Bay Area working on a machine learning platform. I enjoyed grad school for the most part, and was really into teaching. By the time I got a professor job (a visiting one, not tenure-track), I was getting anxious about the long-term job pro…

Similar story with me: decided I didn't want to join the long-term job hunt and went to Insight (4 years ago).

I've been very happy doing data science ever since. It's great to work more collaboratively, ship more quickly, and learn from great engineers.

Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

#247

Post by boise »

andrepd wrote: post #241
mjfl wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do these people owe the world? Nothing. How much net positive does the average person due to for the world? Not much. Are intelligent people your slaves? You mean some smart person who's done some good for the world should be ashamed for trying to afford good schools for their kids? That's the worst possible attitude.

I didn't say any of those things, and I'm not interested in overly confrontational discussions.

do you categorically think working in SEO or fintech is a net negative for the world?

Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

#249

Post by anonu »

d3ld0t wrote: post #248

(PhD, Condensed Matter 2015) I am a quant at a trading firm. I have more daily challenges and unsolvable problems than I have ever faced in physics. Obviously it pays well but 12+ hour days take a toll. Beats working a post-doc for N years, on the other hand...

Trading is a great place for physics PhDs because there is way more upside and the rigor gained during your studies adapts well to studying the markets.

Also depending on what level of magnification you use to observe the markets: they are just random. Maybe there is some consistent process that works today on some subset of the market given a certain forward-looking horizon.

Then, that opportunity disappears at some other time in the future. Its ephemeral and fleeting... and this is probably where the daily challenge comes in.

Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

#250

Post by chadcmulligan »

killjoywashere wrote: post #3
ktpsns wrote: post #2

Academic trends are ruled by money. In theoretical physics, computer simulations is where the money is. For the students, that means they are doing computer science related work, frequently the physics part is lacking. The route to leaving physics and using the data science capabilities is then a straightforward one.

I work with a few PhD physicists, one is a technical program manager in applied optics and ML; one is an individual contributor in optics and ML, and the other one is pretty straight stick ML. I bailed on physics after my bachelor's, ended up in medicine and now ... work in ML, with them. I don't think I ever heard anyone tell me, or any of my classmates "you should get a PhD in physics". It was something one did to…

A surprising number of physics students I studied with, were also mountain climbers. They seem to be very much, 'because its there' sort of people.
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