

Ask HN: Do any of you have degrees in Physics? What career path did you take? - SampleRate

I do, and I feel like my current job (web developer - mainly pushing pixels around until the designer is happy with it) is not mentally stimulating enough. I&#x27;m looking for some inspiration to change the direction of my career.
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oaksagelew
Yep, I got a Bachelor's in Physics, minoring in Computer Science, and did
independent study in computational physics, so lots of numerical-analysis type
of study. Career paths - without a PhD - were limited, so I got into
programming, but the foundation I got made it easy to do a wide range of other
things. I got involved in Instructional Systems Design (designing and building
training material founded on data-based, empirically validated principles)
which Physics helped a lot with. I was also an Industry Analyst during the
dot-com boom days, and again being able to think abstractly, looking for
patterns, and being able to conduct quantitative market research was all
facilitated greatly by a solid foundation in math and physics.

Elon Musk (a Physics student) has a great quote about Physics, where he talks
about reasoning from first principles and "try to identify the most
fundamental truths in any particular arena and you reason up from there." I
agree - you get that foundation and way of thinking, and it can help you in
all kinds of work.

If you're good at abstract thinking - a skill seemingly rare among the younger
members of society these days - you can do pretty much anything. So it's much
less about what you CAN do and much more about what you WANT to do, so focus
on that, knowing you have a solid foundation to support you.

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Bahamut
I have a BS in Mathematical Physics (and a BS & MS in mathematics) - I ended
up in web development, primarily because it was all I could get a job in
amusingly enough.

I am satisfied with how much mental stimulus I got from my education - I
proved to myself that I had the intelligence necessary to get a PhD. After
being unemployed for 2 1/2 years, I am happy enough doing web development - it
treats me very well as far as pay and quality of life goes, sure beating being
homeless. I find enough challenging problems (if not as intense as those I saw
in graduate school) to keep me mentally happy, and I have an opportunity to
make a difference in my & other people's careers through mentorship and
leadership.

For yourself, take a long hard thought at your options - what would you want
to do? Becoming an academic is a possibility, but academia is hard to succeed
in. You could go the data scientist route, which is a meld of research and
coding - there are plenty of unsolved problems there, and uses some of your
current skills.

What do you want to do first?

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japhyr
Yes. I wanted to be a particle physicist, but decided to teach for a couple
years so I wouldn't go straight HS->university->grad school. I stayed in
teaching, though, because I found the intellectual challenges of teaching well
just as satisfying as hard science. 20 years later, I'm still happy with my
decision.

Studying physics meant I have always had a way to think about any science
question any student has ever asked. I can't answer every question, but I can
always give students a good way to think about answering their question.

These days I'm working hard to apply what I know about programming to solve
long standing problems in education. The education field is about 40 years
behind the programming world as far as making efficient tools available to
everyone in the field, which means there is much low-hanging fruit for someone
with a solid grounding in both education and software development.

I want to build the Emacs and GitHub of the education world.

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rexpi0
I have a PhD in HEP; got it on ATLAS at CERN and contributed to the Higgs
discovery analysis in the H->ZZ*->4l channel. I work at NASA and still do
particle physics, but a lot of my work is software oriented - anything from
scripting to developing data analysis frameworks to web development to fixing
legacy code.

~~~
SampleRate
Wow, that sounds incredible to have been involved with the Higgs discovery and
to now be working at NASA. You must be very satisfied with your career so far!

~~~
rexpi0
Yep, I have been very satisfied and fortunate. Only thing that irks me these
days is horrible legacy software and dealing with stubborn people that don't
want to leave the stone age of computing.

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MichaelCrawford
I have a BA in Physics from UC Santa Cruz, and attended grad school with the
intention of working on a search for non-conservation of lepton number at
CERN, however my mental illness (Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder) led to
my leaving grad school.

I've been toying with the idea of returning to grad school, but if I do I'm
going to need to spend some time brushing up on my math. It's been decades.

I dropped out of UCSC after the first quarter of my junior year to work as a
software developer. The only reason I ever graduated was that I grew weary of
always been asked why I never graduated (during job interviews).

I'm not so sure I would return to particle physics, more likely I would do
something to contribute to an equitable and just solution to the problem of
energy production, distribution or storage.

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yetanotheracc
I have worked as a web developer without a degree for a few years. Since I
felt same as you, I embarked on a Physics BSc, due to graduate in 3 months. My
plan is to go to grad school, HEP theory if I can get in. Already taking a hit
on my income due to time spent studying but it is worth it.

