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I received my Ph.D. in physics from Georgia Tech in 2010 doing computational studies of synchronization of coupled neurons. After a year in industry, I went off

I received my Ph.D. in physics from Georgia Tech in 2010 doing computational studies of synchronization of coupled neurons. After a year in industry, I went off to build my own startup. It was in the social, music sharing space. I was not able to raise money, joined a startup and have been doing software engineering for the web ever since. Recently, I've been learning ML in my spare time, it seems to be a nice intersection of some of the math I learned in physics and my more recent software engineering work. >are there any other reasons for this as well? I love physics, but I also love a lot of other things. I was a musician well before I was a physicist. My exit from "doing physics" was driven by a desire to start my own company. I found I really enjoyed developing software for the web, it was a nice blend of technical and aesthetic. I think the draw of physicists towards data science is because of the familiar mathematics. My experience in recruiting data scientists is that candidates that have formal degrees in data science generally have little experience outside of school. My assumption is that these degree programs are relatively new. >Of late, except for few headline-friendly fields (colliders, quantum computing, gravitational waves and astrophysics in general), I don't get to see/relate with a lot of activities in Physics Do you think this used to be different?

dkmn 8y ago
> My experience in recruiting data scientists is that candidates that have formal degrees in data science generally have little experience outside of school. My assumption is that these degree programs are relatively new. A friend (also a physicist, though harder-core) who is a now a data scientist opined to me that the current wave of cross-trained data scientists will be replaced by "kids with their new data science degrees from new data science programs". He didn't mean this ill, but simply thought there was a window of time to make a shift. Your comment implies you are actually seeing relevant benefit from people with more diverse experience. Can you elaborate? Do you mean lots of hands-on data science per se, or simply a broader practical experience? Edited: for formatting
- wuliwong 8y ago
  Sorry for the delayed response, hopefully you check back. :) My experience with hiring is limited, I've only hired 3 data scientists. One had a bachelors in physics and masters in data science. One had a masters in data science (i forget her bachelors degree) and one was a PhD nuclear engineer. I think the main difference was "broader practical experience" as you said. That' was mainly my point. Although my sample size is small, I was just making the point that the degree programs are so new that graduates can't have much real work experience. Obviously if someone returns to school after years in industry and gets a MS in data science then they could have work experience as well.

dkmn 8y ago

> My experience in recruiting data scientists is that candidates that have formal degrees in data science generally have little experience outside of school. My assumption is that these degree programs are relatively new. A friend (also a physicist, though harder-core) who is a now a data scientist opined to me that the current wave of cross-trained data scientists will be replaced by "kids with their new data science degrees from new data science programs". He didn't mean this ill, but simply thought there was a window of time to make a shift. Your comment implies you are actually seeing relevant benefit from people with more diverse experience. Can you elaborate? Do you mean lots of hands-on data science per se, or simply a broader practical experience? Edited: for formatting

wuliwong 8y ago
Sorry for the delayed response, hopefully you check back. :) My experience with hiring is limited, I've only hired 3 data scientists. One had a bachelors in physics and masters in data science. One had a masters in data science (i forget her bachelors degree) and one was a PhD nuclear engineer. I think the main difference was "broader practical experience" as you said. That' was mainly my point. Although my sample size is small, I was just making the point that the degree programs are so new that graduates can't have much real work experience. Obviously if someone returns to school after years in industry and gets a MS in data science then they could have work experience as well.