Re:How I Transitioned from Physics Academia to the ML Industry
by thrmsforbfast on Tuesday October 09, 2018 @07:26PM
(#18180671)
> (PhD 1990)
The title of the post is extremely misleading.
The author of this post graduated from an undergraduate program in 2018. By "transitioned from academia", the author means "graduated with a B.S. (after a few research-y summer internships) and got a job".
That first job is always an accomplishment, but in this cae was definitely not a "transition from academia" in the usual sense.
As a result, the post generally contains irrelevant advice for people actually transitioning (i.e., professors, post-docs, and late-stage graduate students).
In my view it's not so much that "everything else must be easy," but that physicists are expected to take a multidisciplinary approach to our work. In the process of getting my thesis project to work, I had to teach myself electronics and programming, not to mention a variety of mechanical skills such as machining and vacuum plumbing.
Naturally, the job market situation encourages physicists to spread our wings beyond physics research, and to claim that we can do things. ;-)
Most physicists are pretty good at math. This actually gives us a head start in quantitative branches of other disciplines such as engineering. Today, when the engineers at my workplace run into a hard quantitative problem, they go looking for a physicist. If math is what makes a subject seem hard to most people, you might discover a few physicists trying to sneak in.