Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 178 posts

Re: Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

#61

Post by crazypyro »

URSpider94 wrote: post #57
koolba wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Four years? Is it common for a Physics PhD to take that long? I thought most fields are closer to two years.

Four years would be on the very short end these days. Most doctoral programs in math and the sciences are a MINIMUM of four years, with average terms creeping up to 6. Never say never, but a 2-year doctorate is pretty much unheard-of. Some people think of this as 2 years for a Masters and 2 more for PhD, but in practice most hard science programs don't really offer a true Masters program. When I got my doctorate, a b…

Don't some universities give MS diplomas out to people who make it so far in the program, but drop out before getting their PhD as a kind of "well, here's something for your work"?

Re: Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

#62

Post by NumberSix »

crazypyro wrote: post #52
jschwartzi wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American Physical Society maintains numbers on career paths for their student members, and less than 5 percent end up with a Physicist job title. Most end up in the career paths you list.

For anyone curious, here's a one year phd employment survey for physics: https://www.aip.org/sites/default/files/statistics/employmen... 803 responses, 297 in potentially full-time positions. 62% (of all physics phds employed at potentially full-time positions) in non-physics field, break down by industry: Engineering - 20% Computer software - 14% Business or Finance - 11% Other sciences - 8% Education - 2% Medical s…

The use of the phrase "potentially permanent positions" in the AIP report for industry positions, especially in the computer industry, is highly misleading. Academia, including some government labs and institutes, has tenured positions and other positions with guarantees of job security until retirement. The vast majority of industry employees are "at will" and can be laid off at any time for any reason or no reason. Senior executives often have employment contracts that take them out of the "at will" category but these rarely provide long term "permanent" status. Indeed, they can usually be fired by the Board of Directors.

The computer industry is notoriously unstable with jobs often quite short term in practice, with layoffs common.

Just to be clear, the referenced AIP report starts with the phrase:

Positions accepted by PhD degree recipients following receipt of their degrees fall into three categories: postdoctoral fellowships, potentially permanent positions and other temporary positions.

The figure on page two of the AIP report specifically lists a "private sector" block under "potentially permanent".

Tabel 1 on page 3 lists 70 percent of potentially permanent positions as "private sector." Again this is very misleading as private sector positions are potentially permanent only is the sense that there is a small chance that you might continue at the same employer until retirement; there is nothing like a guarantee.

Re: Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

#63

Post by crazypyro »

NumberSix wrote: post #62
crazypyro wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone curious, here's a one year phd employment survey for physics: https://www.aip.org/sites/default/files/statistics/employmen... 803 responses, 297 in potentially full-time positions. 62% (of all physics phds employed at potentially full-time positions) in non-physics field, break down by industry: Engineering - 20% Computer software - 14% Business or Finance - 11% Other sciences - 8% Education - 2% Medical s…

The use of the phrase "potentially permanent positions" in the AIP report for industry positions, especially in the computer industry, is highly misleading. Academia, including some government labs and institutes, has tenured positions and other positions with guarantees of job security until retirement. The vast majority of industry employees are "at will" and can be laid off at any time for any reason or no reason.…

FWIW, I basically interpreted it as full-time employment, but they are definitely playing with the wording a little bit and the data isn't clear on the level of employment at all.

Re: Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

#64

Post by StClaire »

tmoot wrote: post #11

I'm a physics phd student, but I did my undergrad in cs+physics at well known school in the midwest. I really regret going to grad school for physics, I gave up a lot of earning potential, time to develop new skills and I've forgotten a lot of my CS background. Most methods in my area have already been developed and the pressure to publish (pushy advisor, several projects not producing the intended results, and propo…

You don't have to stay. Look for development jobs or internships for the Fall semester. If you like it more than what you're doing now, don't go back. If you decide that you want to get into the physics, the go back. Plenty of grad students take a semester or two off and go finish their PhDs. If your advisor blows a gasket, well, you can probably do better somewhere else anyway.

I know a lot of graduate students and early professors who have a fear of private industry. I think they all know they can make more money outside of academia, but they don't realize they can work fewer hours and not have worry about a bad tenure committee screwing up their careers. A bad boss can make my work life suck, but he'll need to work hard to completely nuke my career.

Anyway, I understand how you feel. Despite my lackluster GPA, a couple professors want me to go on for a masters in math or statistics. You should see their faces contort when I tell them I don't want to go to graduate school or I don't want a career in academia.

You spent your life in academia, surrounded by people who spent their lives in academia, who have surrounded themselves with people who spent their lives in academia. Get some fresh air, fill your bank account, and then decide.

Re: Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

#66

Post by batbomb »

NumberSix wrote: post #43

This migration of physicists to the Silicon Valley and computer industry is not new. It has been true at least since the first big physics employment bubble crashed in the late 1960's, early 1970's. The post-Sputnik boom in physics degrees and grad students produced a huge surplus of physicists by the late 1960's. Dennis Ritchie started at Bell Labs in 1967. Back in the 60's, 70's, early 80's a fair number of physici…

Part of that is because there was only physics and math degrees up to around the 60s. There wasn't really EE or CS, and even when there was, most the professors were originally trained as physicists.

Re: Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

#67

Post by CalRobert »

This starts pretty early. I mean, would you rather be treated like dirt doing your prof's work for her or him for poverty-level wages (if any!) or making a decent income as a CS intern?

I got my undergrad in physics, but spent all of my free time (and a lot of what probably should have been study-time) teaching myself to code. It had a pretty brutal impact on my GPA, but I've no regrets.

Re: Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

#69

Post by elliott34 »

Doesn't really seem like the author spoke to a lot of actual physicists to write this article. Don't get me wrong, physics majors attract a certain type of intellect, but the vast majority of curriculum (quantum, EM, mechanics) are things THAT HAVE BARELY CHANGED IN THE PAST 50 YEARS. Meanwhile, CS majors come out much more prepared and hirable on the job market.

As far as the machine learning market goes, 90% of the projects require software engineering skills, the last 10% requires being able to go underneath the covers of linear algebra libraries, etc.

I just think the whole physics>cs degree for machine learning argument is not totally persuasive given my experience.

Re: Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

#70

Post by woah »

elliott34 wrote: post #69

Doesn't really seem like the author spoke to a lot of actual physicists to write this article. Don't get me wrong, physics majors attract a certain type of intellect, but the vast majority of curriculum (quantum, EM, mechanics) are things THAT HAVE BARELY CHANGED IN THE PAST 50 YEARS. Meanwhile, CS majors come out much more prepared and hirable on the job market. As far as the machine learning market goes, 90% of the…

They have to turn it into some kind of story with more excitement and conflict than "some people who are good at math are getting jobs as engineers".
Post reply on HN