Math PhD here. I was pretty scared by what I saw in a potential career in academia. I went into industry and then gov't doing mostly scientific computer in supp

Math PhD here. I was pretty scared by what I saw in a potential career in academia. I went into industry and then gov't doing mostly scientific computer in support of aerospace engineering research instead. It's been better paying and far more stable then the postdoc-to-postdoc game that I would still be playing if I had wanted to start the marathon towards becoming a tenured professor. For my area (numerical linear algebra), the jump into doing what is essentially software engineering was a very straightforward one. In fact, most of the research that I had been doing was applicable in some way or another. For those in pure mathematics (Analysis, Algebra, Topology, etc.), I could see there being more of a hurdle.