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That's not true. My physicist friends from university ended up in various different places. Many of them with a technical or analytical twist, yes, but certainl
by smueller1234 7y ago
That's not true. My physicist friends from university ended up in various different places. Many of them with a technical or analytical twist, yes, but certainly not all in the 'tech industry': several data scientist, a quant, various opportunities at insurance companies, one who builds spy satellites, somebody who builds lensing systems for lithography, and of course a few who became software/system engineers. None of my acquaintances from uni struggled to find good employment in various industries.
- antisemiotic 7y agoI'm not sure if I understand what you mean, other than quants and insurance companies I'd consider all of these "tech jobs". Or does "tech" now mean "webdev"?
- thaumasiotes 7y agoI would have thought that in this context "tech" meant "software".
- antisemiotic 7y agoEh, I don't live in the US and I'm not up to date on the slang, but honestly a sentence like "some people work in technology while others design equipment for IC manufacturing" sounds quite silly to me. I'll try to remember now.
- grosswait 7y agoI don't think your interpretation is wrong, just the context of a HN thread makes it more likely "tech" is software related.
- smueller1234 7y agoThat's the gross oversimplification I went for, indeed!
- smueller1234 7y agoApologies for being obtuse. It was me, not you, that failed at communication. :) The type of work, though, and skills required are quite different, regardless of that they technically both develop and involve 'technology'. Semiconductor lithography requires a pretty exciting mix of skills starting with plain physics (classical and by now a bit of quantum optics), materials science, mechanical engineering, data analysis/science, software engineering (both for simulation and analysis of production of lensing systems), and I'm sure I'm missing half. It is quite different from "writes software for a software company", which is the framing I had interpreted from the comment I originally responded to.
- smueller1234 7y agoBuilding spy satellites could be argued to be electrical engineering, space/flight engineering, physics, data science, etc. In the interpretation of tech industry == software, these are career options that are open to physicists (and similar grads) that aren't in the-HN-type-of-tech.