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I'm a mechanical engineer with strong minors in applied computational mathematics and scientific computing, and math has been, for me, a super-power. It opens

I'm a mechanical engineer with strong minors in applied computational mathematics and scientific computing, and math has been, for me, a super-power. It opens all kinds of thermal, structural analyst jobs. I can optimize all kinds of stuff. I can automate simulations and plot the results in ways that the non-technical can get a good idea of the right direction to go. That all comes from math. Can you hand-code a solver for Maxwells equations or Navier-Stokes (lid-driven cavity flow)? That opens electronics and thermo-fluids. How are you with classic and singular perturbation methods? That gives you signal integrity at Intel - they pay pretty well. Get a few languages under your belt - icky things that are gold plated. MatLab, LabVIEW, Python, SQL, and C. That gives you most of mechanical engineering, lab-based data collection, tons of current "data science", being able to work with previous content, and making your code go really fast, respectively. Try not looking for jobs on monster, or dice or such. Get friendly with a technical recruiter at Manpower Technical and ask them to get you a few decent contract positions to help you both return some excellent value, and to grow your professional breadth. Make sure some of the positions are business, production, design, and leadership in that order. If you do leadership first without the others, you are wasting yourself. Read a few books on how to negotiate salary. Your earnings at age 25 determine your total lifetime earnings, so if you let yourself get low-balled early, it can cost you a few million in total lifetime earning. You don't want that. Once of my heroes is Karl Kempf. Read what he, applied mathematician that he is, has done. He returns a defensible $8 billion per year every year in new value to his company. He is someone to emulate.

red_hare 9y ago
I definitely feel the same way about my double-major in Math. My favorite super power that came from the degree is probably "being able to read a statistics text book". I turns out that lots of industries run on statistics. And, if you can read a boring text book that covers the statistics used in that industry, you suddenly understand why people are doing what they're doing in that industry; making you a domain expert. Anything you can link to to read more about Karl Kempf? A quick google hits linked-in and paywalls.
jordigh 9y ago
> Can you hand-code a solver for Maxwells equations or Navier-Stokes (lid-driven cavity flow)? For my undergrad, I mostly focussed on number theory and differential geometry. These topics are mostly useless unless you want to work at the NSA, which only works for the US. Most of my undergraduate curriculum is absolutely useless except for the art of mathematics itself. For my Masters I wanted to learn more about numerical analysis, hoping to land a job this way. I suppose that did help me understand topics like machine learning, which really seems to me like numerical analysis rebranded, but I didn't end working on anything like it. In fact, what happened is that I started contributing to Octave and used the experience from working on that to justify getting other programming, non-mathematical jobs. The reason I'm telling this story is just to emphasise that most mathematics is useless, always has been, always will be, just like most art is useless. You mentioned very specific areas and applications of mathematics, but mathematician in general will always have difficult finding jobs pertaining to their mathematical interests and need to diversify towards the need of the job market.
- Myrmornis 9y ago
  I think the comments here could do with being put in a little perspective. There are programmers reading HN (well, all programmers) for whom one important way they can improve as a software engineer is to improve their powers of abstract thinking. You people who have studied advanced mathematics, any of it, are exceptionally skilled at thinking abstractly. I think there’s a risk of underestimating how useful that is in software engineering.
  - jordigh 9y ago
    I think it's a bit superstitious how we think that being good at math means you'll be good at programming. I'm not complaining, because that superstition helped me. Like I said, my math degree did give recruiters an initial good impression of me. Other than that, I don't think it translates into much of a benefit when writing code. I have personally witnessed many mathematicians write the most atrocious code, myself included. Also, if it really were about that kind of structured thinking, maybe just teaching chess to kids would be just as well.
vong 9y ago
> Your earnings at age 25 determine your total lifetime earnings Do you have more info on this?
- mattfrommars 9y ago
  I'm interested in this too. As a 27 year old, if this holds true, it's very, very frightening.

red_hare 9y ago

I definitely feel the same way about my double-major in Math. My favorite super power that came from the degree is probably "being able to read a statistics text book". I turns out that lots of industries run on statistics. And, if you can read a boring text book that covers the statistics used in that industry, you suddenly understand why people are doing what they're doing in that industry; making you a domain expert. Anything you can link to to read more about Karl Kempf? A quick google hits linked-in and paywalls.

jordigh 9y ago

> Can you hand-code a solver for Maxwells equations or Navier-Stokes (lid-driven cavity flow)? For my undergrad, I mostly focussed on number theory and differential geometry. These topics are mostly useless unless you want to work at the NSA, which only works for the US. Most of my undergraduate curriculum is absolutely useless except for the art of mathematics itself. For my Masters I wanted to learn more about numerical analysis, hoping to land a job this way. I suppose that did help me understand topics like machine learning, which really seems to me like numerical analysis rebranded, but I didn't end working on anything like it. In fact, what happened is that I started contributing to Octave and used the experience from working on that to justify getting other programming, non-mathematical jobs. The reason I'm telling this story is just to emphasise that most mathematics is useless, always has been, always will be, just like most art is useless. You mentioned very specific areas and applications of mathematics, but mathematician in general will always have difficult finding jobs pertaining to their mathematical interests and need to diversify towards the need of the job market.

Myrmornis 9y ago
I think the comments here could do with being put in a little perspective. There are programmers reading HN (well, all programmers) for whom one important way they can improve as a software engineer is to improve their powers of abstract thinking. You people who have studied advanced mathematics, any of it, are exceptionally skilled at thinking abstractly. I think there’s a risk of underestimating how useful that is in software engineering.
- jordigh 9y ago
  I think it's a bit superstitious how we think that being good at math means you'll be good at programming. I'm not complaining, because that superstition helped me. Like I said, my math degree did give recruiters an initial good impression of me. Other than that, I don't think it translates into much of a benefit when writing code. I have personally witnessed many mathematicians write the most atrocious code, myself included. Also, if it really were about that kind of structured thinking, maybe just teaching chess to kids would be just as well.

vong 9y ago

> Your earnings at age 25 determine your total lifetime earnings Do you have more info on this?

mattfrommars 9y ago
I'm interested in this too. As a 27 year old, if this holds true, it's very, very frightening.