Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

I have a Bs in applied mathematics and I'm a software engineer. I think that mathematicians make incredible software engineers (not me necessarily ) if they do two things, take some basic cs classes, get co-ops/internships programming.

I faced a _lot_ of bias when getting into the industry because people didn't want to train me to program or thought I'd be too weak of a software engineer, etc... and I believe having internships/co-ops would have massively helped rectify that and also have given me a network of jobs to work at.

I have a PhD in maths (applied, though most of my undergraduate was pure), and lectured for a couple of years before moving to a bigger city and deciding to break out of the academic hamster wheel.

My wife already had a job secured, so I had the opportunity to be a little patient. This really paid off.

I considered many of the types of jobs mentioned by others.

Analyst / tech-consultant jobs didn't seem technically interesting enough. Mostly seemed to involved adapting the same framework or analyses to companies' slightly different requirements.

I got through to an on-site interview with an algorithmic trading firm offering huge bucks, but decided I didn't like the idea of moving money around to make very rich people even richer. My dad still says I should try and do something like this for just a few years then change to something more fulfilling.

I was interested in the betting / odds playing type companies and even went to interview with one (rejected). In hindsight I don't think I'd have enjoyed it as much as my current job.

After a month of my CV being online, I was rung personally by the MD of a smallish company that makes software for public / municipal services. He described excitedly the types of optimisation problems he was hoping to solve, and said he'd been looking to hire the right person to work on it for years. The personal touch and his obvious enthusiasm and energy sold it, and I've now worked there for a year. I've learnt and implemented a lot of algorithms and techniques from a broad range of topics - network routing, discrete optimisation, graph theory, markov chains, plus some bonus stuff like cluster analysis and signal processing. It's been more fascinating than all but maybe the first year of my PhD.

I guess my advice is just that these types of jobs are out there. I noticed a couple of other comments about radar tracking and remote sensing, both of which sound awesome. If you have the opportunity, hold off until you find something that strikes you as exciting or even unique. If you don't have the opportunity, perhaps find something "rote" but keep an eye out.

Not me, that's for sure. I interviewed two maths phd's years ago, who wanted to get out of academia because they felt themselves above chasing grant money, but then didn't want to do anything that wasn't their phd topic or related (of which I didn't even understand what it was, and they couldn't explain, or give examples of what it could be used for).

On the other hand, I did hire people who studied maths in programmer-ish roles; meaning: they didn't have to be programmers, we'd teach them, but they did have to apply maths to our concrete problems and translate it into programmed solutions. I don't think any of them used particularly advanced maths, or did anything they could get published in maths journals (not that I'd recognize it if I'd see it)

So, from my perspective, to be employed as a 'mathematician', you have to go into academia. Otherwise, you have to apply your math skills in some other field; but you won't be called (or probably feel) a 'mathematician'.

(all people with advanced maths degrees I know work as programmers)

Of all the great replies I've gotten, this one has arguably alleviated my concerns the most.

I'd actually be interested in your experience. Personally I have a degree in Physics. Only two classes in programming (majorly self taught) and work in simulations. How does the software engineering field see people like me? I've applied to programming jobs in the past and just never knew if I was under qualified, didn't stand out, or just slipped through the cracks in the large amounts of applications places get.

And to OP's question, look into simulation. There's a lot I learned on the job, but having basic programming abilities will go a long way. A lot of engineers are weak at programming compared to what I see in CS.