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Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

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Re: Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

#41

Post by ianai »

impendia wrote: post #28

I am a mathematics professor (at a non-elite university). If anyone has advice on how I can help our students (at all levels -- undergrad and grad) get jobs in any of these industries, I would be grateful to listen!

I’d tell them to begin work in a portfolio of whatever they’re interested in doing. If they want to work in IT then take the time to learn some cloud platform and Linux sys administration. Try to obtain the A+ asap. If they want to be in data analytics then learn python, excel (for the HR departments of the world), and statistics. Then make a code example repo and/or blog with some analytics. Be prepared to start at a very low position and work up as quickly as they want.

That would also apply to anyone wanting to get into those fields. I’d argue a solid math background puts them in a strong place to specialize.

I’ve also always wondered to what extent math would be useful in law school.

Re: Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

#42

Post by thearn4 »

I have a PhD in mathematics, and have been working in the public sector (NASA) for a little under 10 years. A mix of interest in numerical linear algebra and software engineering helped me work into a niche in scientific computing and engineering software development.

Math is a very, very broad professional interest area. It branches into education, academia, and several areas in several industries around the senior year of an undergraduate program. I'd recommend undergraduate math majors try and get into co-op or paid internship programs as soon as they feel comfortable with it. But that's advice that I'd also give to ANY student these days.

Most technical organizations will hire folks with a mathematics background or entertain the though for a promising applicant. But there are almost no job titles out there called "Mathematician". That can be confusing to some.

Re: Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

#43

Post by mozumder »

squeegee3 wrote: post #6
spicyj wrote: post #5

The NSA. (Really. Some of the largest employers of mathematicians.)

Yes, exactly. Be wary of staying too long - then you may not have much to (publicly) show for years of work.

Not something you'd need to worry about, since you won't get fired from there.

Re: Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

#45

Post by tgb »

impendia wrote: post #28

I am a mathematics professor (at a non-elite university). If anyone has advice on how I can help our students (at all levels -- undergrad and grad) get jobs in any of these industries, I would be grateful to listen!

There's a grant from the NIH (assuming you're in the US) called the K25. It's designed to get math/engineering people into health related fields. It's for the postdoc level (it might also be applicable for someone with a BS/BA, not sure). It can pay for 3-5 years of salary for the individual to work with a mentor and to learn the field - no knowledge of the medical-related subject is expected since the applicant is explicitly there to learn the field. As such it's widely applicable to math people who want to do research in medical fields.

Caveats: I think you need to be a US citizen or permanent resident and you have to find a mentor willing to take you. This shouldn't be impossible though, since your salary will be paid by the grant so it's not a financial burden and many fields need people on the math/statistics side of things. Look for biostats researchers and contact them even if they're not hiring since again the grant pays the salary they might take someone even if they aren't looking for someone. The application is open three or four times a year, next one in February. I think the October round better matches the typical graduate' time frame, which means students should plan this at least a year before graduating.

As someone going through this process right now, thanks for thinking of your students' careers! I wish more math departments encouraged options outside of pure math and finance. There's definite demand but a difficulty finding the appropriate positions for us.

Re: Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

#47

Post by Anonimal »

impendia wrote: post #28

I am a mathematics professor (at a non-elite university). If anyone has advice on how I can help our students (at all levels -- undergrad and grad) get jobs in any of these industries, I would be grateful to listen!

In a word: internships. Large corporations and government agencies (at least in the U.S.) do much of their hiring from intern (or co-op) programs. You might want to reach out to your graduates to find out where they work and what they do (alumni offices are pretty good at tracking them down).

Re: Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

#48

Post by brational »

impendia wrote: post #28

I am a mathematics professor (at a non-elite university). If anyone has advice on how I can help our students (at all levels -- undergrad and grad) get jobs in any of these industries, I would be grateful to listen!

To start - help to get rid of the sentiment that programming is beneath them.

A lot of math undergrads won't take CS classes, won't learn to program, bc they think it is somehow inferior.

source: BS/MS in applied math and didnt learn to program until grad school. I know many other math undergrads that had similar views. I now work in c++ all day - writing algorithms for catheter navigation and geometric mapping of the heart (and previously image processing for factory automation, machine learning/data science for predictive maintenance via aircraft sensor data).

It's a real problem. You don't even need a full CS minor to be useful in industry. An intro programming class, data structures, 1 or 2 algorithms classes. An OS class if you want to be more thorough. In some students it's an attitude problem, in others it's just unfortunate lack of awareness.

Re: Ask HN: Who hires mathematicians?

#49

Post by agentultra »

Formal specifications and verification, proof assistants; program analysis and synthesis; cryptography from protocols to at-rest; compilers and performance analysis, etc.

I view maths as a power-augmenting skill set, like programming (which is a kind of applied maths). It lets you think big thoughts.

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