Are you happy being a Physicist?

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In summary, the conversation discusses the pros and cons of pursuing a career in physics. Some individuals recommend going to grad school and getting a PhD, while others suggest considering other options outside of physics. The conversation also touches on the idea of success and defines it differently depending on the field. Ultimately, the decision to pursue a career in physics should be based on one's personal interests and goals, as it may require a lot of sacrifice and hard work.
  • #1
dipole
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This question goes out to all those currently making a living doing physics.

I just finished up my junior year with a 4.0 GPA, I'm currently on my third research project, and right now it seems the default course of action is to go to grad school, get a PhD and pursue a career in Physics.

I have one major hesitation though, and that is whether or not I'm really going to be happy if I choose a career in Physics. I know that to really be successful in any field, you have to devote most of you time and much of your energy to it, there is the constant pressure to publish, to secure funding, to meet department expectations etc...

It seems like as much of a rewarding experience as it can be, a career in Physics requires a lot of sacrifice. Are successful physicists really happy people? What about the unsuccessful ones?

I know many of the great Physicists had troubled personal lives, and sometimes I see hints of this in my Physics professors whom I've gotten to know a bit. I work very hard right now because I want to get ahead of my peers, but I don't want to live my life like this forever. I want to make decent money and be successful, but I also want a family, I want to travel and have new experiences, I want to live in the mountains and grow a garden... basically, I want to be able to earn money, but I don't think I'm willing to go into a career that demands more of me than that. I don't want to be wealthy, I want to make enough money so that I can live my life freely, and I don't want the burden of responsibility always tying me down.

That being said, would you, the successful (or not) physicist recommend a career in physics?
 
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  • #2
I'm currently on my third research project, and right now it seems the default course of action is to go to grad school, get a PhD and pursue a career in Physics.

This is not the default course of action- the default is get a phd, then do some postdocs and bounce into something outside of physics. There aren't many jobs where you get to physics for a living, far fewer than there are qualified physicists.

Asking a physics professor if they think physics is a good career is like asking a rock star if its a good idea to drop out of college and start a band. Its not a representative sample of phds.

What about the unsuccessful ones?

Define success? And define physicist? If a physicist is someone who makes a living doing physics, than there aren't any unsuccessful physicists- if you actually land the fabled full-time job where you get to do physics, you are a success.

The people who leave physics earlier typically move much faster into the economic markers of adulthood (stable job, starting to save for retirement, able to support a family, < 10 year old car, house,etc) much faster than the people who stick it out for half a decade as a postdoc before winning the tenure track lottery.

I want to make enough money so that I can live my life freely, and I don't want the burden of responsibility always tying me down.

I would say a career in physics will dramatically DELAY your ability to accumulate responsibility, not hasten it. The life of a grad student/postdoc is fairly bohemian- you travel all over the world (generally working in one country for only two or three years). If you have no family to support, etc and don't need to save fo the future, etc it can be a fun way to live.

Most people I know who left physics after their phd (myself included) did it because we chose responsibility in one form or another over chasing a dream. I chose to start a family over ending a relationship (or living in a long-distance relationship for several years). A friend had parents who had lost savings in the downturn and chose to leave physics for the more lucrative field of business consulting so that he could support them, etc.
 
  • #3
When I decided to leave physics I was also at the end of my junior year. I am quite different from most people here because I've left not because of job prospects but because doing research turned out to be too mundane and too boring for me. It almost killed my whole interest in "how does our world work?" stuff.

To tell you the truth I'm still relived that I have left physics and found perfect field for me with much better job prospects. My current field isn't as lucrative as finance, it's hard to get in and it's for passionate and dedicated people. And yet I'm happy because (unlike in physics) if you work really hard you will get stable job with resonable income. I'm still beginner in my field and yet I have prospects that I would never have in physics. That should tell you a lot about job prospect factor in physics career.

So more or less doing physics for career reasons is terrible idea. In most fields (mine is no exeption) "success" means "to do sth different, better and worth of mentioning". In other fields it means to "earn a lot of money" and in physics it means "to get a job". Do you get it now? You want to get into field in which success is defined by getting a low-paid but permanent job. If being an average physics is equal to being a rock star or a CEO I prefer to be a CEO. So summing up:

1. You probably won't get a job as physicist anyway. So you are going to waste 7+ years of your life only to do sth different and probably boring for you (programming, finance) <- say hi to ParticleGrl

2. If you are lucky enough you will be successful which means getting low-paid job in academia. You won't buy your house in the mountains with that and you probably won't win Nobel Prize. Physics is a field where you attain no money and no glory. If with equal amount of energy and talent you can be a rock star, NBA player or rich enough to buy your own island (ok maybe not that rich but still :P) is it worth it?

I'm sure you can find another field with better job prospect which can be as interesting as physics for you. Switching fields now is still better than doing PhD and then being a code/excel mokey for insurance company or bitter scientist fighting for survival and grant money.

But no matter which field will you choose success requires a lot of hard work, dedication, passion and time. Which means if you want to have a lot of free time for traveling or your family it is safe to forget about "big success" and just land good 9-5 job. If you want to be successful then you need to work (maybe not day and night) hard and it probably won't get any better until your 30s or 40s when you will have strong position in your field.
 
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  • #4
Rika said:
2. If you are lucky enough you will be successful which means getting low-paid job in academia. You won't buy your house in the mountains with that and you probably won't win Nobel Prize. Physics is a field where you attain no money and no glory. If with equal amount of energy and talent you can be a rock star, NBA player or rich enough to buy your own island (ok maybe not that rich but still :P) is it worth it?

Most people don't ever get that rich. Even most athletes don't ever get that rich. There's more professional football players than there are pro players in the English premier league and there's even more players who don't play professionally and need a second job to support themselves (probably). Even *in* the top flight (EPL, La Liga, Serie A, etc), it's only a minority who get the most amount of money.

The point is money shouldn't be the *only* driving factor. There's a point where you got to draw a line and be content because once you start playing the "who gets paid more?" game, you'll lose. There will always be someone who gets paid more, who's better looking, who's got a nicer car and who's in a better situation than you. Don't worry about them. Figure out how to land in a good place for you. Maybe in a few years', when the time comes for me to choose between going to grad school and not going, my perspective will change but right now, I do think there is a thing as "enough money".

OP, from what I gather, the actual process of doing research is not very different across a few different fields. Since you seem to be interested in conducting research, how about going for a PhD in another quantitative discipline that has the potential to be more financial viable? Say, something more computational or economics or (bio)statistics? I hear that there's more money to be made there and that there are more faculty positions in these fields. Apparently there's more funding in these fields and also because people tend to go to industry, which means that there's less competition for faculty positions - one doesn't even need to do a postdoc before getting an assistant professorship. The way I see it, physics or bioinformatics, I'm still doing applied math. If doing one over the other means that it'll make things more favorable (perhaps more money or more free time) in the long run, then I don't have a problem with it.

Note that the above is only based on what I've *heard* from other people on forums such as this one and a the grad cafe. In case you share the same opinion, do look into it. There's also the possibility, no matter how small, that everything can change in 4-10 years, when you graduate with a PhD. Maybe the Earth will risk getting covered by water and more $$$ gets pumped into space (is escaping to other planets viable?) and oceanographic (if we can't escape, can we live under water somehow?) research, which means that even people who have technical backgrounds that are close to engineering, get hired. Twofish says that during the dot-com boom, people who could code were getting picked off the street. (figuratively?)

Now, it's unlikely that what I described happens. But if the financial crash happened a few years ago, and before that 9/11 and the dot-com boom happened, then I suspect that something big - it need not be the end of the world, just anything big - may happen in a few years and that could be a game changer for everyone.
 
  • #5
i guess the fact is: don't go into particle physics and high energy astro because they're surprisingly unemployable? i thought the name would've told you that?

try to get interested in materials or leave physics i guess?
 
  • #6
chill_factor said:
i guess the fact is: don't go into particle physics and high energy astro because they're surprisingly unemployable? i thought the name would've told you that?

try to get interested in materials or leave physics i guess?

Cheers, less competition for the rest of us :P
 
  • #7
Mépris said:
Most people don't ever get that rich. Even most athletes don't ever get that rich. There's more professional football players than there are pro players in the English premier league and there's even more players who don't play professionally and need a second job to support themselves (probably). Even *in* the top flight (EPL, La Liga, Serie A, etc), it's only a minority who get the most amount of money.

I was exaggerating little bit :P My point wasn't "don't do physics because you won't be rich". My point was "don't do physics because you will end up poor or bitter or both".

Mépris said:
The point is money shouldn't be the *only* driving factor. There's a point where you got to draw a line and be content because once you start playing the "who gets paid more?" game, you'll lose. There will always be someone who gets paid more, who's better looking, who's got a nicer car and who's in a better situation than you. Don't worry about them. Figure out how to land in a good place for you. Maybe in a few years', when the time comes for me to choose between going to grad school and not going, my perspective will change but right now, I do think there is a thing as "enough money".

Indeed there is a thing called "enough money" and it's when money allows you to live comfortable life without worrying about financial issues.

Amount is different for every person but i think 20-30k is not enough for everyone. I don't live in US so it's hard to tell but from what I understand 50-70K is decent amount if you live in big (but not in N.Y.) city.
 
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  • #8
One outlook I would strongly caution against is the notion of "I'll be happy when..."

I find my job (medical physics) extremely stressful at times, but in general, I'm happy. I was happy as a student. I was happy as a post-doc and then as a resident. That's not to say I wasn't stressed, or worried about money or job opportunities or exams over those times. I absolutely was. But I still managed to be happy for the most part.

Would I recommend a career in physics?
Well, it's worked out very well for me, but there's no guarantee that it will work out the same way for everyone else. It's kind of like recommending a specific pair of shoes. If you're a size twelve my experience in my size tens isn't going to mean much.
 
  • #9
Thanks for all the replies so far.

Basically it comes down to this: I enjoy doing physics, but I'm not in love with physics. I think it'd be great to have a career doing research in Physics, but I'm not willing to sacrifice my personal life or give up other dreams I have to be successful. I'm not prepared to pour my heart and soul into physics, because I don't have that kind of passion for it.

I'm naturally a hard worker, and I'll work hard in whatever I end up doing, but I do not want a career that demands so much of me that it takes way from family and the ability to pursue other things in life. For some reason I get this impression that Physicists are under these enormous work loads and often put their careers above their family and personal life. Am I way off or is there some truth in this?
 
  • #10
There's some truth to it.
 
  • #11
dipole said:
Thanks for all the replies so far.

Basically it comes down to this: I enjoy doing physics, but I'm not in love with physics. I think it'd be great to have a career doing research in Physics, but I'm not willing to sacrifice my personal life or give up other dreams I have to be successful. I'm not prepared to pour my heart and soul into physics, because I don't have that kind of passion for it.

I'm naturally a hard worker, and I'll work hard in whatever I end up doing, but I do not want a career that demands so much of me that it takes way from family and the ability to pursue other things in life. For some reason I get this impression that Physicists are under these enormous work loads and often put their careers above their family and personal life. Am I way off or is there some truth in this?

What things, besides physics, do you have in mind?
 
  • #12
dipole said:
I just finished up my junior year with a 4.0 GPA, I'm currently on my third research project, and right now it seems the default course of action is to go to grad school, get a PhD and pursue a career in Physics.

Assuming "career in physics=job in academia." That's not the default action. Most Ph.D.'s do not go into academia, and unless the Earth is threatened by space aliens, that's not likely to change over the next 10-20 years.

Now a lot depends on how you define a "career in physics."

I have one major hesitation though, and that is whether or not I'm really going to be happy if I choose a career in Physics

Well that's easy. Since the decision is going to be made for you, and since it's very likely you *won't* get an academic position, you have nothing to worry about here. :-) :-) :-)

Worrying about whether you will be happy being into physics academia is like worrying if you will be happen being a professional baseball player or winning the lottery, and the curious thing is that your odds of becoming a professional baseball player (albeit in the minor leagues) or winning the lottery (albeit not the jackpot prize) is considerable higher if you have a degree.

I know that to really be successful in any field, you have to devote most of you time and much of your energy to it, there is the constant pressure to publish, to secure funding, to meet department expectations etc...

Define success. Seriously.

One thing about the "rat race" is that you are doomed to failure. Once you master one level, they just bump you to the next level, and at some point, you are going to fail. And then you die.

It seems like as much of a rewarding experience as it can be, a career in Physics requires a lot of sacrifice. Are successful physicists really happy people? What about the unsuccessful ones?

Define success.

I know many of the great Physicists had troubled personal lives, and sometimes I see hints of this in my Physics professors whom I've gotten to know a bit. I work very hard right now because I want to get ahead of my peers, but I don't want to live my life like this forever. I want to make decent money and be successful, but I also want a family, I want to travel and have new experiences, I want to live in the mountains and grow a garden... basically, I want to be able to earn money, but I don't think I'm willing to go into a career that demands more of me than that.

Then do what I did and go into industry after you get your Ph.D.

I don't want to be wealthy, I want to make enough money so that I can live my life freely, and I don't want the burden of responsibility always tying me down.

Beware of the golden handcuffs. One of the paradoxes of finance is that the more money you have the *less* free you are, since the bargain you make with your employer is to trade your freedom for their money.

The other thing is that you have to make some decisions. If you want a family, then you *WILL* have lots of responsibilities and you will have substantially less freedom.

But those are general life decisions.

That being said, would you, the successful (or not) physicist recommend a career in physics?

I'd recommend going into your Ph.D. realizing that you aren't going to stay in academia. Also, your Ph.D. *is* your career.
 
  • #13
Rika said:
When I decided to leave physics I was also at the end of my junior year. I am quite different from most people here because I've left not because of job prospects but because doing research turned out to be too mundane and too boring for me. It almost killed my whole interest in "how does our world work?" stuff.

Curiously I've stayed in research because I *enjoy* mundane and boring work in moderation. I find it calming and relaxing, and it keeps me sane. Everything is falling apart around me so I kick up the source code and spend a few hours finding the bug.

My current field isn't as lucrative as finance, it's hard to get in and it's for passionate and dedicated people. And yet I'm happy because (unlike in physics) if you work really hard you will get stable job with resonable income.

That's not true. It's hard to get a stable job in physics academia. It's not particularly hard to get a stable job with a physics Ph.D. One reason I encourage people to *give up* looking for an academic position is that the world looks a lot brighter once you do, and knowing that you are *doomed* in academia, is actually intended to get more people into physics.

1. You probably won't get a job as physicist anyway. So you are going to waste 7+ years of your life only to do sth different and probably boring for you (programming, finance) <- say hi to ParticleGrl

It's not a waste of time. You learn to do research. You learn that 95% of research involves dealing with boring, stupid problems.

If you are lucky enough you will be successful which means getting low-paid job in academia.

Define success. From an academia standpoint, I'm a total washout. From the "what was your gross income last year" standpoint, I made really, really scary amounts of money. My standard of success was to "live life like an adventure" and I won really big there.

This is actually why I think that "defining success" is important.

I'm sure you can find another field with better job prospect which can be as interesting as physics for you. Switching fields now is still better than doing PhD and then being a code/excel mokey for insurance company or bitter scientist fighting for survival and grant money.

Hmmmm... Depends. Getting my Ph.D. was one of the best decisions in my life.

But no matter which field will you choose success requires a lot of hard work, dedication, passion and time.

And luck. The main thing that helped my career was that I graduated in 1998 right at the start of the dot-com boom.

Which means if you want to have a lot of free time for traveling or your family it is safe to forget about "big success" and just land good 9-5 job. If you want to be successful then you need to work (maybe not day and night) hard and it probably won't get any better until your 30s or 40s when you will have strong position in your field.

Define "success".

Also in technical positions in the United States, there is no such thing as a "9-5 job". One funny thing is that factory workers in China have a *LOT* better overtime protections both in theory and in practice than most technical people in the US. All the stuff that you hear about exploited slave factory workers in China is nonsense since they have much better employment protections than most technical US workers.

Personally, one reason I like my current job is that it's a "9-7:30 M-F job" which is **much** better that other positions I've had in the past. I worked at a small startup in which we had two weeks in which I was sleeping in the office most days and working 3 a.m. (The reason for this was that it was a database application in which you had to run the end of day parts at night.)

The other thing is that I like "hard work." I find it relaxing and soothing.
 
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  • #14
twofish-quant said:
Define "success".

Also in technical positions in the United States, there is no such thing as a "9-5 job". One funny thing is that factory workers in China have a *LOT* better overtime protections both in theory and in practice than most technical people in the US.

Personally, one reason I like my current job is that it's a "9-7:30 M-F job" which is **much** better that other positions I've had in the past.

The other thing is that I like "hard work." I find it relaxing and soothing.

I would consider being a statistician to be a technical position, and my work thus far (in the health care/pharmceutical sector) have generally been "9-5 jobs", give or take a few hours during key deadlines. So you are not quite correct in stating that there are no "9-5 jobs" for technical people -- it is really sector-dependent (now I'm based in Canada, but technical positions in Canada don't differ significantly from those in the US).

That being said, what were your typical hours when you were working in New York?
 
  • #15
chill_factor said:
i guess the fact is: don't go into particle physics and high energy astro because they're surprisingly unemployable? i thought the name would've told you that?

This is totally, totally false.

Particle physicists and high energy astrophysicists find it difficult to find jobs as tenured university professors. It's not hard to find a job in defense, finance, and oil and gas, and one reason it's not hard to find a job is that defense, finance, and oil/gas problems are more or less the same as astrophysics problems.
 
  • #16
StatGuy2000 said:
That being said, what were your typical hours when you were working in New York and Texas? (I know that you are based in Hong Kong now)

NYC 9-7. Finance is highly variable. The technical people curiously work a lot less than the sales/marketing people that work insane hours.

Texas was crazy. It was at the end of the dot-com, and because everyone thought that they would be gazillionaires with stock options, people worked some insane hours. One it became more and more clear that there wasn't a ton of money, people started showing up less.

One irony is that it turns out that "flex-time" is a bad thing. It might seem like a good thing that you have non-fixed working hours, but once you do, the company will try to squeeze more hours out of you.

Big companies tend to have more stable hours than small startups. In small companies, the company is your family, so there are elements of a "family" or "cult" which gives you social pressure to work long hours.
 
  • #17
dipole said:
I'm naturally a hard worker, and I'll work hard in whatever I end up doing, but I do not want a career that demands so much of me that it takes way from family and the ability to pursue other things in life.

Something that makes my situation interesting is that "academia is family." Pretty much everyone in my family has a post-graduate degree, and graduations end up being social events as much as weddings and funerals.

One weird thing was that it wasn't until junior year in college that I realized that most people don't get summers off.

I don't think of physics as a career. It's my life. My wife has a Ph.D., and my kids are typical "tiger cubs."

For some reason I get this impression that Physicists are under these enormous work loads and often put their careers above their family and personal life. Am I way off or is there some truth in this?

In my situation, it's not a career/family/personal life issue. Physics is my life. Curiously because physics is my life, it turns out to be better that my career *isn't* physics. My career is just the way that I make money, and if someone else offers me more money, then I'll leave. I'm not totally in love with finance, and if someone offers me more money to do I don't know pig farming, I'll do pig farming.

Physics is more like something I'm married to, and I'm not going to leave my wife if someone offers me more money to do so.

One thing about the physics community is that it's a small tight-knit community with weird culture and practices that don't make since to outsiders. It's better to think of physics like joining the priesthood or joining the Marines. Joining the Marines is good for your career, but that shouldn't be your *main* reason for signing up.

Something else that is interesting is that "happiness" isn't very high on my list of life goals. Again the Marine analogy comes up. You can ask a Marine whether they are "happy" and they'll probably look at you as if that's a stupid and irrelevant question, because in the Marines "personal happiness" turns out not to be that important a goal. (Morale is, but that's different.)
 
  • #18
Rika said:
I was exaggerating little bit :P My point wasn't "don't do physics because you won't be rich". My point was "don't do physics because you will end up poor or bitter or both".

That's not true. Everyone that I know with a physics Ph.D. makes either decent or in some cases totally absurd salaries. I don't know of anyone outside of academia that would be considered "poor".

One funny thing is that because physics warps your mind, you don't find making large sums of money to be particularly pleasurable. I don't think money really matters. It's social approval. In some societies, money==social approval, but it doesn't work that way in physics.

Indeed there is a thing called "enough money" and it's when money allows you to live comfortable life without worrying about financial issues.

In fact there isn't. What happens is that as your definition of "comfortable life" changes. I think that I probably worry as much as if not more about financial issues now than I did in college. There is some interesting neuropsychology going on, and I think it has something to do with how addiction works.

One thing interesting about addicts to heroin is that they don't derive any pleasure from heroin, but they feel miserable without it. This is because their brain receptors change. I think the same sort of neuropsychology happens in your daily life. Once you are used to traveling in business class, your brain rewires to consider it "normal."

It makes sense when you realize that people aren't after money, but rather social status or social approval.

Amount is different for every person but i think 20-30k is not enough for everyone. I don't live in US so it's hard to tell but from what I understand 50-70K is decent amount if you live in big (but not in N.Y.) city.

You standards of "decent" will change a lot. Also a lot depend on who your social peers are. If you make 25K, but everyone you know makes 20K, you feel rich. My guess is that most college students estimate what is "decent" based on how much the richest people they have standard social contact with make (i.e. college professors). The trouble is that once you reach level X, you see level X+1, and then you feel poor.
 
  • #19
twofish-quant said:
That's not true. Everyone that I know with a physics Ph.D. makes either decent or in some cases totally absurd salaries. I don't know of anyone outside of academia that would be considered "poor".

...

You standards of "decent" will change a lot. Also a lot depend on who your social peers are. If you make 25K, but everyone you know makes 20K, you feel rich. My guess is that most college students estimate what is "decent" based on how much the richest people they have standard social contact with make (i.e. college professors). The trouble is that once you reach level X, you see level X+1, and then you feel poor.

Keep in mind your own words there about "who your social peers are." I must say that I DO know many people with masters and PhDs (some in math, some in physics, some in music) who ARE "poor". I think it depends on where you are. You might not know any, but that doesn't mean they aren't out there. I don't know many people who make as much money as you probably do (most likely just a few doctors I know), and I don't live in New York (but do live in a big city). I doubt we'd ever associate with the same people, go to the same restaurants, travel to the same places for recreation, be active with the same social clubs, etc... it's totally different social circles.

I'm "poor" and I tend to run into and associate with more "poor" people. Being well educated, I also generally associate with intelligent and well educated people. When those two populations intersect, and you live in that social circle, you find that there are a decent amount of science PhDs who are struggling, underemployed, and unemployed.

Both of our statements really have nothing to say about the overall status of PhDs, since both sets of people we are talking about are small portions of the total population, so I really don't want this post to make a huge deal about that ... I just wanted to highlight that you (and me too) should avoid gross generalizations based on our limited social interactions.
 
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  • #20
bpatrick said:
I doubt we'd ever associate with the same people, go to the same restaurants, travel to the same places for recreation, be active with the same social clubs, etc... it's totally different social circles.

Exactly. But the fact that we are both physics Ph.D.'s and *don't* associate with the same people, go to the same restaurants, etc. etc. is a bit scary.

I'm "poor" and I tend to run into and associate with more "poor" people. Being well educated, I also generally associate with intelligent and well educated people. When those two populations intersect, and you live in that social circle, you find that there are a decent amount of science PhDs who are struggling, underemployed, and unemployed.

I don't know of any science Ph.D.'s that are struggling, underemployed, or unemployed.

I know of a few humanities Ph.D.'s in that situation. Part of it might be that the Austin, Texas economy is pretty decent, and so all of the UT Austin graduates that I know of have been able to get jobs, and the all end up in suburbia.

It could also be an age issue. My peers mostly graduated in the "dot-com" era when jobs were plentiful. Even after the crash, people that worked for a dot-com that blew up were able to get marketable work experience.

Also, I *feel* poor, because I see a social strata of people above me (i.e. my bosses boss) that makes a ton more money and has a much better lifestyle than anything I can afford. It's really scary.

Both of our statements really have nothing to say about the overall status of PhDs, since both sets of people we are talking about are small portions of the total population, so I really don't want this post to make a huge deal about that ...

Sure, but it's important to compare notes.

I just wanted to highlight that you (and me too) should avoid gross generalizations based on our limited social interactions.

But once we start comparing notes, then you can start making generalizations. One generalization appears to be geography is important. There's a bit of self-selection since I seem to have less resistance to moving than most people. Moving is painful and difficult, but in the end I grit my teeth and did it.

Also what *really* worries me is generation gap. I know that the situation for people that graduated in 2008 is worse than 1998, the question is how much worse is it. It doesn't seem that bad, but that might be because Texas isn't in bad shape economically speaking.

Something that really disturbs me is that it wasn't supposed to turn out this way. After the Soviet Union fell, we were supposed to move into a world of plenty, and in 1999 people were talking as if the dot-com boom was permanent.

One thing that I noticed is that a lot of the books that are young adult fiction (Hunger Games) are about worlds in which adults have royally screwed everything up and that people are killing each other just to survive. It's really scary to think about *why* this sort of fiction is popular.
 
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  • #21
Also if it turns out that we are each in disjoint social circles that don't interact, then things get really scary. One of the things that I am terrified of is social revolution, and this is partly because my family ended up in the US because they were at the wrong end of the revolution.

The other thing to point out is that "I'm not that old". The world clearly went "off track" some time between 1995 and today, and I'm trying to piece together what exactly happened. The good news is that whatever pushed things off track could push things back on track. Then again maybe not.

However, I do think that whether you will be "happy" or not will depend on historical events that are largely out of your control.
 
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  • #22
twofish-quant said:
This is totally, totally false.

Particle physicists and high energy astrophysicists find it difficult to find jobs as tenured university professors. It's not hard to find a job in defense, finance, and oil and gas, and one reason it's not hard to find a job is that defense, finance, and oil/gas problems are more or less the same as astrophysics problems.

how about this: they will not get positions dealing with astronomy or particle physics directly and must retool their skillset more than people who did something more directly applicable. I will find it hard to argue that someone who did research on particle physics is more applicable and more employable than someone who did research on say, semiconductor processing or optics.

Also I think you have selection bias due to your specific field, method of research, personality, school of graduation and time of graduation.
 
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  • #23
StatGuy2000 said:
I would consider being a statistician to be a technical position, and my work thus far (in the health care/pharmceutical sector) have generally been "9-5 jobs", give or take a few hours during key deadlines. So you are not quite correct in stating that there are no "9-5 jobs" for technical people -- it is really sector-dependent (now I'm based in Canada, but technical positions in Canada don't differ significantly from those in the US).

That being said, what were your typical hours when you were working in New York?

I have no experience of New York, but twofish's description of working at a startup mirrors the experiences of a lot my friends and me. I don't personally know anyone that is in a tech field in my area (Silicon Valley), who doesn't work hours longer than 9to5. Note that it's after 3 am in California as I write this...
 
  • #24
chill_factor said:
how about this: they will not get positions dealing with astronomy or particle physics directly and must retool their skillset more than people who did something more directly applicable.

I didn't have to do this. Part of it involved trying to sell myself as a "numerical dynamicist" rather than an "astrophysicist".

I will find it hard to argue that someone who did research on particle physics is more applicable and more employable than someone who did research on say, semiconductor processing or optics.

I don't know about "more applicable." But most of computational astrophysics involve baby-sitting large numerical codes, and those are very common in the world. People that do "pencil and paper" theory are going to have a hard time with it, but a lot of particle physics involves "hard core" numerical programming.

Also I think you have selection bias due to your specific field, method of research, personality, school of graduation and time of graduation.

Sure, but the numbers are small enough, and the experiences are varied enough so that it's hard to talk about a "representative sample." I can say that among the 50 or so people that graduated from my department around the time of my Ph.D., I'm not that unusual. There's a professor that tracks these things.

Also trying to figure out what the biases are is interesting.

There are some generational effects. One thing that I've heard people mention is that the quality of programmers declined quite sharply around 2000, and I think that part of it has to do with the fact that the generation of people that grew up programming BASIC on the TRS-80 from age six disappeared.
 
  • #25
twofish-quant said:
Also if it turns out that we are each in disjoint social circles that don't interact, then things get really scary. One of the things that I am terrified of is social revolution, and this is partly because my family ended up in the US because they were at the wrong end of the revolution.

The other thing to point out is that "I'm not that old". The world clearly went "off track" some time between 1995 and today, and I'm trying to piece together what exactly happened. The good news is that whatever pushed things off track could push things back on track. Then again maybe not.

However, I do think that whether you will be "happy" or not will depend on historical events that are largely out of your control.

Your previous posts of yours mention that you read things like Karl Marx, but I wonder if you have studied empires in great detail.

Look at what happens when empires build up and what leads to their collapse and I think you'll find at least one part of the puzzle you are trying to solve.
 
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  • #26
twofish-quant said:
Curiously I've stayed in research because I *enjoy* mundane and boring work in moderation. I find it calming and relaxing, and it keeps me sane. Everything is falling apart around me so I kick up the source code and spend a few hours finding the bug.

It's funny how people can be so different from each other. Mundane and boring work drives me crazy. After few months of doing research I was sure I'll go insane.

What is more I really hate programming and when I see another bug I just want to throw my Pc outside the window. I'm happy that I could say "goodbye" to programming after I graduated.

It really depends. I have always wanted to have a work which uses my creativity and imagination to the greatest extend. Science turned out to be bad for that.
twofish-quant said:
That's not true. It's hard to get a stable job in physics academia. It's not particularly hard to get a stable job with a physics Ph.D. One reason I encourage people to *give up* looking for an academic position is that the world looks a lot brighter once you do, and knowing that you are *doomed* in academia, is actually intended to get more people into physics.

Yes but most people study physics because they want to do physics (if not in academia then in industry). If they wanted to do finance/programming they would study it. You like working in finance because it's similar to physics in some aspects but there is no guarantee that somebody else will enjoy working in finance/oil and gas because he/she is physics major.

I think that there are many people like ParticleGrl who would prefer engineering/applied physicist jobs over finance. If they knew that getting HEP PhD leads them to finance they would choose different field or branch of physics.

So yes there are well-paid jobs* that you can get with physics degree

*but they often have nth to do with physics

twofish-quant said:
It's not a waste of time. You learn to do research. You learn that 95% of research involves dealing with boring, stupid problems.



This one you can learn during undergraduate degree

If you do research afterwards then yes - it's not a waste of time. But if you spend 7+ years to master the skill which you won't use for the rest of your life it is. Life is too short for that.

twofish-quant said:
Define success. From an academia standpoint, I'm a total washout. From the "what was your gross income last year" standpoint, I made really, really scary amounts of money. My standard of success was to "live life like an adventure" and I won really big there.

If you don't go standard route you are always considered to be a failure. It's the same for me since instead of doing "serious" and "intellectual demanding" job like engineering or programming/doing some "real art" like oil painting I'm drawing pictures and write story and mechanics for video games (which is considered to be stupid pop culture for shallow people by some PF useres). But since I'm happy I don't give a **** about it.

twofish-quant said:
This is actually why I think that "defining success" is important.

You are right. From what I understand OP said he works hard "to be ahead of his peers" which means for me that he wants to be on top of his field.
twofish-quant said:
Hmmmm... Depends. Getting my Ph.D. was one of the best decisions in my life.

It really depends. Not getting PhD was one of the best decisions in my life.

twofish-quant said:
And luck. The main thing that helped my career was that I graduated in 1998 right at the start of the dot-com boom.

Yes, people who have graduated/will graduate 10-15 years after you are generally screwed.

twofish-quant said:
Also in technical positions in the United States, there is no such thing as a "9-5 job".

Strange. Most people in my country go for technical positions because you can get stable 9-5 job with nice income. Have in mind that we don't have any industry besides IT and maybe that's the reason.

twofish-quant said:
I worked at a small startup in which we had two weeks in which I was sleeping in the office most days and working 3 a.m. (The reason for this was that it was a database application in which you had to run the end of day parts at night.)

More or less in startup you must work really hard in order to get stable position in market so I guess it's quite normal.

twofish-quant said:
The other thing is that I like "hard work." I find it relaxing and soothing.

I don't. That's why I have chosen a work which is my passion. Because when I'm having fun I'm getting sucked into the work and don't mind if it's hard.

twofish-quant said:
You standards of "decent" will change a lot. Also a lot depend on who your social peers are. If you make 25K, but everyone you know makes 20K, you feel rich. My guess is that most college students estimate what is "decent" based on how much the richest people they have standard social contact with make (i.e. college professors). The trouble is that once you reach level X, you see level X+1, and then you feel poor.

My country is poor, most people are poor and they don't feel rich because they earn a little more than they peers.
 
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  • #27
twofish-quant said:
Also in technical positions in the United States, there is no such thing as a "9-5 job".

Maybe this is true if we take it litterally, but I think the quotations are meant to suggest a type of job, not the literal hours. In that case it's wrong; there are lots of actuaries who work regular business hours and whose work can be described as technical.

I'm not one of them, but there are plenty out there.
 
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  • #28
twofish-quant said:
I don't know of any science Ph.D.'s that are struggling, underemployed, or unemployed.

Then clearly there aren't any.

Certainly no one fitting these descriptions have ever posted on this forum.

FACEPALM
 
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  • #29
twofish-quant said:
Something else that is interesting is that "happiness" isn't very high on my list of life goals. Again the Marine analogy comes up. You can ask a Marine whether they are "happy" and they'll probably look at you as if that's a stupid and irrelevant question, because in the Marines "personal happiness" turns out not to be that important a goal. (Morale is, but that's different.)

Curiously, my personal "happiness" does not come before "what am I doing to make the world a better place?" (by the standards of the people around me and my own) and I wonder whether this has anything to do with the "math/physics culture"!

You standards of "decent" will change a lot. Also a lot depend on who your social peers are. If you make 25K, but everyone you know makes 20K, you feel rich. My guess is that most college students estimate what is "decent" based on how much the richest people they have standard social contact with make (i.e. college professors). The trouble is that once you reach level X, you see level X+1, and then you feel poor.

Maybe it's just *me* and as such, extrapolating to everyone who likes math and physics is a bad idea, but the richest people I know (and I know quite a few of 'em) are rich enough to afford boats and beach houses. That's quite rich. Nevertheless, my idea of "decent" is just a one-room apartment (with kitchen and bathroom separate from bedroom) and having enough money to buy food and a library subscription with. It never increased as I started seeing richer persons on a more regular basis.

and in 1999 people were talking as if the dot-com boom was permanent.

As bpatrick pointed out, maybe it's just because of the limited number of people I interact with, but everyone I know who does have a job (and/or employs people) has been talking about the financial crash as if it were permanent.
 
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  • #30
Mépris said:
Curiously, my personal "happiness" does not come before "what am I doing to make the world a better place?" (by the standards of the people around me and my own) and I wonder whether this has anything to do with the "math/physics culture"!



Maybe it's just *me* and as such, extrapolating to everyone who likes math and physics is a bad idea, but the richest people I know (and I know quite a few of 'em) are rich enough to afford boats and beach houses. That's quite rich. Nevertheless, my idea of "decent" is just a one-room apartment (with kitchen and bathroom separate from bedroom) and having enough money to buy food and a library subscription with. It never increased as I started seeing richer persons on a more regular basis.



As bpatrick pointed out, maybe it's just because of the limited number of people I interact with, but everyone I know who does have a job (and/or employs people) has been talking about the financial crash as if it were permanent.

There is no denying that the impact of the financial crash is serious across many countries around the world, but to state that the effects are somehow permanent is both needlessly pessimistic and is not backed up by history. It may take many years, but the majority of developed nations with stable political institutions who have experienced financial crashes in the past do eventually recover from them.

One can look at the US example, where the economy is slowly recovering with more jobs being made available. The pace of recovery may be slow, and job creation may not be sufficient to lower the unemployment rate substantially as of this time, but the US will recover economically.
 
  • #31
Mépris said:
Nevertheless, my idea of "decent" is just a one-room apartment (with kitchen and bathroom separate from bedroom) and having enough money to buy food and a library subscription with.

This is all I needed as a bachelor, but financial needs increase when one decides to have a family.
 
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  • #32
There is no denying that the impact of the financial crash is serious across many countries around the world, but to state that the effects are somehow permanent is both needlessly pessimistic and is not backed up by history.

But for people who graduated during these bad years, the effects on job/income will be permanent. If you've ever talked with people who came of age during the great depression, it cast a shadow over their entire lives.

Also, at the rate we are going, its something like a decade to full employment, and if Europe falls apart it could drag the US down with it which just further delays 'recovery'. The US may well be in an awful labor market for my entire 30s. Thats bound to hurt tons of people's early careers.
 
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  • #33
ParticleGrl said:
But for people who graduated during these bad years, the effects on job/income will be permanent. If you've ever talked with people who came of age during the great depression, it cast a shadow over their entire lives.

Also, at the rate we are going, its something like a decade to full employment, and if Europe falls apart it could drag the US down with it which just further delays 'recovery'. The US may well be in an awful labor market for my entire 30s. Thats bound to hurt tons of people's early careers.

ParticleGrl, I agree with you that for those graduates entering force during these past few years will possibly face long-term effects due to the fallout of the financial crisis of 2008 (in a manner not dissimilar to those who came of age during the Great Depression). What I'm arguing is that if we look at a long-term view, the financial crisis will not have a permanent negative effect on the US economy as a whole.

There has been much press lately about an increasing pessimism and negativity within the US, how American civilization is disintegrating, how the US is "losing its place" in the world (a pessimism that I see reflected even here in Physics Forums). What I'm arguing is that the pessimism underlying these statements are unwarranted. There has been numerous periods (including the 1930's) when people have predicted the decline of the US, only to see the nation not only recover, but take strong leadership in all spheres of the world. Frankly, I don't see how the current situation is any different.

The resources available to the US -- the enormous creativity of the people, a culture that is accepting of experimentation, risk-taking and entrepreneurship, the great universities, the resilience of the nation as a whole -- are considerable, and I am fundamentally optimistic that the US will once again rise up to its challenges, and with it new opportunities for future students.

Now as far as when this will occur, or at any rate when we will reach full employment -- well, it could take a decade, or it could be sooner, and this will partly depend on events in Europe, as well as other events in the world, and I do not wish to hazard a guess of when that would be.
 
  • #34
I am not a physicist, but my happiest years as a consultant were when I was troubleshooting systems in pulp mills and paper machines. The hours were sometimes brutal, and required travel and absences from home, but the work was stimulating.

Part chemistry, part mechanical engineering, and part physics. I was not degreed in any of those disciplines, but 4 years in a brand-new pulp mill as a process chemist and 6 more years as the top operator of a very sophisticated high-speed paper machine teaches you stuff you can't possibly learn in college.
 
  • #35
StatGuy2000 said:
What I'm arguing is that if we look at a long-term view, the financial crisis will not have a permanent negative effect on the US economy as a whole.

I happen to believe that history is largely determined by the actions of people, so there is a lot of randomness and a lot depends on the decisions that people make. I also believe that the "more you sweat, the less you bleed." One reason I'm optimistic about the Chinese economy is paradoxically because everyone is worried about the Chinese economy. There are about a dozen things that can kill Chinese economic growth, but people are worried about them and so people will do stuff to fix them. Conversely, when you hear people being too optimistic, that's a sign to be pessimistic.

What I'm arguing is that the pessimism underlying these statements are unwarranted. There has been numerous periods (including the 1930's) when people have predicted the decline of the US, only to see the nation not only recover, but take strong leadership in all spheres of the world. Frankly, I don't see how the current situation is any different.

Survivorship bias. (i.e. first rule of finance, don't mistake luck for skill)

There are numerous cases in which people have predicted the decline of the UK, France, Japan, Germany, Argentina, China, and the Soviet Union, and they were *right*. If you take N countries and then put together a set of random events that causes them to collapse, then just by random chance, one of those countries is going to "magically" survive, and whoever magically survives is going to win the game.

However, the mistake is to then go back and then assume that because you were lucky, that you end up somehow *destined* for greatness. Because you flipped heads, eight times in a row, you shouldn't assume that this proves that the ninth time things will come out heads.

The resources available to the US -- the enormous creativity of the people, a culture that is accepting of experimentation, risk-taking and entrepreneurship, the great universities, the resilience of the nation as a whole -- are considerable, and I am fundamentally optimistic that the US will once again rise up to its challenges, and with it new opportunities for future students.

One thing that worries me is that when things get bad, the *first* people that leave are the risk-takers and entrepreneurs. The thing that worries me is that Chinese people that are packing up and ending in China are the people that would have started companies in the US in the 1980's and 1990's. They are starting them in China. (And it looks like the same thing is happening in India.)

Once you have people leave, then the universities will start to fall apart. It's not going to be a fast process (it will take decades), but it's going to happen unless people decide that it's not.

Now as far as when this will occur, or at any rate when we will reach full employment -- well, it could take a decade, or it could be sooner, and this will partly depend on events in Europe, as well as other events in the world, and I do not wish to hazard a guess of when that would be.

1) You don't have a decade to fix the problem. Right now the US is not going into a long term Japanese spiral, but it's headed in that direction. Every year that the employment situation doesn't improve is one more year of "brain drain." If you wait a decade before the problem gets fixed then all of your Ph.D.'s and entrepreneurs are going to end up overseas.

Also skills rot. If you have a particle physicist that ends up working as a waiter, then ten years when the physics jobs open up, they are going to be unqualified for them.

2) You could have full employment in six months if the political will were there. You could *easily* have full employment for physics Ph.D.'s if American politicians decided it was a good thing. It's possible for the US to just say, every physics Ph.D gets a job at a government lab doing whatever research we think is good for the US.

What political leadership in China did in 2007 was to say "Good grief, we are about to have tens of millions of angry unemployed people tear us to pieces, what the heck can we do?" Answer: Build 10,000 km of high speed rail. Now it's a crappy, unsafe system, but that means more jobs for safety inspectors. In 2011, the economy looked like it was too overheated. So what the political leadership did was to slow things down. All of the railway projects that were scheduled to be finished in 2012 were delayed until 2015. Now it looks like the economy is slowing a bit too much, so that some of the projects that were delayed until 2015 are going to get moved to 2013.

The idea of using government spending to set up employment was not invented in China. An Englishman, Keynes figured it out.

Right now, my big hope is that people will just get fed up and start demonstrating. I was really happy that "occupy wall street" was going on, and I'm sad that the demonstrations have died down. Alternatively, I'm hoping that there will be some Sputnik event that "wakes people up."
 
<h2>1. What inspired you to become a physicist?</h2><p>I have always been fascinated by the natural world and wanted to understand the fundamental laws and principles that govern it. Physics seemed like the perfect field to explore these concepts and satisfy my curiosity.</p><h2>2. What do you enjoy most about being a physicist?</h2><p>I love the process of discovery and the feeling of excitement when I make a new breakthrough or understand a complex concept. I also enjoy the collaborative nature of the field and working with other scientists to solve problems.</p><h2>3. What are some common misconceptions about being a physicist?</h2><p>One common misconception is that all physicists work in a laboratory and wear lab coats. In reality, there are many different subfields of physics and not all of them involve conducting experiments in a lab. Also, being a physicist does not necessarily mean you have to be a genius - it takes hard work and dedication like any other profession.</p><h2>4. How do you think being a physicist contributes to society?</h2><p>Physics has played a crucial role in many technological advancements that have greatly improved our daily lives, such as the development of computers, medical equipment, and renewable energy sources. Additionally, physicists are constantly seeking to understand the world around us, which can lead to new discoveries and innovations that benefit society.</p><h2>5. What advice do you have for someone considering a career in physics?</h2><p>My advice would be to follow your curiosity and passion for the subject. Physics can be challenging, but if you have a genuine interest in it, the hard work will be worth it. Also, don't be afraid to ask questions and seek guidance from experienced physicists - collaboration and learning from others is an important aspect of the field.</p>

1. What inspired you to become a physicist?

I have always been fascinated by the natural world and wanted to understand the fundamental laws and principles that govern it. Physics seemed like the perfect field to explore these concepts and satisfy my curiosity.

2. What do you enjoy most about being a physicist?

I love the process of discovery and the feeling of excitement when I make a new breakthrough or understand a complex concept. I also enjoy the collaborative nature of the field and working with other scientists to solve problems.

3. What are some common misconceptions about being a physicist?

One common misconception is that all physicists work in a laboratory and wear lab coats. In reality, there are many different subfields of physics and not all of them involve conducting experiments in a lab. Also, being a physicist does not necessarily mean you have to be a genius - it takes hard work and dedication like any other profession.

4. How do you think being a physicist contributes to society?

Physics has played a crucial role in many technological advancements that have greatly improved our daily lives, such as the development of computers, medical equipment, and renewable energy sources. Additionally, physicists are constantly seeking to understand the world around us, which can lead to new discoveries and innovations that benefit society.

5. What advice do you have for someone considering a career in physics?

My advice would be to follow your curiosity and passion for the subject. Physics can be challenging, but if you have a genuine interest in it, the hard work will be worth it. Also, don't be afraid to ask questions and seek guidance from experienced physicists - collaboration and learning from others is an important aspect of the field.

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