Of late, except for few headline-friendly fields (colliders, quantum computing, gravitational waves and astrophysics in general), I don't get to see/relate with a lot of activities in Physics. Also I have noticed a growing trend of physicists becoming data scientists post phD. Although I understand the money factor, are there any other reasons for this as well?
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?
#2Academic 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.
Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
#3Academic 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 do it. Because it's there. But even 20 years ago, the guidance was to look for jobs in finance or computers.
Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
#4Academic 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.
Is it really bad that most time is invested in simulations? Seems like a very potent low-hanging fruit (not to mention how many cool things could come out of it).
Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
#5Nothing, as they don't seem to be hiring physicists.
Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
#6When I still pursued my PhD in physics, I worked on all-optical amplifiers with phase noise reduction for fiber communication.
Now I develop software for a medium-sized ISP and IT outsourcing company.
Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
#7I'm not a physicist but studied physics before jumping to programming.
A surprising amount of people whom I studied with ended up as programmers themselves, after finishing the physics degree.
Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
#8I'm not a physicist but studied physics before jumping to programming. A surprising amount of people whom I studied with ended up as programmers themselves, after finishing the physics degree.
My first degree was in physics as well, and I also ended up in IT. At SAP, to be exact. Urban legend among German SAP employees has it that SAP expands to "Sammelplatz arbeitsloser Physiker" (gathering place for unemployed physicists).
Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
#9Academic 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.
This kind of reminds me of what Jeff Hawkins once claimed was the issue with making sense of how the brain works:
> So why don't we have a good theory of brains? People have been working on it for 100 years. Let's first take a look at what normal science looks like. This is normal science. Normal science is a nice balance between theory and experimentalists. The theorist guy says, "I think this is what's going on," the experimentalist says, "You're wrong." It goes back and forth, this works in physics, this in geology.
> But if this is normal science, what does neuroscience look like? This is what neuroscience looks like. We have this mountain of data, which is anatomy, physiology and behavior. You can't imagine how much detail we know about brains. There were 28,000 people who went to the neuroscience conference this year, and every one of them is doing research in brains. A lot of data, but no theory. There's a little wimpy box on top there.
Not that physics has no theories, but I dropped out of studying physics myself over a decade ago, and at that time it felt a lot like the balance in physics has shifted towards having to measure and process disproportionate amounts of data with so much precision that it has to be automated, or like you said do a ton of really complicated modelling. It feels a bit "stuck" that way.
[0] https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_hawkins_on_how_brain_science_...
Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
#10When I got my PhD (1999) the American Physical Society said that you had a 2% chance of getting a permanent job in the field with a PhD. At that point you are not being judged on your merits but on your connections, ability to navigate politics, etc. (The job is way too valuable compared to the value you can give to it.)
I saw a postdoc who is now rather well known struggling with anxiety over his career even though he had written half a book and done a lot of great work. When we were both at Cornell I'd come to the conclusion that many papers involving "power law" distributions were bogus because nobody knew how to test for them with any rigor. It was years later, after he had tenure, that he published something about it in a statistics journal.
Seeing that made me run for the exit after my first year as a postdoc.