The h Bar

1:44 AM

@GeorgeSmyridis If you want to go the physics route and maintain a high level of industrial employability, go experimental materials, condensed matter or optics. Do not be sucked in by the siren song of theory. Even computation is risky though it at least will give you a secondary set of salable skills.

Also do not---under any circumstances---be sucked in by particle- or astro-physics in any form.

Love my particle physics degree. Loved my post-doctoral work. Would probably have made a pretty good industry R&D guy but had a really hard time getting my foot in the door and my colleagues report similar things.

And if you are wondering I ended up professing at a very small state U with no money, equipment, lab space, time off or assistants for research.

But at least like the teaching gig.

alarge

1:58 AM

@dmckee Are the experimental materials not quite concentrated in certain parts of the world (say, fabs)? And not only that, if you know how to do one experimental technique, sometimes they are (or seem to me) so highly specialized that it can be difficult to switch to something of more interest to industry. I have seen a lot of my friends who had chemistry majors (experimentalists) have problems getting employed. This could of course be country-specific.

Kyle Kanos

2:22 AM

@dmckee I disagree. With observatories like LSST coming up soon, in addition to the already-existing set of observatories, data analysis is pretty big in the astro groups (just have to find the right advisor, of course). This would go a long ways to industry jobs in data science

dmckee

2:33 AM

@KyleKanos It should, but it is hard to get a foot in the door. My big contribution to two of my projects was analysis coding. I'm a pretty decent coder with some "big picture" understanding and a lot of experience in distributed cooperative development.

The best programming job I was able to get interviews for payed about what i got as a graduate assistant.

Kyle Kanos

Getting the foot in the door in industry always amounts to one thing: knowing someone there first

dmckee

@KyleKanos Uhm. Evidently I don't know the right people.

Kyle Kanos

I'm running into the same trouble :(

dmckee

I did eventually find some good advice on tuning my resume for industry and was starting to get nibbles when my current job dropped in my lap.

Big firms almost all have a idiot computer program look at your documents first and they can circular file them if they don't get enough key-word matches.

So you phrase everything in industry terms in hopes that it will actually get to a hiring manager who can bring human intelligence to the job.

alarge

@dmckee Well it is always a risk for a company to hire someone who may or may not want to stay long term, so naturally they'd prefer someone who has shown interest (through part-time jobs, internships, whatever), which of course add to the difficulty.

@dmckee True to a certain extent. Often for PhD level jobs you might want to go through a recruiter, though, who will probably get your CV read by the guys actually making hiring decisions. A poorly written CV or a less than excellent fit will get a quick rejection, though.

dmckee

2:40 AM

I've talked to a grand total of one (count her) recruiters who professed any interest or experience placing physicists.

Mind you, she did find me a back up gig: writing safety procedure documents for nuclear power plant operations.

Calls for a Ph.D. and practical experience with operations in radioactive environments and sounded like it was even more boring than patent clerking.

I did some safe procedures documents while I was postdoccing. It's detailed oriented and mind-numbing.

alarge

@dmckee Well I remember dropping my CV to one of those online job sites (not submitting it to any particular job at that time, but making it visible to people hiring), and had recruiters calling me the very next day.

In the end, I did not get my job through a recruiter. I did apply through them to one, and was rejected by the company out right (without invitation to interview) because my background was not mathematical enough for them.

I was quite surprised by the reason, but at least they did have a look.

DanielSank

Hey, python users this is useful.

skill patrol

6:27 AM

Congrats @ManishEarth on your science mod positions :-)

ManishEarth

thanks

Gaurav

6:44 AM

@ManishEarth Congratulations Manish !

@ChrisWhite Do you wear a Spock wig ?

skill patrol

7:33 AM

That was a wig? :P

paul23

10:35 AM

wondering once again if my question should go here or on math.se

David Z

@paul23 what's the question?

paul23

0

Q: Hyper/parabolic kepler orbits and "mean anomaly"

In an elliptical kepler orbit there is an easy recipe to describe the motion/position of a satellite at time $t$. One just follows the following steps - an important detail for me is that the numerical part has always the same error, the error doesn't increase with time, nor is it based on the ti...

David Z

seems like physics

@ChrisWhite some unsolicited (and probably not even that useful) advice: if and when you do make the decision to leave academia, don't waste any time doing so

George Smyridis

1:07 PM

@dmckee @alarge @ChrisWhite @KyleKanos @ACuriousMind So are there any advantages as far as job prospects are concerned to become a physicist than an engineer? They all get similar jobs anyway :/

Kyle Kanos

1:18 PM

@skillpatrol Why? We were all involved in a conversation yesterday (last night for some), so he's trying to continue it

skill patrol

sorry, didn't know that :(

Kyle Kanos

@GeorgeSmyridis I honestly don't know what the advantages/disadvantages would be, as I've got a physics degree.

@skillpatrol Scroll upwards, part of the conversation is at the top of the page :shrug:

Transcript for