My personal take, which is similar to others here:
1) In my experience the biggest indicators of success for a new hire is having succeeded at difficult things in the past and having an interest in succeeding again. There's nothing magical about physics, but most physics PhD's are hard, so it's...
So first let me say I think the demand for CS is so ridiculously high that ageism isn't a thing until you're 65. And maybe not then. That's just my opinion, and is based on second hand experience. I wouldn't mention it except I want to tell a story.
The story isn't even CS, but I do think it...
I got a physics degree, and then subsequently changed careers twice. I currently work as a data scientist.
I agree with answers in this thread to your second question: this job is unlikely to be much help getting into your PhD program.
However whether it's beneficial to your career (your first...
Two CS classes doesn't tell you anything about whether you'd enjoy or be good at any number of jobs that require programming.
I'm not interested in trying to get you to become a software engineer, but I do want to see if I can get you to think differently about programming.
I've done a tiny...
Depends on the company, of course. POV: I'm a data scientist at a tech company and my impression from the SWEs I work around is that their degree means zero to their career there. Nobody cares and it doesn't matter. Maybe having a BS is still helpful in getting the job (though much less so than...
Just for fun, let's take two examples.
Is your alternative to this to instead go $40k in debt getting a journalism, public health, or other low value degree where you can be worked to the bone for low salaries in crummy locations?
Or is your alternative instead to leverage the programming...
I think the answers you've gotten have been very good. My personal experience is that it was worth it for me. It took me about 1.5 years and was paid for + I got a stipend. It opened a few doors - nothing amazing, but it synergized well with my other work experience.
I bet there are better...
I agree with jedishrfu that analytics is an area you can work your way into. These days the online seminars and courses have very little value by themselves, but I think they synergize very well with your PhD/BS - you've already shown you can do the really hard stuff, and the online courses...
This is true. It should vary for lots of other reasons as well, such as what their skills and experience are like and what industry they're applying to. I also think ChrysPhys point about noting whether the work is full or part time is a good one.
However, when it comes to order, there is no...
I think it's sadder that there are folks who, decades later, are still defined by their degrees.
Would you have gotten those internships while getting a creative writing or public health degree? Would you have the same skills you have now with those other degrees?
I'm not saying there's...
Nice! That's the thing about Python - when it comes to run speed, it's super janky. Two different methodologies that look, at face value, identical can have speed differences of 50, 150, 1000 times. What you did for speed was important and I'd include a bullet point on it. As for savings I think...
Regarding your CV, I would move the work experience above education.
I find the first and third bullets under education to be poor and/or unnecessary. The third might be relevant with some details about what you did.
For the Aviva work, what do you mean by "improve efficiency across data...
Many folks who get a PhD in astrophysics don't end up in astrophysics research. Is that okay with you? Some who do end up in research do so without a tenured or otherwise well paying and secure job, and it's essentially a life of poverty. A minority - and in astrophysics I believe it is a very...
Boring? I mean, sometimes we have to do boring things to make a living. I'm in analytics and my job is never boring, but it sure as hell isn't always fun or enjoyable. There are parts I genuinely enjoy, but I wouldn't come to work every day for free - the money I get paid definitely makes it all...
That robot.txt file is telling you all the directories you can't crawl. You need to feed that to your crawler and ensure it doesn't go there.
People have been sued by companies for crawling their sites without permission.
Yea I definitely meant the way you were either using it for you, or letting others use it for them. I wouldn't accept anyone else's personal password, just a recipe for disaster.
Nice! If you ever open source the code, I hope you'll message me the link on LinkedIn.
Two thoughts:
1) I don't think there's anything wrong with it the way you're using it (with a small caveat) and I don't think it represents a problem with the job search or hiring process. If it manages to...
I went physics -> actuarial -> data science. It has worked out very well for me.
I think Jedishrfu has a great list. Let me add to that a couple of others: 1) Elements of Statistical Learning, 2) Machine Learning by Murphy, and 3) any good undergraduate optimization book (e.g. Optimization by...
Yea, never forget the requirements necessary to become a recruiter - one must think to oneself "hey, I'm a recruiter". There are more than a few recruiters out there who have exactly that level of expertise in their field.
But there are some good ones. Find them and build that relationship.
As a side note, while pay is still very good for data science/machine learing/mlops folks, that's not the really hot market right now. It's data engineering that's the hot market right now. It might be worth giving that a quick spin.
Something important to know - it is normal to get a very low response rate applying cold to job ads. Some of those ads are for jobs that don't even exist. Some of them are ads for jobs whose occupant is decided on, and they're just going through the process for ceremony. Of the ones that are...
Alright, sounds like a plan. Let me throw out some additional thoughts. My goal with these isn't to change your direction, just to give your journey context.
First, let me expand the field a bit. The magic combination is this: math, computers, and professionalism. By professionalism I mean an...
I agree with others to do many things, but I do think there are some priorities. A steady job for multiple years is step #1. Switching jobs is fine, so long as it's a step up. Showing a measure of stability combined with some velocity forward in your career is critical. It will be hard to be...
It's a pretty bad idea.
I've changed careers twice, and both of them were bad ideas. They worked out extremely well.
I hope your bad idea works out even better than my bad ideas.
Best of luck in your endeavor.
As long as you don't care whether they're physics related, there are careers out there that will find your background valuable. However, note that they can't just value your skills & background - they have to value them more than all the other candidates. So there are options, but they aren't...
One critical aspect of my job is to ensure our teams don't have this happen to them. I work to ensure we get reasonable requirements, set appropriate deadlines, and require dependencies to be met.
I hate that there was no one there looking out for you.
Yep - the important context there being that they didn't respond to a job ad, they just sent a random email/message, so i need info on what they want. When someone responds to an job posting, I don't need a letter explaining they want a job in my dept. Because, you know, they responded to a job...
You're going to get radically different opinions on cover letters. My opinion is that they aren't necessary in general, but can sometimes help. In particular, smaller business or institutions may look for them, and a few larger places (e.g. hospitals) seem to often have a culture that demands...
The job market is pretty bumpy, even for those with experience and skill sets in demand. My opinion is that you're going to have a brutal time getting your foot in the door almost anywhere.
It's possible in the US to get your masters or PhD paid for, and even get a small stipend to spend each...
Some of it also may depend on how many positions actually turn up in your search area. If there are only a handful of open positions that turn up in a season, well, research away! Why not invest the time? Then I get what Dr. Courtney was saying.
On the other end of the spectrum, I don't know...
For those earlier in their career, I don't recommend this approach. Entry level positions aren't really that different within an industry, and entry level folks don't have enough experience to have something meaningfully different for every version of the resume.
For early-career folks on the...
You didn't tell us where you are located - it will make a big difference. It would also help to get an idea of roughly what you're making now. 10 years in civ-e should probably put you in the 80's or 90's?
It's going to be hard to get into a field that will make substantially more without going...
So some thoughts:
1) Finishing your PhD is probably a wise choice if you can manage it in 2 years. The work you're doing builds skills that have applications lots of places, and having that PhD on your resume will have value.
2) Bailing out with a Masters is not a terrible idea if you could do...
Keep trying. The cost is low and the reward high. Unfortunately, the probability of a hire is also not great, so you'll need endurance. You're looking at a tough time, so keep applying to jobs, even as you explore other options and gain other skills.
There's folks from many careers here -...
If you're trying to become a quant, you're not going about it the right way, and I think you need to explore other methods of getting the info you need. Any time you spend here is time you could have been doing something useful towards your goal.
If you're just trolling Vanadium 50 then you're...
Spyder is a different experience than a notebook - it isn't a web application, and doesn't have the same options for graphics, narrative text, etc. within the code. However, like a notebook, it does keep a kernel running, which can allow for some very nice debugging options. Spyder will feel...
I haven't suggested installing linux, just git bash. If you don't like the git bash terminal, you can use the windows terminal to do the same thing (it will even give you that option when you install git bash).
The important thing I want folks to take away from this is that there's nothing...
Sure there is!
Here's the exact code I would type to create and activate it in git bash:
python -m venv envs/physicsforum
source envs/physicsforum/Scripts/activate
The first line creates a "phsysicsforum" folder in my "envs" folder. Envs is where I keep all my environments; you can put yours...
As long as Python and git bash are installed, this would just be typing three lines into the bash terminal.
There's nothing special about Python package management on Windows. Venv even uses the same syntax as Linux (the only difference being the activation script is stored in...
I disagree about package management on Windows being a mess. I use git bash and python venv on Windows and it works very smoothly. I totally get a preference for other tools, but one can work very efficiently without them.
That's Python's strength: you can produce functional, usable code very quickly.
Ensuring that code runs fast, on the other hand, is something of an art. Python can run fast, but sometimes doesn't. There are a lot of opportunities for bottlenecks.
You've gotten great responses so far, and I'll see if I can add to it.
I like every suggestion so far. One thing I would say is that while it's perfectly fine to end up using Pycharm or other advanced IDE, I think there's real value in being able to work straight from the command line. I use...
A reason this could be coming up on your searches is due to geography. There are some places (e.g. Seattle) that I rarely see security clearance required (though it does happen!). Others (e.g. Huntsville, AL) almost always require clearance. This is due to the differing types of business the...