This does not mesh with my experience. The people in my physics phd class who ended up going into finance make significantly more than the people who are not in finance.
This is the incorrect comparison to make: he's deciding whether to pursue a PhD in physics for the sake of becoming a quant, not deciding between finance and other industries
given a PhD in physics in hand. The appropriate comparison to make is whether people in your university's grad schools (including MBAs, CS PhDs, lawyers, doctors) who are in technology firms (or any other) make more than the people in your physics PhD class who are in finance firms.
What remains is to argue the point if he is deciding to go into finance or other industries
given a bachelor's in physics in hand. My college's alumni association releases statistics of median wages of alumni and the software/tech jobs have always been paid more (above 100,000 out of college, median). Comparables: bulge bracket banks that match the regex .*S are bidding 80,000 for analysts while Dropbox is bidding >100,000 for fresh-out-of-college developers.
My motivation for pursing this field is that I find the field to be very fascinating, exciting, high paced, very intellectual, and the fact I would be successful. I have always been told I wouldn't be successful and I feel like this is a very successful job. I have considered the field of an actuary because it claims to be low stress, high pay and good working hours, but I don't think I would get the rush and excitement like I would on wall street.
"Fascinating, exciting, high-paced, intellectual, successful" are adjectives that don't really convey much except that you're enamored with a job that you don't know much about (no offense intended, all of us have this mentality to some extent). Let's put that in perspective:
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Fascinating: I don't really think that debugging and writing UIs is a fascinating activity, and I hope you don't either. This means we're talking about the few jobs where you don't do debugging and writing UIs as your primary activity. But you wanted something with rush and excitement too, this leaves the kind of work say, the managing directors at **** ***** Capital do (I reckon only the two of them make trade decisions while everyone else does slow-paced work), but the way in which they acquired their positions had nothing to do with acquiring a physics PhD.
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High-paced/rush/excitement: Work for quantitative individuals on the pits is getting completely outphased. This means you are looking at only two possibilities: working at one of few quant-oriented Chicago firms that still trade largely during the open outcry, or a prop trading floor. In the former, there are very few names left, DRW and CTC come to mind. In the latter, the Volcker Rule has shipped off a large number of prop traders in banks. This leaves you with much fewer jobs that can be both high-paced AND intellectual on Wall Street. There are still jobs that require on-demand debugging though, but I don't think this is the kind of 'high-paced' that you're looking for.
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Exciting and intellectual: Intellectual quant work and high-paced are rather mutually-exclusive characteristics and often require different personality types. Or rather, as a finance employer (and I am one), I'd rather keep them mutually-exclusive.
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Successful: How so? Renting a 800 ft^2 apartment vs owning a 4000 ft^2 house? Do you win a Nobel Prize for being in finance? Also, in many parts of the world, being a lawyer/doctor/scientist is considered a more prestigious profession than being a trader. I didn't actually know what a trader really did until I left my country for college.
