[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Jobs After a Math PhD?
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Ask HN: Jobs After a Math PhD?
I'm failing to find a job after a PhD in mathematics in Europe. One
of the big problems is that most people in my situation seem to get
jobs in trading and/or blockchain, both of which I'm uncomfortable
with. I'd be thankful for any idea thrown my way (be it actual
companies, domains or just vague career plans). Cheers
Author : rosetremiere
Score : 22 points
Date : 2022-05-11 18:35 UTC (4 hours ago)
| yuppie_scum wrote:
| Economics doesn't have to mean trading/crypto
| conformist wrote:
| (from an applied maths PhD perspective)
|
| I'd argue that you can distinguish between career paths that
|
| - make use of and are related to your broader specialisation
| within maths (e.g. fluid dynamics, actuarial sciences,
| cryptography, derivative pricing, specialised ML research...).
| For these, it's hard to give recommendations without addition
| details. They can still be open to folks from unrelated maths
| backgrounds, but it depends on other experience and
| circumstances.
|
| - are highly quantitative and tend to value PhDs from
| quantitative disciplines (e.g. "Data Science" & data consulting
| companies, banks, (Re)insurance companies with internal training,
| quant trading, applied ML research and startups, possibly sports
| betting...). For these, PhDs in physics and EEE will probably be
| similarly appropriate.
|
| - value smart people with academic titles regardless of
| discipline and might require separate skills and qualifications
| (e.g. strategy consulting, IT consulting, patent attorney,
| software development ...? ).
|
| I would start by assessing where your interests and
| qualifications sit within that range. It can help to start by
| focusing on a specific industry that you find interesting and
| then find out what kind of maths-adjacent roles there are. In my
| experience, this tends to be very different for purer vs more
| applied maths PhDs.
| slavik81 wrote:
| AMD is hiring developers for the ROCm math and communication
| libraries [1]. If you're interested in developing open source
| mathematics code for GPUs, there are a number of open positions.
| Send me a message to discuss opportunities in more detail. My
| email is in my profile.
|
| [1]:
| https://rocmdocs.amd.com/en/latest/ROCm_Libraries/ROCm_Libra...
| zeruch wrote:
| Not all "blockchain" is the same (case in point, there are firms
| that do Anti-Money Laundering/Fraud and Counter Terrorism Funding
| activities which use lots of big data/ML stuff).
|
| Disclosure: I work for one of those firms (CipherTrace) so I may
| have some bias, but really, this is the portion of the
| Fintech/Crypto spectrum I find acceptable.
| xtracto wrote:
| Say hi to F. Steegmans (from the Mexican engineer guy who
| opened an office at his last gig). He is such a nice guy!
|
| BTW I love what you guys are doing over there.
| zeruch wrote:
| I worked with Steegmans at SugarCRM (he was the guy who
| brought me into CipherTrace)...small world indeed.
| bmitc wrote:
| You can find some pretty good responses on reddit.com/r/math.
| This gets asked quite often there.
|
| The short story is: software development. Sure, there are more
| quantitative jobs like data science and ML and other mysterious
| math/scientist jobs that are quite hard to find and secure, but
| software development of any kind is the quickest way to a job.
| You'll need to convince people you're not a pie in the sky
| thinker, and so I'd recommend building up some side projects.
| Functional programming languages will probably suit you better,
| and those jobs can sometimes be more technical. Also,
| universities and research institutions, at least in the U.S., are
| hiring more and more software developers.
|
| Regarding trading and blockchain, having some principles is fine,
| but you also need to eat. There's nothing wrong with taking a job
| for a couple of years to get your feet into industry and then
| moving on from there.
| BadCookie wrote:
| You're right about software being a good option, but I will
| caution that it can feel like too much of a change for someone
| coming from math because the job interviews sometimes assume
| that you know the CS undergraduate curriculum. The other side
| of the coin is that being good at advanced math isn't an
| advantage in something like web development, except insofar as
| it has trained you to be hypersensitive to potential errors
| (bugs) in the code.
|
| As someone who made the move to software from math many years
| ago, it feels like it was a good short-term decision, but I
| don't know if I can make a life-long career of it. Sometimes I
| wish I'd chosen something that played to my strengths more.
| readingnews wrote:
| I have a good friend, in the US, with a Ph.D. in math. It seems
| like there is no job he can _not_ do.
|
| Consulting for oil/gas/drilling as they always need analysis.
|
| Financials.
|
| Data analytics (of any kind).
|
| Physics labs/research labs.
|
| Manufacturing (optimization problems, efficiency problems, actual
| problems <snicker>)
|
| Have you thought completely outside the enclosure?
|
| Sitcoms (look at the people on Futurama or Big Bang for example)
|
| Porn (how _would_ you figure out the volume of that thing??)
|
| Entertainment (Bill Nye the science guy, rosetremiere the math is
| near!)
| j8asic wrote:
| If you come from applied math, then numerics! For structural
| analysis, fluid dynamics, robotics, machine learning, etc. If you
| asked this question week ago, I'd probably hire you.
| jrussino wrote:
| Maybe there's something interesting here:
| https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Careers_at_ESA/Professionals ?
| mjfl wrote:
| post doc?
| jethkl wrote:
| PhD in math, US perspective, 20ish years working.
|
| Members from my class (including +/- a couple of years) went to
| startups, think tanks, SEC, NSA, trading, hedge funds, digital
| media, academia, postdocs, consulting, and commercial research
| labs that are incubators within larger corporations.
|
| You didn't indicate your specialty, but it probably does not
| matter. Many current DS and related jobs list PhD in a STEM field
| as baseline or preferred requirement. I know logicians who got
| non-academic work (this is not a dig at logic, they were really
| worried about this).
|
| If you want to go the software developer route, at this point you
| do know how to study for leetcode type puzzles. But you are in
| direct competition with many others who specialize in that, and a
| PhD in math will not carry much extra weight in the hiring
| decision.
|
| Watching my own and my peers careers evolve over time, the impact
| of one's network should not be underestimated.
|
| Finally, assume you will never be asked about your dissertation.
| Ever.
| ktpsns wrote:
| I had a similar situation with Physics PhD a few years ago. Now
| things have turned, I'm doing my startup and we urgently look for
| people like you.
|
| Since I don't want to tamper my anonymity here, let me tell you a
| few tips:
|
| First, find out for yourself whether you want to work in
| enterprises or startups. Whether you want to apply scientific
| methods/conduct private research or not.
|
| I had a clear idea for myself: startup+research. Once you know
| this, you can basically let yourself "go with the flow": Look up
| interesting people and topics (at TED(x) conferences, at youtube,
| at fairs or conferences) and ask if you can work with them. Works
| best if they are CTO/CSO at their startup (such as I am) :-)
| effnorwood wrote:
| jstx1 wrote:
| Data science and/or ML? A mathematics PhD is a big advantage when
| applying for those positions.
| thenipper wrote:
| Also there is optimization/operations research if you want
| something a bit different. Less buzzwordy too.
| BadCookie wrote:
| In the US, there are "boot camps" that specialize in getting
| people with PhDs jobs in data science. I don't know if that's a
| thing in Europe too, but probably.
| jstx1 wrote:
| For a math PhD a bootcamp only makes sense if it's basically
| intensive interview prep and you feel like you really need
| it. In any other case a bootcamp seems very unnecessary and
| it can even be a red flag depending on the bootcamp.
| BadCookie wrote:
| Maybe. I don't think most people with math/physics PhDs
| have done much with machine learning or the specific tech
| that companies are looking for, so that's why so many of
| these bootcamps popped up. The people in my social circle
| who did bootcamps to transition to jobs from PhDs seemed
| happy enough with them, but that doesn't make all bootcamps
| equal. My info is also 5+ years old, so circumstances may
| have changed. I do believe you that there are a lot of
| crappy bootcamps now.
| daanlo wrote:
| Check out: https://datascienceretreat.com/
| sillyinseattle wrote:
| Commenters are clearly trying to help. They can do better if you
| provide more context. What kind of math do you want to do? This
| does not have to be related to your dissertation area. And since
| you are asking on HN .. what kind of hacking/ development do you
| want to do? Coming from academia (I have a phd in game theory --
| kind of useless in real world, other than ad auctions), it gets
| easier to find an industry job and develop idea of a good fit
| once you already have one! Don't be too picky to start with. Good
| luck!
| jerglingu wrote:
| mrjay42 wrote:
| Any kind of computational science? We need applied maths people
| to explain the maths to us <3 ^^
|
| Any kind of data science/machine learning?
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