Ask HN: Do any of you have degrees in Physics? What career path did you take?

burger flipper and advanced basket weaver, level 2

I have a PhD in HEP; got it on ATLAS at CERN and contributed to the Higgs discovery analysis in the H->ZZ*->4l channel. I work at NASA and still do particle physics, but a lot of my work is software oriented - anything from scripting to developing data analysis frameworks to web development to fixing legacy code.

Yes. I wanted to be a particle physicist, but decided to teach for a couple years so I wouldn't go straight HS->university->grad school. I stayed in teaching, though, because I found the intellectual challenges of teaching well just as satisfying as hard science. 20 years later, I'm still happy with my decision.

Studying physics meant I have always had a way to think about any science question any student has ever asked. I can't answer every question, but I can always give students a good way to think about answering their question.

These days I'm working hard to apply what I know about programming to solve long standing problems in education. The education field is about 40 years behind the programming world as far as making efficient tools available to everyone in the field, which means there is much low-hanging fruit for someone with a solid grounding in both education and software development.

I want to build the Emacs and GitHub of the education world.

I have a BA in Physics from UC Santa Cruz, and attended grad school with the intention of working on a search for non-conservation of lepton number at CERN, however my mental illness (Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder) led to my leaving grad school.

I've been toying with the idea of returning to grad school, but if I do I'm going to need to spend some time brushing up on my math. It's been decades.

I dropped out of UCSC after the first quarter of my junior year to work as a software developer. The only reason I ever graduated was that I grew weary of always been asked why I never graduated (during job interviews).

I'm not so sure I would return to particle physics, more likely I would do something to contribute to an equitable and just solution to the problem of energy production, distribution or storage.

Yep, I got a Bachelor's in Physics, minoring in Computer Science, and did independent study in computational physics, so lots of numerical-analysis type of study. Career paths - without a PhD - were limited, so I got into programming, but the foundation I got made it easy to do a wide range of other things. I got involved in Instructional Systems Design (designing and building training material founded on data-based, empirically validated principles) which Physics helped a lot with. I was also an Industry Analyst during the dot-com boom days, and again being able to think abstractly, looking for patterns, and being able to conduct quantitative market research was all facilitated greatly by a solid foundation in math and physics.

Elon Musk (a Physics student) has a great quote about Physics, where he talks about reasoning from first principles and "try to identify the most fundamental truths in any particular arena and you reason up from there." I agree - you get that foundation and way of thinking, and it can help you in all kinds of work.

If you're good at abstract thinking - a skill seemingly rare among the younger members of society these days - you can do pretty much anything. So it's much less about what you CAN do and much more about what you WANT to do, so focus on that, knowing you have a solid foundation to support you.

I have worked as a web developer without a degree for a few years. Since I felt same as you, I embarked on a Physics BSc, due to graduate in 3 months. My plan is to go to grad school, HEP theory if I can get in. Already taking a hit on my income due to time spent studying but it is worth it.

I have a BS in Mathematical Physics (and a BS & MS in mathematics) - I ended up in web development, primarily because it was all I could get a job in amusingly enough.

I am satisfied with how much mental stimulus I got from my education - I proved to myself that I had the intelligence necessary to get a PhD. After being unemployed for 2 1/2 years, I am happy enough doing web development - it treats me very well as far as pay and quality of life goes, sure beating being homeless. I find enough challenging problems (if not as intense as those I saw in graduate school) to keep me mentally happy, and I have an opportunity to make a difference in my & other people's careers through mentorship and leadership.

For yourself, take a long hard thought at your options - what would you want to do? Becoming an academic is a possibility, but academia is hard to succeed in. You could go the data scientist route, which is a meld of research and coding - there are plenty of unsolved problems there, and uses some of your current skills.

What do you want to do first?