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Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

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Re: Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

#91

Post by sidlls »

koolba wrote: post #51
physcab wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a Physics undergrad+ Physics / Materials Science PhD and I ended up just quitting 4 years into my PhD. You can do it too. You don't owe your advisor anything and you've definitely put in your indentured servitude. I ended up getting a job as a data analyst / scientist and never looked back. You can work on interesting problems, use the same experimental design knowledge and methods, and get paid $100k more than…

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

If you go straight from undergrad into a PhD track four years is a reasonable minimum, yes. You can at some institutions at least opt to take an MS along the way (as I did) after your two years of graduate level course work is completed, and then continue to complete the PhD.

Re: Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

#92

Post by santaclaus »

asafira wrote: post #81

Whoa! I am actually currently in a physics PhD program, in my last 1-2 years, and have been pursuing internship opportunities for the summer. For me, I've actually wanted to get my PhD in physics and then work in tech for as long as I can remember (so it's not primarily that I feel like the academic job market is too competitive for me, or doesn't pay enough, but those are pretty good reasons, too...) . I actually ha…

> For those that are getting themselves in the door, do you have any tips?

I have no tips, but a guide to dealing with recruiters (who are typically pattern matching for the framework du jour) for developers from a (hard) science background would be really cool!

Re: Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

#93

Post by jupiter90000 »

ythn wrote: post #14
circlefavshape wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/me raises hand Degree in physics, working software for 20 years and still feel like an impostor ... not that I remember any physics at this stage

Impostor syndrome seems bogus but only because I've never experienced it and therefore can't understand it. Why do you feel like an impostor? The world is analog, not digital. There's no rite of passage that will suddenly switch you from being an "impostor" to being "legitimate". I've met EE majors who turned out to be better software developers than CS majors and vice versa.

Speaking personally, I used to experience alot of impostor syndrome type feelings. After doing alot of work with therapists around family of origin issues, I don't experience it anymore. I can understand if you don't get it, for me it was an issue of misperception that took correcting at the root.

Re: Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

#94

Post by renlo »

I'm working on a Masters in CS right now and have been interested in heading into some form of 'Data Science', whatever that may entail.

Does this mean that only physics/math/stats majors are getting into this field? At my current place of employment this is the case for the data scientists; all have an academic background in one of these three fields, all have a Masters or PhD. I assumed this was because the head data scientist had a long history with academia and thus had a predilection for academics.

From my experience the data science concepts I have encountered thus-far seem pretty straightforward and I suspect that people are trying to make these concepts seem more difficult/arcane than they are by using notations/concepts only learned in academia. Am I wrong here? Is it actually a field which requires a PhD in Math to understand? My exposure has only been with toy examples (logistic regression, simple perceptrons, similarity algorithms, etc). How easy is it to get into the field without a heavy academic background?

Re: Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

#95

Post by jschwartzi »

NumberSix wrote: post #74
crazypyro wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The report is probably aimed at young people, college students in particular, investigating pursuing a Ph.D., who often are unfamiliar with the work world. "Potentially permanent positions" in the computer industry is not going to fool someone who has been working in the computer industry more than a few years. College or high school students are a different matter and won't automatically equate "potential permanent…

Their data is partly why I didn't pursue a PhD.

Re: Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

#96

Post by NumberSix »

sciurus wrote: post #83
NumberSix wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I don't understand your strong objection to the phrase "potentially permanent position". Do you believe that the AIP is trying to mislead students into believing programming jobs in the private sector have tenure!? To me "potentially permanent" seems like a serviceable phrase to encompass positions in academia and in industry that do not have an end data built in to them. It contrasts them to "temporary" positions li…

The phrase "potentially permanent position" is misleading. Is it intentional? I don't know.

The primary audience for a report on outcomes for Ph.D.'s in Physics one year after graduation, getting their Ph.D. degree, is students (and parents of students) evaluating whether to pursue a Ph.D.. Obviously, they should investigate longer term outcomes, but young people often don't, focusing the next step in their life/career.

Potentially permanent position sounds like a general version of "tenure track research job" as another commenter correctly noted below.

Students with little or no work experience often do not have an accurate impression of salaries, working conditions, and other aspects of the work world (or academia), specifically in the private sector computer industry where most Ph.D's in Physics currently end up.

News coverage of computer companies like Google emphasizes many far out research-like projects such as the Google self-driving car, the AlphaGo deep learning project, and so forth. These sounds like academic research, so why wouldn't these companies have comparable positions to tenure track research jobs? Indeed, in very rare cases, they may have such positions.

However, the vast majority of industry jobs are at will full time jobs without a specified end date. Especially in the computer industry, they are quite insecure and often short-lived, very different from what potentially permanent position implies. They are not analogous to tenure track jobs.

Re: Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

#99

Post by elliott34 »

vitaminbandit wrote: post #89
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…

How is the notion that "the vast majority of curriculum (quantum, EM, mechanics) are things THAT HAVE BARELY CHANGED IN THE PAST 50 YEARS" relevant to this discussion?

Because the author draws a lot of parallels between computer science majors and physics majors, citing that physics majors are better prepared for the type of work ML requires. I am a physics major turned data scientist, and my argument is that I would have better prepared having been a CS major, given what the majority of my work requires. While in a CS major, a lot of data structures and algorithms haven't changed in 50 years either, you're much more likely to take electives with marketable skills or with up-to-date technologies (distributed systems, operating systems, OO/fp, databases, concurrency) that would've helped me in my day to day more than a math course or too did during my physics degree.

Re: Physicists taking jobs as Silicon Valley software engineers

#100

Post by zxcvvcxz »

asafira wrote: post #84
zxcvvcxz wrote: post #40

Does anyone else think that general programming education (not necessarily computer science) is overrated? I much rather hire people that I know can think in both in terms of fundamental logical principles, and who understand the scientific method, which comes up more than one expects in business. For example, I've seen physicists run much better marketing analytics than "growth hackers". And who cares if someone can…

How would you recommend searching for those sorts of roles that aren't just cog-in-a-machine but require a good bit of technical ability and creativity on the job? No offense, but if you look at most job listings (even on hacker news), they often specifically mention technologies and languages one should already have a background in, and it's definitely not clear they would take someone that has succeeded in differin…

A lot of employers will list too much stuff just because it's an ingrained habit. In my experience, both as an employee and employer who used to do this to some extent, these requirement lists are fairly 'negotiable'.

If you have the top 2-3 things they'd need (e.g. CS algorithms knowledge + some scripting language + some database experience), and are otherwise a good applicant, go ahead and apply with the mindset being that you'd have no problem picking up other frameworks X,Y,Z. Of course, spend an evening to take a look at them and be confident enough to make that the case.

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