Career guidance for a very lost Physics PhD student?

[CrysPhys]

And to finish, how is your relationship with your advisor? Your advisor should be part of the discussion you are carrying out here.

I would advise caution here. The OP should first go over their advisor's background carefully, and approach discussions on "life after a PhD" carefully. I never worked in academia. My career was spent entirely in industry and law firms.

I was once involved in a couple of initiatives to match STEM students (undergrad and above) with non-academic mentors. These initiatives were based on the premises that (a) most STEM students do not end up in academic careers and (b) most STEM professors do not have first-hand experience with non-academic careers. For (b), I haven't tracked recent stats; but I'm fairly certain that it still holds for professors who are advising physics PhD candidates. After all, the road to academic success in physics is typically: a PhD, one or more postdocs, one or more untenured professorships, and then a tenured professorship.

More alarming was an attitude we found held by some professors. I'll paraphrase: "If you're a first-rate PhD, you'll land a job in academia. If you don't land a job in academia, you're not first rate, and will need to look elsewhere." Before the OP approaches their advisor for career guidance, the OP should carefully find out whether or not their advisor shares the above attitude. Otherwise, if the OP asks bluntly, "I'm not interested in pursuing an academic career after my PhD. What are my alternative career options, and what should I do now to better position myself for them?", that discussion could potentially have negative consequences on the OP.

 

[CrysPhys]

Yes, I should have been clearer and said I meant what hard skills she brought to the table. I understand that her soft skills in language/culture were invaluable for getting the position.

Just to let you know: I still plan to respond.

 

[Choppy]

From a distant vantage point it seems one issue is that the OP is deeply concerned about not being as smart/academically inclined as their peers. Some might consider it a form of imposter syndrome. But this is extremely common in graduate school. Consider:

• The academic bottleneck - all though high school you probably did well without a lot of effort because there, your peers were the general population, or at least that segment of it that took advanced science options. In undergrad, you still did okay, but it wasn't quite as easy, because your peers were a very small segment of the general population that (a) had an aptitude for physics, and (b) enough desire that they chose to pursue it for post-secondary education, even to the exclusion of other STEM options. Then you entered graduate school. This was a highly competitive process where they selected the top performing undergraduates. After a couple years of graduate school you may have even experienced some attrition within your program as well.
• Sources of feedback - victories tend to get celebrated, sub-par performances tend to get buried. This can generate a bias that would indicate your peers are performing better than you.
• Details in the pool - your grad school peers include everyone from first years who started a few weeks ago to those "all but defended" candidates. People learn a lot in graduate school. When I was in grad school, students often ate lunch in a common area and when I joined them it was easy to feel outclassed, but looking back it was most often the senior students who were doing the majority of the talking.
• Professors - you have frequent interactions with those people who have (i) survived even more bottlenecks, and (ii) have dedicated their careers, and in many cases the majority of their lives to a particular sub-field. They constantly issue you problems that are designed to challenge you. You have formal meetings where you face multiple professors, all experts, who question you on the details of your work.

Some things that can help:

• Reframe your situation - you're at a stage in life where you're supposed to be learning as much as you can. In such cases it's ideal to be surrounded by people who know more than you. Be inquisitive. Learn more. Compete less.
• Practice gratitude - take small moments to appreciate the opportunities you have, tell people that you're thankful for the opportunity to work with them, or that you appreciate their efforts on a project.
• Focus on what matters - figure out what your most important tasks are and concentrate on getting those done. Sure, there might be other people who at "smarter" than you by some arbitrary metric, but they are working on different projects.
• Take time to explore your own passions - kindle those things that keep you excited about the field. If you've lost sight of them, search out new ones.
  Also explore other interests outside of your field of interest... take up a new hobby, try a martial art, join the debate team, etc.
• Take good care of yourself - avoid burnout, get good sleep, exercise, nutrition, socialization, etc.
• Recognize and appreciate that none of this is easy.

 

[gleem]

I would advise caution here. The OP should first go over their advisor's background carefuand approach discussions on "life after a PhD" carefully. I never worked in academia. My career was spent entirely in industry and law firms.

My suggestion was not meant as post-graduation advice. The OP seems to have a self-esteem problem. He needs to get himself back on his feet. He needs validation from someone he respects. Hopefully that person is his advisor.

More alarming was an attitude we found held by some professors. I'll paraphrase: "If you're a first-rate PhD, you'll land a job in academia. If you don't land a job in academia, you're not first rate, and will need to look elsewhere.

Some professors. Certainly, some professors in a field that has practical applications will be more attuned to careers outside academia. As for professors in general, on average only about 25% of graduates will go on to academic positions. I don't buy the attitude that if you do not go into academia you are a second-rate physicist. They may prefer their students to go into academia but they know that not all, no matter how good, will.

@Choppy, He does not seem to have any passions or interests, having said:

Interest is a tricky thing. I think a person needs a sense of safety and self-confidence to entertain interests. Graduate school has eroded both to a great degree, and has had a way of making me quite numb to 'interest.'

 

[dp647]

I appreciate everyone here taking time to write out such thoughtful responses. However, without sounding ungrateful, I do think the conversation is steering somewhat away from what I had intended.

I have heard much about imposter syndrome, building up resilience to it, and continuing to work despite it; it is indeed a well-known phenomenon in the contemporary graduate school environment. I have worked through imposter syndrome, one could say, from my first day of undergrad, and I have done so primarily by breaking down my tasks into short term chunks. The story of my education has been one of "let's survive this week, and worry about the next over the weekend" -- this strategy has brought me to where I currently am.

But, this strategy has a clear flaw: it renders me unable to make plans that are any grander than accomplishing next week's tasks. Even in undergrad, I remember trying to formulate long-term plans (e.g: career goals), and having the attempt inevitably devolve into circular thoughts with no progress, accompanied by much anxiety. It was only when I gave up on making long-term goals that I could get anything done.

I think I became more fully aware of this limitation only recently, when a friend pointed out that, unlike most of the students here, I really have no plans beyond next week (the caveat is that the social circle I'm referring to is mainly composed of undergrad engineering and computer science majors, many of them former students of mine). They all have an idea of what career path they want to work towards and are actively acquiring skills to realize their goals. I'm the only one, it seems, who is mentally paralyzed in this regard.

What prompted my OP was a specific impending task. At this time, I am soon to fill out my annual Student Progress Report. Among its questions are a few which ask me to write out my career plans. My answers the previous two years were invariably hand-wavy: I said I wanted to use my education somewhere in industry, and I arbitrarily dropped photonics/optical engineering as a name just for the sake of some specificity (I only did so because my project so far has dealt with optical cavities). While there is no right or wrong answer, my advisor did say that he thought my answer was too vague.

My advisor recommended I do some career research by looking for what jobs are out there in general, and what jobs might make use of a graduate education in a technical field in particular. He also encouraged me to talk to real people, and I view this post as part of that. I did some researching over the summer. Besides triggering my usual anxiety from dealing with non-short-term goals, it had the effect of making me feel generally unqualified. There was not one job where I read the description or candidate requirements and thought to myself, "yes, that's me, I could do that." Naturally, I had a bit of a crisis of self-worth after that.

At present, I suppose what I desperately want to know is how to answer that one question on my progress report. I obviously know that no one but me can give an answer, and that no one on here can answer for me, but I thought that perhaps talking to strangers on the internet is a better move towards developing an answer than just sitting there and thinking. The latter has never gotten me anywhere, at any rate.

 

[CrysPhys]

Yes, I should have been clearer and said I meant what hard skills she brought to the table. I understand that her soft skills in language/culture were invaluable for getting the position.

* If by “hard skills”, you mean skills specific to experimental AMO physics (such as optical spectroscopy and cryogenics), the answer is none. Rather than dwelling on “hard skills” and “soft skills”, you should focus on “desired skills” (i.e., skills desired by an employer) and “transferable skills” (i.e., skills transferrable from physics to other, including non-scientific, fields).

* First and foremost, employers in a variety of fields value PhD physicists as problem solvers. In order to solve a problem, of course, you first need to formulate it. So you first need to research the background of the scenario of interest and come up to speed. Then you need to model the system of interest: such as defining inputs and outputs, boundary conditions, constraints, and governing equations of state. Finally you need to solve for outputs of interest, either analytically or computationally (e.g., via simulations); or, if you’re an experimentalist, via tests, measurements, and data analysis. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, if you can model complex systems such as phase transitions in soft-condensed matter, you are well equipped to model financial markets and supply chains. The question is not whether you have the ability to, but rather, whether you have the desire to.

* Employers also value PhD physicists for their scope of breadth and depth: the ability to comprehend high-level abstractions, as well as the ability to drill down to nitty-gritty minute details. E.g., when I worked as a telcom engineer, there were systems engineers who modelled systems with block diagrams and virtual interfaces, but they never set foot in a test lab. And then there were hardware engineers who could design filters according to spec, but had no interest in the systems in which the filters were used in. But I was able to read through standards documents, define a systems architecture, specify the network elements and their interfaces, build a network test lab (including wire up custom cables with my own hands), run the tests, and analyze the data.

* There are also a whole host of desired and transferrable skills pertinent to experimental physicists, but, since you a theorist, they are not applicable to you. But if you go beyond analytical calculations and can handle large and complex data sets computationally, that would certainly be a plus.

* A key skill in the workplace, and one that you typically do not acquire in a PhD physics program, is the ability to communicate with a wide variety of audiences. You should make a special effort to develop this skill while you are still in school. For me, this came easy, since I worked diligently in my high-school and undergrad humanities courses, had a keen interest in writing, and even wrote poetry. I was successful in product support teams because I could give presentations to, and write papers for, non-technical audiences. Often the execs who called the shots had a business and finance, not a technical, background. The ability to adapt my writing to different audiences was also key to my success as a patent agent.

 

[CrysPhys]

What prompted my OP was a specific impending task. At this time, I am soon to fill out my annual Student Progress Report. Among its questions are a few which ask me to write out my career plans. My answers the previous two years were invariably hand-wavy: I said I wanted to use my education somewhere in industry, and I arbitrarily dropped photonics/optical engineering as a name just for the sake of some specificity (I only did so because my project so far has dealt with optical cavities). While there is no right or wrong answer, my advisor did say that he thought my answer was too vague.

My advisor recommended I do some career research by looking for what jobs are out there in general, and what jobs might make use of a graduate education in a technical field in particular. He also encouraged me to talk to real people, and I view this post as part of that. I did some researching over the summer. Besides triggering my usual anxiety from dealing with non-short-term goals, it had the effect of making me feel generally unqualified. There was not one job where I read the description or candidate requirements and thought to myself, "yes, that's me, I could do that." Naturally, I had a bit of a crisis of self-worth after that.

At present, I suppose what I desperately want to know is how to answer that one question on my progress report. I obviously know that no one but me can give an answer, and that no one on here can answer for me, but I thought that perhaps talking to strangers on the internet is a better move towards developing an answer than just sitting there and thinking. The latter has never gotten me anywhere, at any rate.

Have you looked at all the career resources offered by American Physical Society (APS) ( https://www.aps.org/ ) and American Institute of Physics (AIP) ( https://www.aip.org/ )? As a grad student, you can join APS for free for one year and get greatly reduced rates while you're still a student. APS and AIP have numerous articles and stats on various career opportunities for physics PhDs, including listings of companies that hire them. APS also has a career mentoring program (as I mentioned before, I participated in other mentoring programs, but not the current APS one, so I don't have first-hand experience here; but it doesn't hurt to try it). APS also has a dedicated Forum on Graduate Student Affairs and a Forum on Industrial and Applied Physics. You should check those out.

ETA: Also note this thread on career resources in Physics Today: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/looking-for-a-physics-job-physics-today-can-help.974636/. In particular, since 2019 there has been an annual "Careers Issue", typically Oct or Nov issue.

 

[gleem]

Perhaps we should have paid more attention to the OP statement in post 4.

The first is a tricky one; I’ve always found it hard to put into words what I like and why. If I approach it from the structured view of specific courses I enjoyed in undergrad, then in no particular order these are the following: intermediate classical mechanics, complex analysis, Buddhist theology, Christian theology, thermal physics, ancient philosophy, quantum mechanics, Roman history/archaeology. I sometimes joke that I am a humanities person who stumbled into physics and hasn’t yet been kicked out.

Are you waiting to be kicked out? Are you really interested in Physics? There is no shame in admitting it and changing your goals, whatever they were. Of course you have the last three-plus years weighing on you. You could take an MS. Then what? You said you liked tutoring; well, what about teaching HS. You will need to get a teaching certificate for public schools, but some private schools may not require one. We know there are not enough qualified physics teachers unless AI is taking up the slack. But here again is an opportunity to leverage expertise in AI in education if you can see a path to it.

On the other hand, you could start over in a Philosophy of Physics, History of Physics, or Physics Education program. These would most likely put you on an academic path and cost you about four years at a minimum, plus postdoc(s), and then there is no guarantee of an appointment.


This is all easy for me to say, and I am not walking in your shoes.
"The wise speak only of what they know.” J.R.R. Tolkien.

 

[CrysPhys]

Perhaps we should have paid more attention to the OP statement in post 4.

I did note the OP's Post #4. But it didn't overly concern me, because in Post #1, the OP wrote:

One thing I do know for certain is that I will not voluntarily drop out of my program, even with a Master’s and even if the PhD will never be needed for a job. It has been my rule in life to finish anything I undertake without exception.

I've been operating on the assumption that the OP and this thread are legit. Maybe, maybe not. But there are likely many other PhD candidates in similar straits, and I've been trying to post info that would be of use to them as well.

 

[dp647]

Have you looked at all the career resources offered by American Physical Society (APS) ( https://www.aps.org/ ) and American Institute of Physics (AIP) ( https://www.aip.org/ )? As a grad student, you can join APS for free for one year and get greatly reduced rates while you're still a student. APS and AIP have numerous articles and stats on various career opportunities for physics PhDs, including listings of companies that hire them. APS also has a career mentoring program (as I mentioned before, I participated in other mentoring programs, but not the current APS one, so I don't have first-hand experience here; but it doesn't hurt to try it). APS also has a dedicated Forum on Graduate Student Affairs and a Forum on Industrial and Applied Physics. You should check those out.

ETA: Also note this thread on career resources in Physics Today: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/looking-for-a-physics-job-physics-today-can-help.974636/. In particular, since 2019 there has been an annual "Careers Issue", typically Oct or Nov issue.

Thank you for the information. I will look into the APS career mentoring program, as it sounds useful and relevant.

 

[dp647]

This may be a dumb question, but how would people here approach answering the "career plans" questions that I mentioned are present in my Student Progress Report? In particular, these are the following pair of questions:

1. Briefly summarize your career-related goals and/or career considerations. (e.g., type of activity: research/discovery/invention, teaching, management, analysis, writing; type of employer: business, education, entrepreneurship, government, non-profit, start-up; geographic priorities; financial objectives; etc.)

2. Briefly summarize your goals and/or plans for professional development in the coming year. (e.g., clinical experience, communication, conferences, internships, international experiences, networking, performances, speaking, teaching, writing, technical skills, etc.).

I've never seen someone else's answers to these, so I would appreciate it if someone pretended they're in grad school again and had to write satisfactory answers. My response to the former mostly just stated that I wanted to go into industry (as opposed to academe), and floated the idea of pursuing a role in the optics/photonics industry. My answer to the latter listed teaching and presenting as experiences (teaching as a TA, giving monthly presentation to my research group, respectively).

 

[gleem]

For the first question on the Student Progress Report, just give your best current guess. You cannot be held to it since it can change as you learn more and more opportunities open up. It shouldn't require a lot of thinking. You can even include some uncertainty, since you cannot know how your circumstances will develop. You should include specifics, like indicating interest in one of the current problems that are being worked on. Google: companies doing research on AMO physics. I know you have a problem visualizing yourself as a successful researcher at this point, but you must learn to see how to develop a path to that end. Go to the company's website or whatever clearinghouse has positions with requirements posted. Google: what skills or experience are necessary for a job in industry in AMO physics to be successful. This will help with the second question.

The second question wants you to think about how you can make yourself better able to progress and achieve your goals, to be more productive, skills that need developing, and what resources you should seek to aid in your progress. In industry, you may be required to set yearly goals and objectives, which would be used as a standard by which you would be judged for promotion or increased compensation. So if you are planning to go into industry, get used to it. But be realistic and state what is actually attainable so that next year you will have demonstrated progress.

 

[bhobba]

When I worked as a programmer, our CIO had a PhD in physics. Here is how he got the job. He started a graduate diploma in computing (normally takes a year, but he got a few exemptions and started applying for jobs while still studying - they required significant progress towards a qualification, not completion). Anyway, he got a job as an entry-level programmer rather quickly, doing scientific programming. With his PhD, he got promoted quickly; many places for more senior jobs that require experience count relevant higher-level education as meeting the experience requirement. He got the senior executive job because it required proven ability to do research. His PhD nailed that.

That's just one case I know of. One of the team leaders when I started work had a degree in math and physics. He started as an entry-level programmer, with the understanding that he would do part-time further study.

One of our top economists here in Australia, Andrew Stone, got a PhD in pure math from Stanford. He did a graduate diploma in Economics, and the rest is history.

Basically, with a PhD in math, physics or a related area, the world is your oyster, provided you do a smidgen of further study in an in-demand area and keep applying for jobs. I frequently interviewed applicants for entry-level programming jobs. I had one applicant with a PhD in math who started a graduate certificate in computing. That counted as significant progress toward a computing qualification requirement, and he was offered a job. He got promoted soon after elsewhere.

Added later:
Consider entry-level jobs in Government. Private enterprise sometimes will classify people like you as overqualified, just using the job as a stepping stone, which, of course, you are. People on government selection panels know this as well, but by law cannot take it into account; they must select the best qualified person, and personnel review it. Government employees, by nature, are predominantly risk-averse.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Matterwave]

I got a Ph.D. in astrophysics and now I work as head of AI at a start up, having previously worked at a FANG company. There's a lot of physics Ph.D.s who pivot to data science, engineering, finance, consulting, etc. It's common.

The one thing you do have to be on the lookout for is the effect of AI on junior/mid level hiring and how that changes in the next couple of years.

 

[dp647]

I got a Ph.D. in astrophysics and now I work as head of AI at a start up, having previously worked at a FANG company. There's a lot of physics Ph.D.s who pivot to data science, engineering, finance, consulting, etc. It's common.

The one thing you do have to be on the lookout for is the effect of AI on junior/mid level hiring and how that changes in the next couple of years.

Indeed, the effect AI will have on what qualifications I have to bring to the table is the intimidating part for me. During my undergrad, it seemed (as @bhobba above alluded to) that having very basic coding skills atop a physics background was sufficient to get an entry-level job involving programming somewhere. I even remember being told that if I could code a fizzbuzz, that was good enough of a base to get into somewhere that I could be trained further. Now, I see many friends who are finishing undergraduate degrees in computer science struggling to find internships/jobs. There just seems to be such a glut of people graduating from CS that, together with many entry-level coding tasks now being done by AI, the bar for what's considered adequate has been raised tremendously. It's only natural to get dismayed when I realize that even people with a degree in computer science are starting to struggle.

 

[gleem]

The need for "coders" is decreasing, but not the need for those who determine what is to be coded and how, as well as validating the final product..

 

[jedishrfu]

I know one major American corporation viewed the Brazilian market as one of the top ten regions for selling computer products, both hardware and software. FIGS, CJK, and Brazilian Portuguese were considered important markets, and products were translated for them when the US release was made.

FIGS = French, Italian, german, Spanish
CJK = Chinese, Japanese, Korean

 

[bhobba]

many friends who are finishing undergraduate degrees in computer science struggling to find internships/jobs.

Before I retired, I was transitioning to managing our data warehouse. Even back then, things were moving away from coding. Now Data Science is the big thing, but that too is threatened - AI is on the ascendancy. Thats what I would look at for a graduate certificate in, e.g.:
https://www.lse.ac.uk/study-at-lse/executive-education/programmes/data-analytics

Thanks
Bill