Recent content by ferm

I have to admit that, said like that, my question sounds really stupid... But actually it's not exactly like this. First, I have plenty of time until my grant expires (little less than one year), although the possibility of being months doing nothing but preparing for jobs does not sound...

Thanks a lot for your reply, twofish-quant! Actually this consulting company is known for paying higher salaries than its competitors. You start with the typical recent-graduate salary, but it gets increased from 15 to 25% annually. The problem is that the fact I have a PhD is irrelevant to...

Hi everyone! I would like to ask you for some advice on a decision I need to take soon... I am about to finish a PhD in theoretical physics, and I decided to leave academia. I recently landed a job offer, where I would be working as a financial consultant in risk management. The job...

There are many physicists working in fields other than physics (both in academia and industry) that enjoyed a success they couldn't achieve in physics. The interesting thing is that many physicists work and succeed in a wide range of fields, which is not true in many different fields of...

I couldn't agree more with that! I have the sense that there is a natural selection in academia against people interested in too many things, since what is rewarded is to have many publications in a particular narrow field where you will be making your career. However, many advancements in...

In my opinion, there are many, many, many examples in the past no to have to think about a particular guy. You're going to tell me you don't know many people who have ended up demonstrating they were brilliant, and who struggled a lot to get a faculty position? And the reason isn't faculty...

IMHO, there is a point where it is quite difficult to order people by their quality, especially when you are trying to estimate the future scientific output of this person. Naively, it sounds as a much better strategy to give professorships to people with demonstrable experience publishing...

In many countries of Europe it is quite more common to get in a tenure track after three postdocs rather than two. Doing four postdocs is not so common, I wouldn't say it is impossible to get tenure then, but not many people are willing to apply for postdocs being 35 years old...

Hi, As far as I know, the EU aerospace sector is quite big nowadays, maybe more than the Russian. I am not working on this field so I can't really give you good information, but I know a few European and American people working in aerospace engineering who are working respectively in Europe...

I wouldn't say it is a good idea to learn a language for this single purpose. First, you don't know if you will ever have to work in russia, unless you are planning to go to graduate school there. Second, as far as I know research in russia is very hard, with very little money going to research...

I think the first question is far more common. Sometimes it's not that easy to know what would be great to do, specially looking at the possibilities from outside. Almost every PhD leaving academia will be sure of that.

Hi, One source of employment for physics PhDs in management consulting, specially (but not only) in large firms. Actually, this is the major route for ex-particle-theoreticians that I've known about recently, since there are very few finance firms where I live. I even know about physics...

Then I guess studying physics is a good start. It will give you some knowledge about the basics of "everything" which are some of the hardest to obtain. In my opinion, it is much easier to switch from physics to any another field of knowledge than the inverse. Needless to say that you don't...

I totally understand you, but I think what you really need is to learn more about work options. You might now think that you don't like to do programming, or finance, or whatever. But have you asked yourself why you don't like them? One thing that you will learn is that knowledge is not the...

Today the market is international, and so many people who graduated in Europe are working in the US. The inverse is somewhat less common, due to the brain drain that mal4mac points, so it could even be worse here (in Europe). Anyway the situation is bad enough everywhere. In some countries of...