5 ms·

This is a pretty common career path I think once people realize that finding a well paying physics gig is much much tougher than just becoming a developer. Ever

by randlet 10y ago

This is a pretty common career path I think once people realize that finding a well paying physics gig is much much tougher than just becoming a developer. Every physicist has at least some programming experience and are generally adept at problem solving. Coding was always way more fun than doing 4th year/grad school level physics for me too. Also, it is especially tough to get a job if you're a mediocre physicist (like me) whereas there are very many jobs available for fair to middling programmers (like me). Don't want to guess at numbers but my gut instinct & experience tells me that very few physicists end up doing physics and most end up in finance, software, and hardware.

jschwartzi 10y ago
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.
- crazypyro 10y ago
  For anyone curious, here's a one year phd employment survey for physics: https://www.aip.org/sites/default/files/statistics/employment/phdinitemp-p-14.pdf 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 services - 2% Other - 5%
  - NumberSix 10y ago
    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.
    - crazypyro 10y ago
      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.
      - NumberSix 10y ago
        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 position" and "at will full time position."
        avn2109 10y ago
        "Potentially permanent positions" is a euphemism for "tenure track research job."
        NumberSix 10y ago
        Yes, that is my point. There are almost no jobs in the private sector, especially the computer industry, analogous to a "tenure track research job." Possibly some corporate research labs like HP Labs, which have nearly all been downsized heavily or completely eliminated since the 1990s, have positions like this. The vast majority of Ph.D. physicists who move on to industry are getting some type of software development job which are "at will full time" jobs with no future prospect of something like tenure.
        jschwartzi 10y ago
        Their data is partly why I didn't pursue a PhD.
    - sciurus 10y ago
      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 like postdocs in academia or contractors in industry where you know going into the job that your employment ends on a certain date.
- sjg007 10y ago
  Finance use to be a big draw. Not sure if it still is. I am tempted to move to finance...
atmaweapon 10y ago
once people realize that finding a well paying physics gig is much much tougher than just becoming a developer. Unfortunately, becoming a developer is a short-term optimal choice that you pay for in the long term. The 40-year-old physicist has tenure and can work on whatever he wants. As far as his peers are concerned, he's mid-career. The 40-year-old programmer is considering plastic surgery so he can still get hired in the Valley. The people who become developers find out that they don't have permission to get a day older than 35 unless they can make it into management. And if you were going to be a manager anyway, you might as well have gotten an MBA in your mid-20s, and then you'd be making far more than the developer would even dream of. Coding was always way more fun than doing 4th year/grad school level physics for me too. Programming is a lot of fun, but most software jobs aren't programming intensive. The coding is trivial and a high school student could do most of the work. The hard part is dealing with tickets, PMs, and unnecessary meetings.
throw_away_777 10y ago
On average, a tenured physics professor will graduate a bit more than 10 PhD students over the course of their career. Physics as a field is not growing, so at most 10% of PhD students become professors. If you don't become a tenured professor there are very few jobs that aren't postdocs, and even if you wanted to you can't keep doing postdocs forever.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  Do you have a source for the rough number 10? I'd have guessed the average is more, even if the median is 10ish.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    It really depends on the field -- fields with labwork tend to have more PhDs per professor because there's an incentive to get cheap labor.
    - jabl 10y ago
      https://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html https://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html claims it's about 15. Though that article was written in 1993, it seems (good read in general, btw). Still, it seems low IMHO. Unless you start counting at the point where the person gains full tenure rather than from the point where they become some kind of "group leader", "assistant professor", or such "tenure track" type position?
      - jessriedel 10y ago
        I think the relevant number is the fraction of PhDs that go one to a position that mints new PhDs. (That's where the multiplier comes from.) So that almost never includes non-tenure-track positions, but does include assistant professors who don't go on to make tenure.
  - throw_away_777 10y ago
    It is just a rough guess based on my experience as a grad student. The average professor at my university had 1-2 grad students at a time, and with 6 years to finish a PhD and about 35 years where a professor takes on grad students it works out to roughly 10. I wouldn't be surprised if the number was actually as high as 20 though, 10 is probably a low estimate. Another way to look at is that roughly half of people go on to do a 1st postdoc, half of those go on to do a 2nd and 3rd or 4th postdoc, half of those get a tenure track position and around 3/4 of people with a tenure track position actually get tenure. The problem with a career in physics these days is that a postdoc position is a terrible deal. As a graduate student you at least have job security and can stay in the same place for a good amount of time, not so as a postdoc.
walrus1066 10y ago
Definitely agree with the coding being more fun. I found refactoring my teams messy analysis code much more satisfying than the laborious data analysis + paper writing. For me it was also that nothing truly new was being discovered in my area of physics, so it all felt a bit boring. Plus the politics that comes when post docs have to fight and plot over rare tenured positions when they appear.

by randlet 10y ago

jschwartzi 10y ago

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.

crazypyro 10y ago
For anyone curious, here's a one year phd employment survey for physics: https://www.aip.org/sites/default/files/statistics/employment/phdinitemp-p-14.pdf 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 services - 2% Other - 5%
- NumberSix 10y ago
  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.
  - crazypyro 10y ago
    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.
    - NumberSix 10y ago
      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 position" and "at will full time position."
      - avn2109 10y ago
        "Potentially permanent positions" is a euphemism for "tenure track research job."
        NumberSix 10y ago
        Yes, that is my point. There are almost no jobs in the private sector, especially the computer industry, analogous to a "tenure track research job." Possibly some corporate research labs like HP Labs, which have nearly all been downsized heavily or completely eliminated since the 1990s, have positions like this. The vast majority of Ph.D. physicists who move on to industry are getting some type of software development job which are "at will full time" jobs with no future prospect of something like tenure.
      - jschwartzi 10y ago
        Their data is partly why I didn't pursue a PhD.
  - sciurus 10y ago
    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 like postdocs in academia or contractors in industry where you know going into the job that your employment ends on a certain date.
sjg007 10y ago
Finance use to be a big draw. Not sure if it still is. I am tempted to move to finance...

atmaweapon 10y ago

once people realize that finding a well paying physics gig is much much tougher than just becoming a developer. Unfortunately, becoming a developer is a short-term optimal choice that you pay for in the long term. The 40-year-old physicist has tenure and can work on whatever he wants. As far as his peers are concerned, he's mid-career. The 40-year-old programmer is considering plastic surgery so he can still get hired in the Valley. The people who become developers find out that they don't have permission to get a day older than 35 unless they can make it into management. And if you were going to be a manager anyway, you might as well have gotten an MBA in your mid-20s, and then you'd be making far more than the developer would even dream of. Coding was always way more fun than doing 4th year/grad school level physics for me too. Programming is a lot of fun, but most software jobs aren't programming intensive. The coding is trivial and a high school student could do most of the work. The hard part is dealing with tickets, PMs, and unnecessary meetings.

throw_away_777 10y ago

On average, a tenured physics professor will graduate a bit more than 10 PhD students over the course of their career. Physics as a field is not growing, so at most 10% of PhD students become professors. If you don't become a tenured professor there are very few jobs that aren't postdocs, and even if you wanted to you can't keep doing postdocs forever.

jessriedel 10y ago
Do you have a source for the rough number 10? I'd have guessed the average is more, even if the median is 10ish.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  It really depends on the field -- fields with labwork tend to have more PhDs per professor because there's an incentive to get cheap labor.
  - jabl 10y ago
    https://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html https://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html claims it's about 15. Though that article was written in 1993, it seems (good read in general, btw). Still, it seems low IMHO. Unless you start counting at the point where the person gains full tenure rather than from the point where they become some kind of "group leader", "assistant professor", or such "tenure track" type position?
    - jessriedel 10y ago
      I think the relevant number is the fraction of PhDs that go one to a position that mints new PhDs. (That's where the multiplier comes from.) So that almost never includes non-tenure-track positions, but does include assistant professors who don't go on to make tenure.
- throw_away_777 10y ago
  It is just a rough guess based on my experience as a grad student. The average professor at my university had 1-2 grad students at a time, and with 6 years to finish a PhD and about 35 years where a professor takes on grad students it works out to roughly 10. I wouldn't be surprised if the number was actually as high as 20 though, 10 is probably a low estimate. Another way to look at is that roughly half of people go on to do a 1st postdoc, half of those go on to do a 2nd and 3rd or 4th postdoc, half of those get a tenure track position and around 3/4 of people with a tenure track position actually get tenure. The problem with a career in physics these days is that a postdoc position is a terrible deal. As a graduate student you at least have job security and can stay in the same place for a good amount of time, not so as a postdoc.

walrus1066 10y ago

Definitely agree with the coding being more fun. I found refactoring my teams messy analysis code much more satisfying than the laborious data analysis + paper writing. For me it was also that nothing truly new was being discovered in my area of physics, so it all felt a bit boring. Plus the politics that comes when post docs have to fight and plot over rare tenured positions when they appear.