Particle phenomenology (hep-ph) PhD in 2014. Left after 1st postdoc (3 years). I had two kids during my postdoc and quickly became disenchanted with the prospe

Particle phenomenology (hep-ph) PhD in 2014. Left after 1st postdoc (3 years). I had two kids during my postdoc and quickly became disenchanted with the prospect of hunting for postdocs in a random part of the world. I was as interested in statistics and machine learning techniques, so moving into industry was not terrible. I still love the formalism of supergravity, but it looks to be becoming less and less relevant in hep-ph. You're absolutely right that data science is a common destination for exiles. It makes the most sense because we get to still read interesting mathy papers, develop computational tools. The mechanics are very similar for physicists (in certain fields). Literally every single former physicist friend I have on LinkedIn is working as a Data Scientist, except one who is teaching physics at a private high school in NYC. When I left my postdoc, I worked at a data science startup for a year, and now I do general software and applied ML at google.