I just finished my PhD in theoretical physics and had a relatively easy time finding a "data scientist" like job in the tech industry. I had two jobs offers fro

I just finished my PhD in theoretical physics and had a relatively easy time finding a "data scientist" like job in the tech industry. I had two jobs offers from two interviews, neither of which were very close to my PhD research. I did do an industry internship toward the end of my PhD and I think it made a big difference. Not only did I have the experience to show potential employers that I was serious about going into industry, but I also learned more about software engineering in 3 months of my internship than 5 years of academic coding during my PhD. And I ended up with an offer from the company where I did the internship. I actually think it's an even better idea to do a software engineering internship early in your PhD if you're doing some sort of computational science, because you'll pick up skills that nobody will teach you in grad school but that are also valuable for writing academic code. As you know, industry internships are way outside the norm for physics, but they're pretty standard for computer science grad students. In my view, not doing an internship was this guy's first mistake, although I have no idea what to make of the fact that he had no offers after 30+ interviews, which does strike me as highly anomalous.