I have 4 close German friends, 1 MS Math, 2 PhD Math, 1 PhD Physics who all completed their terminal degree at the same university as me. 3 of them decided to

I have 4 close German friends, 1 MS Math, 2 PhD Math, 1 PhD Physics who all completed their terminal degree at the same university as me. 3 of them decided to go back to Germany mainly for the vacation culture. All big travelers with no interest in the US work environment. The 4th integrated into American culture more but is also the biggest traveler. While he wants to go back to Germany, he is currently working in the US because he says he still doesn't know what he wants to do and he doesn't think he could get away with that lack of direction anywhere else but the US. For completeness, hes one of the phd maths and does research for an acturial software company. But he will be switching to something else soon. You may like that the physics guy was doing post doc in the US and then decided to bail and joined a telecom consulting company in Germany. That's not as unrelated as chem to finance but for him it was a huge switch. The company was just willing to take on a long ramp-up time and teach him.