Ask HN: New career for a faltering academic? (Experimental physics post-doc)

7 points by _8091149529 5 years ago | 5 comments

What is an interesting career to pivot into for someone who's spent 10+ years in physics research?

At the age of ~35, I'm about to start my fifth academic appointment at the postdoc/staff scientist/research fellow level. The apparent lack of progress, both career and research-wise, has made me want to consider a chance of scenery.

In my present line of work, one picks up a great deal of knowledge about the various things needed to make the lab "tick", ranging from high-tech instruments to utilities, without ever really attaining a professional level of expertise in any particular topic.

Are there any enterprises willing to overlook a lack of formal qualifications for a jack of many trades with a PhD? I believe there are many competent people in the same boat across the various STEM disciplines.

mdifrgechd 5 years ago |

I was in a roughly similar situation, I got a job as a (pretty junior) management consultant. Learned a lot about how different businesses work but had to deal with being bossed around by people 10yrs younger than me and realize that nobody cared about whatever specialized knowledge I had from my PhD. (To be clear, this was probably the best thing for me to break out of the bubble I was in).

The big upside was that it was a job that you don't need any specific credentials to get, and it gave me the perspective and "soft skills" - really just learning how to work in a team outside an academic setting - to get a tech job that could use some of my academic background as well as the business experience I had.

austincheney 5 years ago |

I have recently learned there are many lawyers that quit the law to become police officers often maintaining their law license. As an outside observer that seems absurd because the academic requirements and expenses to become a lawyer are high while most major cities don’t even require a four year degree and will pay the cost of the police academy. In some areas of the country police officers earn more than lawyers.

As a rocket scientist, speaking figuratively, you are already drastically to be a software engineer. I would spend a year full time outside of your day job vigorously building a software side project embracing hard problems. You should them have no problem sliding into a good software engineering job.

I work for a big bank and one of my coworkers is a software engineer who in a previous life was a particle physicist on the Super Collider Super Conductor project.

ThrowawayR2 5 years ago |

The FAANGs are willing to consider physics PhDs as developers; I know two personally. You will have to acquire knowledge of CS basics and demonstrate coding ability but, for a physicist, it shouldn't be much of a challenge.

sosilkj 5 years ago |

a phd in physics can land you a job on a quant team at a bank or hedge fund or prop trading firm. another option could be "data scientist" roles (in a tech company or other industry). 'machine learning' roles also heavily favor someone with masters/phd.

for banks/hedge funds/etc roles, look at the book "Capital Markets for Quantitative Professionals" to get up to speed on background knowledge.

Whirl 5 years ago |

Have you considered industry research positions? Depending what field, there could be high demand for your skill set, even if the research is not exactly what you did in your academic life.

I went to industry immediately after grad school and it has been pretty dope. It might feel differently to you, since you spent so much time in the academy.