Near the End of A PhD and Have No Job

[mayonaise]

The feedback I get is consistently that other candidates had more experience doing X (where X is some technical technique/skill that is needed for the job) than I did. Generally, this is no doubt true, because odds are I self taught whatever I thought I needed as I was applying for the job. (My theory phd didn't give me much in the way of what industry might want).

This is starting to make me worried that engineering/science industry jobs are NOT what I should be applying for (despite being what I would like to do, and despite having a physics phd), because they seem to care more about experience with some technique than a broad background/trainable.

This exact sentiment came as a huge mind**** when I went job hunting the first time: I knew little about electronics other than they were a bunch of transistors. I could do C++ but what the heck was class inheritance? I had no idea what Verilog was, or was it very log? I had never even heard of Pro-E.

Having believed the professors "if you learn physics, you can do anything" "there is always industry" "physics is used everywhere" instilled me with such unrealistic sense of safety and superiority. But the truth is, an academia focused physics education gives you zero advantage over an engineering education for a particular engineering field. And since most engineering fields are represented by their respective disciplines in academia, a physicist cannot do anything without being humbled by the engineers. Besides, the sense of superiority really shuts one's mind from the world. Irony for the discipline that tries to figure out the world!

Oh, and I don't consider a physicist more trainable and has broader background anymore. Not compared to an engineer. That was just superiority complex.

 

[Choppy]

The feedback I get is consistently that other candidates had more experience doing X (where X is some technical technique/skill that is needed for the job) than I did. Generally, this is no doubt true, because odds are I self taught whatever I thought I needed as I was applying for the job. (My theory phd didn't give me much in the way of what industry might want).

This is starting to make me worried that engineering/science industry jobs are NOT what I should be applying for (despite being what I would like to do, and despite having a physics phd), because they seem to care more about experience with some technique than a broad background/trainable.

As someone who's recently been on the other side (doing the hiring) one of the issues that comes up has to do with the applicant pool. When your applicant pool has candidates with specific experience doing X (for a position in doing X), even though it may not be a requirement, those candidates still go to the top of the list.

 

[jk]

The feedback I get is consistently that other candidates had more experience doing X (where X is some technical technique/skill that is needed for the job) than I did. Generally, this is no doubt true, because odds are I self taught whatever I thought I needed as I was applying for the job. (My theory phd didn't give me much in the way of what industry might want).

This is starting to make me worried that engineering/science industry jobs are NOT what I should be applying for (despite being what I would like to do, and despite having a physics phd), because they seem to care more about experience with some technique than a broad background/trainable.

My experience with applying for engineering jobs is that they are looking for very specific set of skills/experience - the same set that you would get in school. From speaking with my engineer jobs, they seem to be mostly a "paint by the numbers" type of jobs. Of course, they only have Bachelor's degrees so the types of jobs they would qualify for might be different than what you are going after. What kind of engineering jobs are you applying for?

You might do better with software positions, especially since you have a more theoretical training and it would be easier to fit you in software roles. For example, if you don't have experience with control engineering, it would be hard to convince someone to put you in a role designing control systems for a factory or something like that. But software is generally more malleable and the people in software have a more diverse set of backgrounds. One of the directors at a financial firm I worked for has a phd in particle physics and he is in charge of a division that writes risk management software for the firm.

If you don't have particular programming skills, I would take a couple of classes at your local community college.

 

[jk]

This exact sentiment came as a huge mind**** when I went job hunting the first time: I knew little about electronics other than they were a bunch of transistors. I could do C++ but what the heck was class inheritance? I had no idea what Verilog was, or was it very log? I had never even heard of Pro-E.

Having believed the professors "if you learn physics, you can do anything" "there is always industry" "physics is used everywhere" instilled me with such unrealistic sense of safety and superiority. But the truth is, an academia focused physics education gives you zero advantage over an engineering education for a particular engineering field. And since most engineering fields are represented by their respective disciplines in academia, a physicist cannot do anything without being humbled by the engineers. Besides, the sense of superiority really shuts one's mind from the world. Irony for the discipline that tries to figure out the world!

Oh, and I don't consider a physicist more trainable and has broader background anymore. Not compared to an engineer. That was just superiority complex.

I don't recall any of my professors ever making a statement like the one you describe.

Arrogance and superiority complex will do you no good, regardless of the field. Physics is not some magic spell that can compensate for lack of knowledge of specific fields. It stands to reason that if a company is looking for someone with very specific skills to hit the ground running, then you won't stand a chance - even if you had come up with the latest TOE that united gravity and quantum mechanics.

From my experience, a physics person would do better to go for software jobs rather than engineering jobs unless you are an experimentalist and have specific experience related to the job that you are applying for.

 

[daveyrocket]

I heard those kinds of statements on a fairly regular basis, from professors, grad students and undergrads. There's a general attitude that gets sold to physics students that physics will prepare you for a variety of things but in reality it doesn't really prepare you for anything.

And ugh.. software. I went to graduate school to get away from that field. The fact that you're recommending that someone with a PhD needs to take more classes goes to show how worthless a PhD in physics is.

 

[mayonaise]

I don't recall any of my professors ever making a statement like the one you describe.

I wouldn't say I heard the exact words, but communication is only 30% words. Imagine from 18 to 22 you're surrounded by this kind of poster (see attached), and most of you curriculum follows a reductionist approach (see "More Is Different" from P. W. Anderson), and the highest powers in your institution, the professors, seem to be happy about all that. Then it's not hard to imagine what messages ultimately form in the minds of young physics students.

 

[ParticleGrl]

What kind of engineering jobs are you applying for?

Numerical programming when it pops up, thermo stuff, fluid stuff, anything simulations, occasionally EE stuff but my circuit design experience is all analog and there isn't a ton of call for it.

If you don't have particular programming skills, I would take a couple of classes at your local community college.

Really? More than a decade of schooling past high school, and your response is "maybe you don't have what it takes to get a job, take some classes?"

Physics is not some magic spell that can compensate for lack of knowledge of specific fields. It stands to reason that if a company is looking for someone with very specific skills to hit the ground running...

The thing with physics is that you learn a little bit about many different subjects. I certainly don't know as much about electrical engineering as an electrical engineer, but I probably know more about mechanical engineering than an electrical engineer.

I know a little about fluid mechanics, a little about circuit design, etc. The groundwork has been laid, and is there, and I've done a phd, so given a bit of time I can become an expert in any of these areas, after all I've done it before with certain aspects of quantum field theory. What companies actually VALUE that sort of dynamism?

 

[jk]

I heard those kinds of statements on a fairly regular basis, from professors, grad students and undergrads. There's a general attitude that gets sold to physics students that physics will prepare you for a variety of things but in reality it doesn't really prepare you for anything.

You should have taken those statements with a grain of salt. It is true that physics (or any analytical subject) does prepare you well for careers that use those type of skills. What you don't have is a ready made track you can jump on that will carry you to your destination. If you wanted that you should have studied accounting, engineering or something like that.

And ugh.. software. I went to graduate school to get away from that field. The fact that you're recommending that someone with a PhD needs to take more classes goes to show how worthless a PhD in physics is.

I think that kind of attitude is very detrimental to your growth. Having a physics PhD doesn't mean you know everything. Why would you think that without doing the work it takes to learn it, you could do the same work as someone who spent 4 or 8 years studing something like engineering? That is so naive as to be unbelievable. You are going to have to continually learn if you want to be competitive in today's workplace.

While physics won't give you a ready made job, somehow I suspect that you will eventually do fine. I have yet to meet a PhD in physics who is on welfare. Just to give you some hope, I know two physics phd's (one particle, the other condensed matter) that are in industry and both are doing great. One is a director at a major bank and the other heads his own consulting company. Both are probably millionaires.

 

[jk]

I wouldn't say I heard the exact words, but communication is only 30% words. Imagine from 18 to 22 you're surrounded by this kind of poster (see attached), and most of you curriculum follows a reductionist approach (see "More Is Different" from P. W. Anderson), and the highest powers in your institution, the professors, seem to be happy about all that. Then it's not hard to imagine what messages ultimately form in the minds of young physics students.

I wouldn't make my career plans based on a poster that claims that physics tells you how to get out of black holes.

But I do agree that physics (science in general, with the exception of perhaps Chemistry) departments do a poor job of informing students about career options.

 

[twofish-quant]

I heard those kinds of statements on a fairly regular basis, from professors, grad students and undergrads. There's a general attitude that gets sold to physics students that physics will prepare you for a variety of things but in reality it doesn't really prepare you for anything.

YMMV. I found my Ph.D., really, really, really incredibly useful for getting jobs.

And ugh.. software. I went to graduate school to get away from that field. The fact that you're recommending that someone with a PhD needs to take more classes goes to show how worthless a PhD in physics is.

As for as software goes, one reason I did my Ph.D. in the way that I did was that I wanted to get into software. I like programming. I like figuring out the universe. Writing nasty, hard code to figure out the universe was cool.

One problem with Ph.D.'s is that every Ph.D. is different. They aren't like MBA's in which one MBA is like another one. I happen to find my Ph.D. incredibly useful to get jobs, but YMMV.

 

[twofish-quant]

The groundwork has been laid, and is there, and I've done a phd, so given a bit of time I can become an expert in any of these areas, after all I've done it before with certain aspects of quantum field theory. What companies actually VALUE that sort of dynamism?

Investment banks.

 

[jk]

Numerical programming when it pops up, thermo stuff, fluid stuff, anything simulations, occasionally EE stuff but my circuit design experience is all analog and there isn't a ton of call for it.

This is probably very obvious but you are tailoring your resume to each kind of job, right? You listed 4 or 5 disparate items here. You should probably have that many, if not more, resumes - each emphasizing different aspects.

Really? More than a decade of schooling past high school, and your response is "maybe you don't have what it takes to get a job, take some classes?"

All you are looking for is a job, a chance to prove that you can be an asset to whoever hires you. The first job is the hardest since you have no experience in the work world - and no, most managers won't be impressed by your education. They'll be asking themselves what you can do for them. So if the company is looking for someone with all the sills you mentioned above plus who knows some C++, if you don't know C++ you lost that opportunity. I am not saying learn everything under the sun but if that is a common skill set in the jobs you are looking for and if you don't have that skill, what is wrong with learning it?
The attitude that you had more than a decade of schooling past high school won't cut it with a hiring manager if in that decade you didn't learn something that he/she finds necessary to do the job. At any rate, in today's job market, you can't stop learning or you'll be out the door at the next recession.

The thing with physics is that you learn a little bit about many different subjects. I certainly don't know as much about electrical engineering as an electrical engineer, but I probably know more about mechanical engineering than an electrical engineer.

I know a little about fluid mechanics, a little about circuit design, etc. The groundwork has been laid, and is there, and I've done a phd, so given a bit of time I can become an expert in any of these areas, after all I've done it before with certain aspects of quantum field theory. What companies actually VALUE that sort of dynamism?

When I used to interview people for positions within my company, I always looked for that type of dynamism. A willingness to learn new things, to push yourself to do whatever it takes to get the job done, to be flexible in dealing with unexpected situations, a sense of optimism and confidence (not arrogance) that you can get the job done and are willing to work hard for it, to not be afraid to admit when you don't know something...these mean more than a list of specific skills.

 

[twofish-quant]

This is probably very obvious but you are tailoring your resume to each kind of job, right? You listed 4 or 5 disparate items here. You should probably have that many, if not more, resumes - each emphasizing different aspects.

It turns out to be hard to do blind, because if you are going in blind, you really don't know what the company is looking for. Also, I've found that writing resumes end up being a lot of work, so I've ended up with two different ones and two cover letters. One which emphasizes the Ph.D. and one that doesn't.

All you are looking for is a job, a chance to prove that you can be an asset to whoever hires you. The first job is the hardest since you have no experience in the work world - and no, most managers won't be impressed by your education.

This is happens to be a hundred times easier when the manager has the same background as you do. One reason physics Ph.D.'s end up in certain fields is that it is a lot, lot, lot easier to get a job, if the manager that is making hiring decisions also has a physics Ph.D. In particular in some fields (oil/gas, defense, financial), your time as a Ph.D. is counted as work experience. One thing that is common about every company that I've worked in is that I've always had a boss that had a Ph.D. in something, and often it's been a Ph.D. in astrophysics. If the person who is interviewing has a astrophysics Ph.D., then you don't have to worry about the "so what good is your Ph.D.?"

Also, it's irrelevant that most managers want, and trying to make your resume appeal to most people I think is a big mistake. You don't care if 95% of the people that read your resume will toss it in the trash, especially since 95% of the people that read your resume will toss it in the trash. Also, sometimes you want the person reading the resume to immediate reject you. If you just have no hope of getting the job, it's a waste of everyone's time and energy if they don't immediate toss your resume.

I think the main obstacle to ParticleGrrl is that she wants to stay on the West coast. I sympathize with that since I spent three years trying to avoid moving, beforeI just gave up.

The other thing is that sometimes you can be the perfect candidate with the perfect resume and it doesn't matter because no one is hiring.

So if the company is looking for someone with all the sills you mentioned above plus who knows some C++, if you don't know C++ you lost that opportunity.

This isn't true in some industries. I've gotten hired in oil/gas and finance and the attitude was "we know you don't know didlly about oil/gas and/or finance but that doesn't matter since we know you can learn it quickly."

Also C++ is a hard thing to put on a resume. The problem is that programming languages is something that is notoriously easy to resume pad, so one of the important skills if you are an expert C++ programmer is to be able to write your experience in a way that's hard to "pad." Saying that you have C++ experience will get you past the initial HR keyword search, but that's all it's good for. Once you get past the initial HR keyword search, the you need to put something like "worked on system X designing class Y with Z source lines of code."

Finally often it's a often a *bad* thing to put C++ on your resume. If the company is looking for a C++ guru, and you aren't a C++ guru, then getting interviewed is just a waste of everyone's time. If you claim to be a C++ guru, then when the interview comes around, you'll be totally grilled with obscure C++ questions (Can you tell me when you'd write placement new, and how you'd call a C++ destructor without freeing memory? Tell me when you'd use template partial specialization, and what the purpose of the "typename" keyword is in templates.)

I am not saying learn everything under the sun but if that is a common skill set in the jobs you are looking for and if you don't have that skill, what is wrong with learning it?

Because if you can learn it in a month and everyone knows that you can learn it in a month, then people won't count off for you not knowing it. If you know nothing about option pricing, it won't kill you in a finance interview because people assume that they'll give you Hull and you'll learn everything you need to know in a month.

Now there is a lot of stuff that you *can't* learn in a month. In a month, I can get you to be able to program some very basic C++ so that you aren't totally illiterate in it, but you aren't going to be an expert. That's fine if they aren't looking for a C++ guru, but it will kill you if they are.

The attitude that you had more than a decade of schooling past high school won't cut it with a hiring manager if in that decade you didn't learn something that he/she finds necessary to do the job. At any rate, in today's job market, you can't stop learning or you'll be out the door at the next recession.

It will in some fields it will. This is one reason Ph.D.'s need to stick together.

Also the job market is crap. There's something fundamentally screwed up about the way that society works.

When I used to interview people for positions within my company, I always looked for that type of dynamism. A willingness to learn new things, to push yourself to do whatever it takes to get the job done, to be flexible in dealing with unexpected situations, a sense of optimism and confidence (not arrogance) that you can get the job done and are willing to work hard for it, to not be afraid to admit when you don't know something...these mean more than a list of specific skills.

Different people will look for different things. One thing that I do have is a lot of sympathy for interviewees since I've been on the other side of the table. Job hunting stinks. It's degrading, and one skill that you do have to learn is to fake emotions. You have to fake dynamism and optimism even though you feel lousy, and you hate your situation. The funny thing is that we're both pretending. You don't think that I'm as terrified of losing my job as you are of not getting one? But the smiles we were and the act that we put on, that's just like the suits we are wearing. It's a social convention.

One way I think of a job interview is that it's something like a standup comedy act, and learning to handle interviews is part of your education. The first time you do an interview, you will likely bomb, you'll say or do something that will get you dropped.

Something that I found useful for me is that my cynicism, anger, and pessimism has actually helped me a lot in the job search. I'll put on the act. I'll do the interview, and smile, and do or say whatever it takes to get me hired. But the fact that I'm "faking it" actually makes it easier to do it.

 

[jk]

It turns out to be hard to do blind, because if you are going in blind, you really don't know what the company is looking for. Also, I've found that writing resumes end up being a lot of work, so I've ended up with two different ones and two cover letters. One which emphasizes the Ph.D. and one that doesn't.

You do your research and find out what kind of work the compay does. If you're applying to an engineering company that is looking for hardware knowledge and a consulting company that does analytical work, you are going to have different resumes. I was talking in generalities.

This is happens to be a hundred times easier when the manager has the same background as you do. One reason physics Ph.D.'s end up in certain fields is that it is a lot, lot, lot easier to get a job, if the manager that is making hiring decisions also has a physics Ph.D. In particular in some fields (oil/gas, defense, financial), your time as a Ph.D. is counted as work experience. One thing that is common about every company that I've worked in is that I've always had a boss that had a Ph.D. in something, and often it's been a Ph.D. in astrophysics. If the person who is interviewing has a astrophysics Ph.D., then you don't have to worry about the "so what good is your Ph.D.?"

I suppose we all generalize from our experiences. I don't think it is true in all cases that your time as Ph.D is counted as work experience. Nor do I think that it is common that Ph.D's work for Ph.D's. I have worked with people who have Ph.D's (I don't have one) and in none of the cases did they report to someone that also had a PhD. I had one report to me and I know someone in the same group who had a Ph.D in Geophysics and was working as a DBA after working for 15 years for an oil company.
The guy that reported to me had a Ph.D in Computer Science but after he went through the interview process, which was pretty rigorous, it was evident that as far as the company was concerned, his PhD did not set him too far apart from the rest of the talent pool. His subsequent work history bore that out. He was good but not so much more than others who only had a Bachelor's. In some cases, people who have PhD's tend to be overly abstract and theoretical in their approach to business problems.

Also, it's irrelevant that most managers want, and trying to make your resume appeal to most people I think is a big mistake. You don't care if 95% of the people that read your resume will toss it in the trash, especially since 95% of the people that read your resume will toss it in the trash. Also, sometimes you want the person reading the resume to immediate reject you. If you just have no hope of getting the job, it's a waste of everyone's time and energy if they don't immediate toss your resume.

I am not even sure how to respond to this. It is relevant what the hiring manager wants. Also, I think it is always good to go to interviews even if you have no hope of getting the job. I am sick in that I enjoy interviews because they give me insights into the company and industry. More information is always better.

I think the main obstacle to ParticleGrrl is that she wants to stay on the West coast. I sympathize with that since I spent three years trying to avoid moving, beforeI just gave up.

I agree that is a hard one to overcome.

This isn't true in some industries. I've gotten hired in oil/gas and finance and the attitude was "we know you don't know didlly about oil/gas and/or finance but that doesn't matter since we know you can learn it quickly."

Funny enough, I have had the same happen to me in oil and gas and finance. I have also been rejected for jobs in finance and oil and gas because I didn't have some skill or experience they were looking for. So it's not industry specific but job specific.

Also C++ is a hard thing to put on a resume. The problem is that programming languages is something that is notoriously easy to resume pad, so one of the important skills if you are an expert C++ programmer is to be able to write your experience in a way that's hard to "pad." Saying that you have C++ experience will get you past the initial HR keyword search, but that's all it's good for. Once you get past the initial HR keyword search, the you need to put something like "worked on system X designing class Y with Z source lines of code."

Finally often it's a often a *bad* thing to put C++ on your resume. If the company is looking for a C++ guru, and you aren't a C++ guru, then getting interviewed is just a waste of everyone's time. If you claim to be a C++ guru, then when the interview comes around, you'll be totally grilled with obscure C++ questions (Can you tell me when you'd write placement new, and how you'd call a C++ destructor without freeing memory? Tell me when you'd use template partial specialization, and what the purpose of the "typename" keyword is in templates.)

The answer is simple. Don't claim to be a guru if you're not.

Also the job market is crap. There's something fundamentally screwed up about the way that society works.

Different people will look for different things. One thing that I do have is a lot of sympathy for interviewees since I've been on the other side of the table. Job hunting stinks. It's degrading, and one skill that you do have to learn is to fake emotions. You have to fake dynamism and optimism even though you feel lousy, and you hate your situation. The funny thing is that we're both pretending. You don't think that I'm as terrified of losing my job as you are of not getting one? But the smiles we were and the act that we put on, that's just like the suits we are wearing. It's a social convention.

The way I look at it, optimism means that you have hope even if your situation is bleak. I have been there and the best I know how to deal with it is to have something else that keeps you sane. I used to read math books.

One way I think of a job interview is that it's something like a standup comedy act, and learning to handle interviews is part of your education. The first time you do an interview, you will likely bomb, you'll say or do something that will get you dropped.

Something that I found useful for me is that my cynicism, anger, and pessimism has actually helped me a lot in the job search. I'll put on the act. I'll do the interview, and smile, and do or say whatever it takes to get me hired. But the fact that I'm "faking it" actually makes it easier to do it.

In some ways, it is an act. You get better at it by doing it more. I used to go on interviews knowing I won't get the job just for the practice. It is almost enjoyable when you have no pressure.

 

[daveyrocket]

You should have taken those statements with a grain of salt. It is true that physics (or any analytical subject) does prepare you well for careers that use those type of skills. What you don't have is a ready made track you can jump on that will carry you to your destination. If you wanted that you should have studied accounting, engineering or something like that.

It's easy to say that it should have been taken with a grain of salt, but for some crazy mixed-up reason I thought I should have been able to trust my advisors in their perspective on careers. If I had been more skeptical, I definitely wouldn't have gotten a PhD in physics. Honestly we should be telling people that they shouldn't do physics because there are no jobs in the field.

I think that kind of attitude is very detrimental to your growth. Having a physics PhD doesn't mean you know everything. Why would you think that without doing the work it takes to learn it, you could do the same work as someone who spent 4 or 8 years studing something like engineering? That is so naive as to be unbelievable. You are going to have to continually learn if you want to be competitive in today's workplace.

Huh? Of course it doesn't mean you know everything, I never claimed that it did so I don't know what you are talking about.

Getting a PhD in any field comes with a tremendous opportunity cost. But if you get a PhD in just about any field of engineering, there is an industrial field you can go into. Same with chemistry, biology, geology, statistics, psychology, etc. Of course you're not guaranteed a job, and of course maybe you'll go into another field, but at least there are jobs in the field that value degrees in that field. Not so in physics.

While physics won't give you a ready made job, somehow I suspect that you will eventually do fine. I have yet to meet a PhD in physics who is on welfare. Just to give you some hope, I know two physics phd's (one particle, the other condensed matter) that are in industry and both are doing great. One is a director at a major bank and the other heads his own consulting company. Both are probably millionaires.

Yeah I'm not worried. I will probably end up doing programming. But I knew how to do that before I went to graduate school, which will make my graduate education a complete waste. Really if I wanted to spend my life as a programmer, I'd have already gone into that field. I did physics because I wanted something different.

 

[Choppy]

Honestly we should be telling people that they shouldn't do physics because there are no jobs in the field.

Where are you getting your data?

Whenever I look up statistics on such things, it seems that physics majors and physics PhDs tend to do quite well in comparison with other majors, and certainly better than national averages.

Some sites of interest:
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes192012.htm
https://www.cap.ca/careers/home/employmentprospects.html
http://www.physicstoday.org/jobs/about_jobs
http://www.aip.org/statistics/catalog.html

 

[ParticleGrl]

Whenever I look up statistics on such things, it seems that physics majors and physics PhDs tend to do quite well in comparison with other majors, and certainly better than national averages.

The problem is that salary comparisons are likely apples and oranges, and physics has a much larger standard deviation than many other majors/phd disciplines. Consider- I'm a physics phd, and I'm near the middle of the salary distribution for recent physics phds (which excludes postdocs, so I'm probably WAY above the "real" median) with a job bartending. Yes, salary wise I do quite well compared to the national average, but if I never get another job, was the phd useful for me economically? Of course not.

Further, people don't get phds because they want money, they hope for a career somehow related to physics. I know I did it because I wanted a job where I could actually do physics. Few people get a physics phd because of their life-long ambition to work in insurance or finance. If I end up in the hospitality industry, daveyrocket ends up programming for a living, etc, we'll do fine financially, BUT the physics phd will have in no way helped us. I would have done much better going straight into bartending from college (or better yet, dropping out of college to bartend). In the APS surveys, only 20-30% of recent phds claim to use physics knowledge in their jobs, and most of those are postdocs. To me, that number is more important than the salary numbers.

 

[jk]

The problem is that salary comparisons are likely apples and oranges, and physics has a much larger standard deviation than many other majors/phd disciplines. Consider- I'm a physics phd, and I'm near the middle of the salary distribution for recent physics phds (which excludes postdocs, so I'm probably WAY above the "real" median) with a job bartending. Yes, salary wise I do quite well compared to the national average, but if I never get another job, was the phd useful for me economically? Of course not.

Further, people don't get phds because they want money, they hope for a career somehow related to physics. I know I did it because I wanted a job where I could actually do physics. Few people get a physics phd because of their life-long ambition to work in insurance or finance. If I end up in the hospitality industry, daveyrocket ends up programming for a living, etc, we'll do fine financially, BUT the physics phd will have in no way helped us. I would have done much better going straight into bartending from college (or better yet, dropping out of college to bartend). In the APS surveys, only 20-30% of recent phds claim to use physics knowledge in their jobs, and most of those are postdocs. To me, that number is more important than the salary numbers.

That is something that you will have to come to grips with sooner or later. But you may be surprised at how different other fields are when you look at them from the inside. Also what you think of as "life long" ambitions may change.

I have a BS in physics and have been working in industry for a few years now. None of the jobs I've had were remotely related to physics - it was mostly software. That is not what I set out to do initially but that is what was out there in industry. I don't regret any of it - in fact, it broadened the way I look at things. When I decided to major in physics, I was aware that there were few jobs for someone with just a BS in it. But I went ahead anyway - I tried engineering and hated it. I felt was mostly cranking the handle without understanding how things worked. I was attracted to physics for two reasons: 1. I was interested in finding out how the world works, 2. I enjoyed problem solving. I was able to do the latter in my jobs.

Now, I didn't invest as much time as you did into my physics education. Things may look different when you spend 10 years as opposed to four studying a field. But look at it this way: Between bartending, software (which is a huge field) and finance, which one uses the parts of the brain that physics does (to put it crudely) and is more similar to physics than the others? The answers probably depend on the individual. For me it was software, although I eventually ended up doing financial software. If you're not willing to move to get a job doing physics and there are few physics jobs in the areas you want to live in, what are your options? Why not try out software or finance?

 

[jk]

It's easy to say that it should have been taken with a grain of salt, but for some crazy mixed-up reason I thought I should have been able to trust my advisors in their perspective on careers. If I had been more skeptical, I definitely wouldn't have gotten a PhD in physics. Honestly we should be telling people that they shouldn't do physics because there are no jobs in the field.
Huh? Of course it doesn't mean you know everything, I never claimed that it did so I don't know what you are talking about.

Getting a PhD in any field comes with a tremendous opportunity cost. But if you get a PhD in just about any field of engineering, there is an industrial field you can go into. Same with chemistry, biology, geology, statistics, psychology, etc. Of course you're not guaranteed a job, and of course maybe you'll go into another field, but at least there are jobs in the field that value degrees in that field. Not so in physics.
Yeah I'm not worried. I will probably end up doing programming. But I knew how to do that before I went to graduate school, which will make my graduate education a complete waste. Really if I wanted to spend my life as a programmer, I'd have already gone into that field. I did physics because I wanted something different.

I don't think we should tell people not to do physics but I do think they should be given career advice and guidance early in the program. Engineering departments generally do a better job of this. Physics department hardly do anything to prepare their students for the world.

By the way, engineers are also having a hard time in this economy. The pain is across the board - not just in physics.

You say you will probably end up doing programming. But you may not realize that you have a wider selection of programming jobs available to you as a physics PhD than I do with a BS or even someone with a CS degree because you have additional skills that we don't have (or at least it should be easy to convince an employer of this, which is all that matters). So in that way, your PhD is not a waste. At any rate, I suspect that you got your PhD because you enjoy physics and not just to get a job.

 

[twofish-quant]

You do your research and find out what kind of work the compay does.

Which creates some interesting situations when you don't know what company you are applying to. In the fields I'm familiar with, the hiring goes through headhunters which means that you really have no clue who are you are applying to.

I don't think it is true in all cases that your time as Ph.D is counted as work experience. Nor do I think that it is common that Ph.D's work for Ph.D's.

It's pretty common to me. The industries that I've worked in have tended to be Ph.D heavy.

It is relevant what the hiring manager wants. Also, I think it is always good to go to interviews even if you have no hope of getting the job. I am sick in that I enjoy interviews because they give me insights into the company and industry. More information is always better.

If that works for you, that's wonderful. It doesn't work for me. Preparing for an interview is *extremely* time intensive. It's also psychologically difficult. I'm by nature cynical and pessimistic, but when I go into the interview room, I want to put on a good show, and emphasize the optimistic, happy bits. It takes a lot of mental energy for me to put on a good show, and I'm not going to do it unless there is a chance that it will lead to a job.

If there is really no chance of me getting a job, and I'm just looking for information, then it's better if we skip the interview and just have lunch. One reason for this is that when you go in for an interview, there is some psychological distance. The interviewer doesn't want to be your friend because at the end of the day, he is going to have to tell a few people that they just aren't going to get the job, and that person may be you. If there is no job on the table, then that psychological distance is unnecessary, and we can go out for lunch and become each others friends. Also if there is a job on the table, I'm not going to tell you my dirty secrets, and you aren't going to tell me yours. If there is no job and we are just talking, then we can be more like humans instead of corporate machines.

The other thing is that more information is not always better. Looking for work is a full time job, and any information that doesn't help me get the job is irrelevant and a waste of my time. Also sometimes you just need one critical bit of information. If no one is hiring, then that's the information I need so I give up at that field and go for another one.

Funny enough, I have had the same happen to me in oil and gas and finance. I have also been rejected for jobs in finance and oil and gas because I didn't have some skill or experience they were looking for. So it's not industry specific but job specific.

Also it's depends on the economy. The company wants someone that can juggle chainsaws while walking on water. In a tight labor market, they won't be able to get that so they'll have to settle. It will kill you not to have some experience, only if they can find someone else at the same price with that experience. Unfortunately, right now there are so many people getting laid off that companies can get the perfect employee cheap.

The way I look at it, optimism means that you have hope even if your situation is bleak.

Sometimes you really need to face reality and realize that you are in a hopeless situation. Sometimes it's good to realize that you are doomed because it keeps you from wasting energy on something that just won't work and focus on something that will.

I think that one reason I've ended up with such positive feelings toward my Ph.D. is that pretty early on, I realized that I had no chance of getting a research professorship so I then gave up and worked on something else. Hope can also be painful and there is something soothing and comforting in just giving up.

Also, if you are out of work for a week or even a month, then you can keep being optimistic. At some point as the months roll by, you start become delusional if you keep hoping, and being delusional is not a good way of dealing with reality.

I have been there and the best I know how to deal with it is to have something else that keeps you sane. I used to read math books.

Different people cope in different ways.

 

[twofish-quant]

It's easy to say that it should have been taken with a grain of salt, but for some crazy mixed-up reason I thought I should have been able to trust my advisors in their perspective on careers. If I had been more skeptical, I definitely wouldn't have gotten a PhD in physics.

One reason I have had positive experiences is that I didn't trust my advisers. If the NSF was actively lying to me, then I knew that what my advisers said would be given with a grain of salt. Conversely, one thing that I think is also positive is that my advisers never gave me any advice on careers. They gave me a lot of emotional support, but when it came to industrial careers, they admitted their own general cluenessless. The one professor that had some specific insights was the one that kept track of what happened to Ph.D.'s in our departments, and she didn't try to provide advice, only data.

Also just looking at the statistics and stories made me feel a lot better. It's like not winning the lottery. Nothing wrong with buying a ticket, but you shouldn't feel *guilty* if it doesn't pay off. The other thing is that knowing that X didn't get a faculty position made me feel better since X was better that I was, and if X couldn't do it, then I shouldn't feel bad if I didn't.

Honestly we should be telling people that they shouldn't do physics because there are no jobs in the field.

We should be sharing experiences and letting people figure out what to do. Also one reason that I've been able to feel good about what I'm doing is that I've been able to convince myself that what I'm doing is physics. I probably won't be able to convince you, but that doesn't matter.

Of course you're not guaranteed a job, and of course maybe you'll go into another field, but at least there are jobs in the field that value degrees in that field. Not so in physics.

So what? I hate mental silos.

\Really if I wanted to spend my life as a programmer, I'd have already gone into that field. I did physics because I wanted something different.

I'm left my Ph.D. being a *FAR* better programmer that I came going in. The thing about programming is that there are different levels of programming skill. Also the programming that I did was pretty close to the bleeding edge.

 

[twofish-quant]

Few people get a physics phd because of their life-long ambition to work in insurance or finance.

Sure, but my ambition was to be an intellectual and lead the "life of the mind" and have a life full of adventure. Got that.

BUT the physics phd will have in no way helped us.

And my situation is different. I think part of it is that for me my Ph.D. is more important than my job. The important thing in my life was that I got a Ph.D.

 

[daveyrocket]

And my situation is different. I think part of it is that for me my Ph.D. is more important than my job. The important thing in my life was that I got a Ph.D.

It was for me too, when I got it. But after that it felt like a hollow, costly victory. The importance of the PhD for me eroded especially quickly when it came time to looking for jobs and realizing how badly I had dropped the ball by choosing physics.

I'm left my Ph.D. being a *FAR* better programmer that I came going in. The thing about programming is that there are different levels of programming skill. Also the programming that I did was pretty close to the bleeding edge.

I didn't. But I was a pretty good programmer when I went into my PhD. And my skills developed some, mostly because of doing things in my spare time that had nothing to do with physics. But thanks to physics, I learned that numerical programming is nearly as boring and annoying as web development. Of course, if I had gone into programming, I'd have spent 40 hours a week professionally doing it for 8 years and I'd be much more abreast of current technologies, etc.

I don't think we should tell people not to do physics but I do think they should be given career advice and guidance early in the program. Engineering departments generally do a better job of this. Physics department hardly do anything to prepare their students for the world.

By the way, engineers are also having a hard time in this economy. The pain is across the board - not just in physics.

Engineering jobs exist though. I know it's tough for them, but someone with a degree in mechanical engineering who lives in a big city can go onto indeed or monster and type in "mechanical engineer" and find jobs to apply for. If you do that with physics, nearly every job that comes up that isn't academic comes up because it's asking for a degree in "engineering, physics, chemistry, or related field." Nearly every industrial job a physicist can do, an engineer can do, and the engineers also ave a boatload of jobs that are 'closer to home,' so to speak.

You say you will probably end up doing programming. But you may not realize that you have a wider selection of programming jobs available to you as a physics PhD than I do with a BS or even someone with a CS degree because you have additional skills that we don't have (or at least it should be easy to convince an employer of this, which is all that matters). So in that way, your PhD is not a waste.

That a degree opens doors in a field that I've already tried and realized I don't like doesn't convince me that the degree is useful. Especially when you consider the type of programming you do in physics sucks nearly as bad as web development.

Anyway, you're not thinking about the opportunity cost. Of course having my PhD in physics is better than having spent that time in jail, but if I had gone into software (or any other field) after my BS or MS then I'd have 7-8 years of experience in the field, a network of contacts in the industry, I'd probably be able to afford a car that isn't 20 years old (1991 Toyota Corolla LE, baby!) and I might even own a house instead of having spent years living in crappy one bedroom apartments. A PhD doesn't compare to that.

At any rate, I suspect that you got your PhD because you enjoy physics and not just to get a job.

I felt that way when I got into the PhD program. But years of working on complicated but useless projects that no one outside a small circle of academics will ever care about has slowly and painfully crushed that feeling. I don't enjoy physics any more and I doubt I ever will, and I certainly will never look back at my experience in graduate school with anything but contempt.

 

[jk]

Engineering jobs exist though. I know it's tough for them, but someone with a degree in mechanical engineering who lives in a big city can go onto indeed or monster and type in "mechanical engineer" and find jobs to apply for. If you do that with physics, nearly every job that comes up that isn't academic comes up because it's asking for a degree in "engineering, physics, chemistry, or related field." Nearly every industrial job a physicist can do, an engineer can do, and the engineers also ave a boatload of jobs that are 'closer to home,' so to speak.It was for me too, when I got it. But after that it felt like a hollow, costly victory. The importance of the PhD for me eroded especially quickly when it came time to looking for jobs and realizing how badly I had dropped the ball by choosing physics.
I didn't. But I was a pretty good programmer when I went into my PhD. And my skills developed some, mostly because of doing things in my spare time that had nothing to do with physics. But thanks to physics, I learned that numerical programming is nearly as boring and annoying as web development. Of course, if I had gone into programming, I'd have spent 40 hours a week professionally doing it for 8 years and I'd be much more abreast of current technologies, etc.

Out of curiousity, I went to indeed.com and typed in "Physics Phd" and got 3000 hits. For engineering PhD, I got 10000. Now, this isn't a scientific survey and there is a lot of overlap in between both sets but the a ratio of 3/10 isn't bad. Physics was never, and I mean never, a field that produced as many jobs as engineering.

That a degree opens doors in a field that I've already tried and realized I don't like doesn't convince me that the degree is useful. Especially when you consider the type of programming you do in physics sucks nearly as bad as web development.

When I mentioned programming, I was simply trying to give my experience. Of course, if you can't stand it, then it's not much help. Out of curiosity, have you worked in software (outside of school)? What kind of programming have you done?

Funny enough, I was contemptuous of software too(and the few courses I had taken in school). Once I got into the field through a long, circuitous way, I found that my view was nowhere near the reality. I tell you this not to convince you that it is a field you should enter but to tell you my experiences so that you can maybe benefit from it.

Anyway, you're not thinking about the opportunity cost. Of course having my PhD in physics is better than having spent that time in jail, but if I had gone into software (or anssy other field) after my BS or MS then I'd have 7-8 years of experience in the field, a network of contacts in the industry, I'd probably be able to afford a car that isn't 20 years old (1991 Toyota Corolla LE, baby!) and I might even own a house instead of having spent years living in crappy one bedroom apartments. A PhD doesn't compare to that.

The opportunity cost of getting a PhD in physics is always higher than the typical alternatives like software, engineering or an MBA. I have friends that went on to get an MBA and are doing fabulously. I took a couple of MBA classes and t found that with the exception of a couple economics classes they were unbelievably vacuous and easy. They were also deadly boring and I couldn't see myself doing that kind of stuff. But companies do pay for it, especially if you get the MBA from a well regarded school.

I felt that way when I got into the PhD program. But years of working on complicated but useless projects that no one outside a small circle of academics will ever care about has slowly and painfully crushed that feeling. I don't enjoy physics any more and I doubt I ever will, and I certainly will never look back at my experience in graduate school with anything but contempt.

If you don't enjoy physics anymore then why look for a job in physics? The analytical and quantitative skills you developed over the years of your PhD are highly valued in industry and can be very lucrative. The catch is that those jobs are not advertised as "disillusioned physics PhD" or something like that.

 

[twofish-quant]

It was for me too, when I got it. But after that it felt like a hollow, costly victory. The importance of the PhD for me eroded especially quickly when it came time to looking for jobs and realizing how badly I had dropped the ball by choosing physics.

For me, getting a Ph.D. was to finish off a family curse. Due to some reasons beyond his control, my father was unable to finish his Ph.D., which meant that it was planned that I'd finish mine. The weird thing was that I didn't realize that this was the plan until long after I got my Ph.D., my father had passed away, and I was looking at some old letters.

But because of my environment, whether I got a job is irrelevant. I got the Ph.D. and therefore could declare victory.

I didn't. But I was a pretty good programmer when I went into my PhD. And my skills developed some, mostly because of doing things in my spare time that had nothing to do with physics. But thanks to physics, I learned that numerical programming is nearly as boring and annoying as web development.

I actually find numerical programming soothing and relaxing. This is one reason that I get paid large amounts of money. It's a supply and demand thing, and the number of people that can spend a month debugging several thousand lines of badly written optimization code to find out that there is one line that needs to be changed isn't huge.

This is why software/finance firms hire physics Ph.D.'s. It's assumed that if you have a physics Ph.D., you don't hate numerical programming and you are willing to do it 60 hours a week and spend weeks tracking down bugs. If this isn't true, then you have a problem.

Of course, if I had gone into programming, I'd have spent 40 hours a week professionally doing it for 8 years and I'd be much more abreast of current technologies, etc.

For numerical stuff there latest technologies involve multi-core and GPU. Multi-core/GPU/cloud computing requires that a ton of programs be totally rewritten. Which is cool. Also, what's really, really cool is that we are increasing compute power by 1000x. Right now we are just using the new tech with old systems and processes. There's got to be a way of doing stuff that we didn't imagine before.

If you do that with physics, nearly every job that comes up that isn't academic comes up because it's asking for a degree in "engineering, physics, chemistry, or related field." Nearly every industrial job a physicist can do, an engineer can do, and the engineers also ave a boatload of jobs that are 'closer to home,' so to speak.

That's not true. One problem is that the jobs that are specially tailored to Ph.D.'s tend to be clustered in a small number of places. If you go into any major city, you'll find jobs for mechanical engineers. The jobs for astrophysics Ph.D.'s are clustered in only a few cities. For finance, it's NYC. For oil/gas, it's Houston. For defense, it's Los Alamos/Oak Ridge.

Also, I don't think that the supply/demand is that different. There are a lot more jobs for engineers, but there are a lot more engineers.

Especially when you consider the type of programming you do in physics sucks nearly as bad as web development.

If you hate physics programming, you are going to have a terrible, terrible time finding jobs in industry. If you go into an interview for most theoretical physics Ph.D. jobs, and the interviewer senses that you hate numerical programming, then game over. You can fake liking programming, but if you can fake not hating numerical programming then you can't hate it that much.

Something that has helped me a lot is that when someone mentions C++, my eyes light up, and I can talk your ear off about the limitations of template meta-programming in numerical code. Faking interest is impossible, because if you can fake interest that means that you are interested.

Of course having my PhD in physics is better than having spent that time in jail, but if I had gone into software (or any other field) after my BS or MS then I'd have 7-8 years of experience in the field, a network of contacts in the industry, I'd probably be able to afford a car that isn't 20 years old (1991 Toyota Corolla LE, baby!) and I might even own a house instead of having spent years living in crappy one bedroom apartments. A PhD doesn't compare to that.

I managed to get most of that with my Ph.D. Also, the reason I get $$$$ is that the number of people that can tolerate working for large periods of time on nasty numerical code is rather small. You can hand me six pages of greek equations, ten thousand lines of badly written code, and give me a few days, and I'll find the problem.

In every software company, I've worked at most programming ends up being extremely tedious debugging, and if you can't stand that, then I really don't see how you are going to survive in that world. If you go into an interview, and the interviewer senses that you can't tolerate painful debugging, you aren't going to get the job.

One other thing. I try to keep my expenses low. Doing Black-Scholes is okay, but my heart is really in stuff like numerical relativity and supernova models. The lower my expenses, the more money I have in the bank, and the sooner I can quit and go back to being a graduate student. I've worked out the numbers, and I figure that I should be able to go back into astrophysics within the next decade.

I felt that way when I got into the PhD program. But years of working on complicated but useless projects that no one outside a small circle of academics will ever care about has slowly and painfully crushed that feeling.

Some of that is sales and marketing. Why should a Wall Street bank care about neutrino radiation hydrodynamics. Well... This is the equation for multigroup flux limited diffusion. This is the black scholes equation with Heston local volatility. Looks the same. Now consider that there are tens of billions of dollars of transactions that depend on solving the latter equation in near real time.

Got your attention? Also one fun thing is that people in finance are *extremely* concerned about round off errors, so you get into huge esoteric discussions about hardware floating point handling. The reason is that the sums of money are large enough so that a "round off error" could end up being several million dollars. I've been in situations where I've had to spend two to three months tracking down a round off error so that we could put new code into production. It's painful and ugly, and 99% of the people in the world will go insane rather than doing that sort of thing, but that's why physics Ph.D.'s get hired.

If you don't care, what can I do to make you care? If it doesn't seem important, what can I to to make it important?

I don't enjoy physics any more and I doubt I ever will, and I certainly will never look back at my experience in graduate school with anything but contempt.

The worst thing about graduate school was that it ended, and the best thing about my current job is that it feels a lot like graduate school with more money. One thing that makes it similar is the moments of glory. You spend weeks tracking down this one bug, and it's driving you insane. Finally, you think you got it. You keep your hopes down because this is the sixth thing that you tried. You do something ridiculously tiny like changing a >= to a >. You run the compiler, crank up the test harness, and it works. You try a few more things, and you got it. So you savor the moment, and those two minutes when you know you've got it makes the previous weeks of pain worthwhile.

Then you cross off one bug, make a note on the "things to remember when you write your self-evaluation at the end of the year" and move to the next bug... :-) :-) :-)

 

[ParticleGrl]

The analytical and quantitative skills you developed over the years of your PhD are highly valued in industry and can be very lucrative.

WHERE? WHAT INDUSTRIES? I keep asking, and other than finance jobs in NYC and programming (which is a stretch, I have only a smattering of c++ and fortran 77, fortran is not in high demand) there are literally no suggestions. I'm applying to anything I think I can get myself prepared for, as far as job interviews go, and its been more than a year with 0 offers. What industry values a broad analytical and quantitative background?

Part of the frustration is that I believed statements like the one above for years, I finished my phd, and find out that no industry values the skills I spent years developing. Now I'm scrambling to acquire new skills as fast as possible in the hopes of finding employment more mentally stimulating than tending bar.

 

[JDGates]

WHERE? WHAT INDUSTRIES? I keep asking, and other than finance jobs in NYC and programming (which is a stretch, I have only a smattering of c++ and fortran 77, fortran is not in high demand) there are literally no suggestions.

On the very first page of this thread you were active in discussion of other industries. But for anyone just jumping into the thread, I'll throw out some:

Management consulting, defense/aerospace analysis, logistics management, air traffic control management, nuclear regulation, systems engineering, oil/gas, patent research, risk analysis, education.

I personally know physics PhDs who have gotten jobs in almost all of those fields without programming as a primary responsibility.

And of course the obvious industry options for those who did condensed matter, AMO, and biophysics, which is neither you nor me.

Is the economy crummy? Yes. Are PhDs still being hired into these jobs? Yes.

I know you're frustrated, but this kind of thing:

I finished my phd, and find out that no industry values the skills I spent years developing.

is just counterfactual.

Look, when I finished my PhD my job decision came down to two offers. For both companies, the entire formal requirement was a PhD in a technical field. Now, I had to show them that I was a reasonably good researcher, that I had good communications skills, and all that. But the subject matter I studied had absolutely nothing to do with it, and a programming background was not required (general data analysis was). And I know that both of those companies are hiring fresh PhDs right now.

Anecdotal? Absolutely. But that's pretty much what this thread is, and anecdotes from those in the industry should weigh a little heavier than anecdotes from jobseekers.

Oh, and while we're here:

In the APS surveys, only 20-30% of recent phds claim to use physics knowledge in their jobs, and most of those are postdocs. To me, that number is more important than the salary numbers.

Huh. In the AIP statistics I'm looking at, 79% of new PhDs in "potentially permanent" jobs say their position involves "basic physics principles", and 53% say it involves "advanced physics principles". 96% say that "a physics PhD is an appropriate background for this position". Cites:

http://aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/emp3/table4.htm

http://aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/emp3/table5.htm

Care to share the source of your numbers?

 

[elkement]

This is an extremely interesting quote:

Sure, but my ambition was to be an intellectual and lead the "life of the mind" and have a life full of adventure. Got that.

And my situation is different. I think part of it is that for me my Ph.D. is more important than my job. The important thing in my life was that I got a Ph.D

twofish-quant, I can really relate a lot to what you say - but this quote nails down an important difference:

I would rather work in a role less intellectual, live a life building trivial stuff, and rather calculate things based on undergraduate physics knowledge instead of solving very tricky PDEs - as long as I might be able to call myself a physicist or an engineer (In my country physics and engineering are considered not so far from each other as in the US - if I read the threads here correcly).

It seems many younger students here admire theoretical physicists and want to go for the pure intellectual mind-boggling challenge - when I was an undergraduate my idol was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGyver" .

The PhD was a starting point for this, a means to an end, a pre-requisite. I would not have done that if I would not have been employed the university at the same time - employed for doing a job that included similar "boring and less intellectually challenging" duties than what would have been required in industry (such as project management).

 

[elkement]

Management consulting, defense/aerospace analysis, logistics management, air traffic control management, nuclear regulation, systems engineering, oil/gas, patent research, risk analysis, education.

I personally know physics PhDs who have gotten jobs in almost all of those fields without programming as a primary responsibility.

I agree. From my anecdotal evidence in Europe I know that the typical physicists' skills are most valued by companies in these areas that offer trainee programs for graduates or young professionals. These companies value your general skills so much that they will pay you for taking the post-PhD training specific to an industry sector.

E.g. a colleague of mine was hired as a trainee in a pharmaceutical company, the requirements were basically a degree in natural sciences or engineering (not necessarily physics - thus there was competion from graduates in probably more specific fields) and those infamous problem solving and analytical skills.

The job included the analysis of manufacturing processes and mapping them onto IT tools to be acquired from an external company - no programming involved.

 

[Locrian]

Huh. In the AIP statistics I'm looking at,

http://aip.org/statistics/trends/hig...mp3/table4.htm

http://aip.org/statistics/trends/hig...mp3/table5.htm

Readers who see tables like that are encouraged to answer the following questions:

• What year was the data taken?

• What percentage of all awarded PhD's were sampled?

• What percentage of the sample actually responded?

• What percentage of responses actually came from the individuals themselves, as opposed to their advisors?

The answers can have a huge impact on the validity of the stats and how you interpret the results.