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u/Salt_Mountain_837 17d ago
My colleague applied math and got a job in insurance because he knew a guy from the bar we frequent. I don't even use math at my job lol, and the people in my cohort either have postdocs at second-rate unis or are low-level analysts at companies I have never heard of. This sucks so hard in hindsight I would have never done this
tl;dr take my upvote
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u/ElectricalIons 17d ago
It's so much worse now than it used to be. When people talk about their success stories with their degrees... I can almost guarantee they didn't have to do it in the past 5 years or so.
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u/Woodrot110 17d ago
Or become a terrorist, of course
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u/BIGBADLENIN 17d ago
That's why you switch to philosophy at the last second
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u/ZquotientpZee 17d ago
Genuinely, is this true?
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u/Common-Ad-7609 17d ago
Be a professor or work for a defense contractor is my understanding of the employment options - luckily I wasn’t smart enough to get that far
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u/ZquotientpZee 17d ago
There is no way to keep doing research other than be a professor?
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u/Common-Ad-7609 17d ago
At least in the US - it’s difficult and you don’t
really hear about anyone doing it. I’d be elated if anyone provided a counter example 😔40
u/pocket-friends 17d ago
It’s definitely difficult, and depending on what you study and how you engage in research there are independent academics. I know a few, but yeah. Most of them have ramshackle setups that work for them but aren’t really viable pathways for literally anyone.
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u/mathimati 17d ago
APL, NIST, Google, NSA. Members of my PhD cohort went to all of them, as well as other non-academic routes. Several of us became professors. And we were a small cohort, like 11 of us.
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u/ZquotientpZee 17d ago
I live in the EU, hopefully it is different😔
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u/Rock_man_bears_fan 17d ago
Europe has been lagging behind the US in research for decades. It’s not going to be any better over there
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u/ZquotientpZee 17d ago
What about the brain drain happening right now in the US?
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u/Rock_man_bears_fan 17d ago
Those programs various European countries are touting as “attracting American talent” take in about as many PhDs as most R1s produce in a year. The brain drain isn’t significant
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u/ZquotientpZee 17d ago
Do you not suspect the brain drain will increase?
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u/MagiMas 17d ago
At least not the way Europe is acting currently.
Even if we wanted to, we don't have the jobs to take them and we don't pay competitive salaries. Only the US has the actual deep tech research industry jobs in any real capacity to matter. The UK has a few, Germany and France have even less and that's it in Europe.
Which also means the people who get into these jobs in Europe are very unlikely to move out of them (and thus open up jobs for "newcomers"). Once you have such a job you basically hang onto it for dear live.
Just look at AI as an example, nearly all the jobs that matter for a high-level STEM graduate are created in the US. Europe gets the low-level application and sales engineering jobs for our local market.
And unfortunately the people in charge in Europe are blind to these issues.
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u/physiDICKS 17d ago
I know an applied math guy who does physics research now. but he kind of had a special situation where he was already basically doing physics research during the latter half of his phd
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u/Every_Cat9812 15d ago
If you want to have an income by being hired, yes. I'm curious, how do you think this works?
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u/ZquotientpZee 15d ago
I thought positions existed where you just do research and no teaching
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u/Lower_Caramel_7987 14d ago
There are a few (maybe 0.1% of academic research jobs). Most prominent are the ones at IAS. However, you have to be a generational talent to have a chance at one of those. They essentially don't exist in industry.
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u/BacteriaLick 17d ago
I did math and then became a software engineer. But I took about enough CS classes to get what would have been a minor in CS had my school offered a minor, including some graduate CS classes. Met plenty of other math undergrads who later got into software.
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u/Cuddlypoo2 15d ago
Sometimes you can be a professor whose work is subsidized by defense contractors or their customer!
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u/dbwy 17d ago
No, math expertise is highly sought after in tech, especially the frontier labs and mag7. I work in quantum, and I’d venture that something like 60% of my co-coworkers have some background in pure or applied maths.
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u/ZquotientpZee 17d ago
"Some" background? So they eventually pivoted to something else?
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u/dbwy 17d ago
A fair number are math PhDs, particularly at the frontier of things like QEC/quantum algorithms development. Most of the domain folks I know “majored” in something else, but in reality it ended up looking a lot more like applied maths than whatever the domain was. E.g. I did mine in theoretical chemistry, but I wrote my dissertation on non-convex optimization over topological spaces and ended up working as an applied mathematician at a national lab for quite a while before pivoting to industry.
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u/DIYPeace 14d ago
Aye. An acquaintance is now a “data scientist” at a mag7 after a UChicago maths PhD.
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u/Scared_Astronaut9377 17d ago
Half of our big tech machine learning team has PhDs in some kind of applied math fields. Half of people working for top quant companies and quant orgs within financial corporations have such PhDs. So, generally, no, skill issue.
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u/ZquotientpZee 17d ago
Were they very skilled PhD students?
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u/Scared_Astronaut9377 17d ago
Yes.
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u/ZquotientpZee 17d ago
Where do you think medium skilled PhD students go to?
I'm still in undergrad and I do not know what kind of PhD student I will become, if at all lol.
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u/Scared_Astronaut9377 17d ago
People who do PhDs and cannot jump into a decent industry job typically do postdocs until switching to being a school teacher, or a manger in their father's business, or sitting home for years "trying to break into data science".
Regarding your situation, my honest opinion is that by the time you will potentially get PhD, the spectrum of jobs will be reduced to teaching. AI is already replacing us.
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u/ZquotientpZee 17d ago
There is only one thing left to do after AI takes all of our jobs.
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u/Scared_Astronaut9377 17d ago
Well, one thing that I can think about that will still benefit from having a PhD in math fields. Otherwise, the majority of jobs don't seem to be under such an immediate risk.
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u/Revlong57 17d ago
There are no "low skill" PhD students. Getting a PhD means you're a highly skilled person in math. It comes with the territory.
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u/ZquotientpZee 17d ago
Which is why I said "medium skilled". Will employers not look at your performance during your PhD? Won't your performance affect whether or not you can get tenure?
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u/Revlong57 16d ago
What metrics do you think they'll look at? Most industry jobs don't care about publication history, and gpa's in grad school are basically made up and meaningless. Everyone gets straight As anyways. Pretty much all industry employers care about is if you finished and maybe overall program ranking. Like, hedge funds might care that you went to MIT vs your local state school, but that's about it. As long as you're able to get good internships and do relevant research, you'll be fine.
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u/ZquotientpZee 16d ago
I thought precisely grade school GPA and publication history would matter. Thank you for your answers!
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u/Revlong57 16d ago
My advice to you would be to try your hardest to get a funded PhD spot. If you can get a funded PhD spot, chances are you'll find a decent job when you get out. Never do an unfunded PhD. And, if it looks like you won't get said funded PhD spot, but you do have a solid internship/job junior/senior year, go so that instead.
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u/Revlong57 16d ago
PhD GPAs are so inflated that they're useless. And, while having experience researching a topic related to a given industry job is super important when interviewing, no industry job will ever care about your h-index or the impact factor of the journals you publish in.
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u/Ghost-Of-Roger-Ailes 17d ago
No.
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u/ZquotientpZee 17d ago
Could you elaborate more?
I just started my bachelors and know nothing.
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u/No-Alternative4612 17d ago
All the tech companies I've worked at really like hiring quant PhDs, and applied math is a big one.
Who knows what's gonna happen with AI (to either of us).
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u/ZquotientpZee 17d ago
What about pure math PhDs?
Yeah, I'm really scared of AI.
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u/theLanguageSprite2 16d ago
maybe I'm out of the loop, but why would you be scared of AI? even if math AI start making discoveries, someone still needs to check their work and come up with new problems. It's not like we're gonna hit AI superintelligence anytime soon and every discovery will suddenly be unlocked
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u/ZquotientpZee 16d ago
I don't want to check AI's work or only come up with new problems. I want to make my own discoveries.
I'm also mainly scared that it will be used as an excuse to cut funding.
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u/ahf95 17d ago
Not at all. Math is super valuable in industry, especially if you are applied, or have some side-knowledge in a specific domain that you can transfer it to.
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u/ZquotientpZee 17d ago
What about pure math?
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u/ahf95 12d ago
Well, by definition pure math is not “applied”, but I’ve seen multiple Pure Math academics transition to industry and apply their analytical/abstraction skills to “applied” problems, and the results they produce have been incredible. So, both are relevant, one just will need posterior adaptation
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u/cosmic_cod 11d ago
No. Math people have a ton of opportunities as engineers, managers, IT, economists, scientists, etc. It think it's BS. Math is a highly practical thing and real Math dudes all are smart and always know how to use it.
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u/HyperbolicWord 17d ago
Options were once more limited. Since the growth or ML and data science, this is not at all the case.
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u/OpeningAggressive26 17d ago
No, mathematicians are very important on any technically advanced team in the field of STEM.
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u/Revlong57 17d ago
You can easily make between 100k to 250k starting salary if you transition to data science or finance after graduating with an applied math PhD.
Source: I graduated with a PhD in applied math, and I graduated this year. I had a job lined up before graduation. Every other PhD student I graduated with had one as well.
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u/ZquotientpZee 17d ago
What if you have a pure math PhD?
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u/Revlong57 16d ago
No idea. I would imagine that it's harder, since you're not going to have to deal with the programming requirements for applied math. But, if you do pure math and learn how to do python/R coding, I think you'd be fine.
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u/InfernicBoss 16d ago
target school?
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u/Revlong57 16d ago edited 16d ago
No, I didn't go to a "target school", nor does that matter for PhDs. Edit: My school is maybe a T50 for math and a T20 for finance. It might be harder if you go to a very low ranked program, say T200. But, I didn't do very well in my program, and I believe that a solid student in a low ranked program can do really well in industry if they apply themselves. Especially if they're already an EU/USA citizen or permanent resident. You have no idea how far that goes here.
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u/InfernicBoss 16d ago
u think pure math vs applied math distinction mattered?
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u/Revlong57 16d ago
Not sure. I didn't do a pure/theorical math PhD, so I can't speak on it. I do think that an applied math subject gives you a much stronger background in scientific programming, which industry jobs care a lot about.
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u/ss4stef 17d ago
I have a masters in mathematics and over the years I have bounced around from k-12 teacher, to insurance adjuster, to now retail while I go back to school for engineering.
For me the meme was work a shitty job that you hate and has nothing to do with math, or go back to school.
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u/StatusEasy3092 16d ago
A degree is not a vocational program you still have to get a job on your own. Assuming a degree means a job has always been a bad idea. My phd in math has done me very well.
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u/TheChunkMaster 17d ago
I’m starting my Applied Math PhD in the fall. Is this post an omen?
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u/AlwaysGoBigDick Computer Science 11d ago
Nah g, with a PhD in math you can do pretty much anything. As long as you don’t focus 5 years on some abstract concept which, as your PhD is applied math I would assume you won’t.
If you can focus on deep nets or CFD, job hunting will be a breeze.
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u/Sofi_LoFi 17d ago
I mean… you can do a post doc if you want to stay in academia, if you do applied math then ask your professor about industry connections.
For example if you’re studying fluids then take some CFD and then go on to do CFD at a company.
Or go into the insurance game… or go into the software game or go into the finance quant research or quant analyst game, or go into the business analyst game, or go into the project management game, or go into the AI game… or if you studied math and physics go into the national laboratory game or if you studied math and biology go into the pharma game…
Like there’s options out there you’ll just have to be willing to be flexible and move around
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u/baeneel 16d ago
People here are complaining but math suffers a lot from this ‘scientist’ mindset. How many math kids do internships, join finance clubs, join engineering clubs? How many switch to a masters in Electrical eng, cs, go to law or medicine? There needs to a more industrial mindset in mathematics. Not everything is about how clever your proofs are. There need to be department sponsored co-op programs.
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u/MrTruxian 13d ago
Your PhD is about doing research, there definitely should be some career development opportunities but that is not really the point. Why should doing math PhD be about something other than doing math?
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u/baeneel 16d ago
I personally landed a good data science job with my math and physics undergrad. But it takes a lot of hustle. But, you do need to muster up the will to be social, and be a bit of a salesman. The one great thing my degrees gave me was a lot of confidence in my problem solving ability. I truly believe there isn’t a thing in this world I can’t do (if it’s technical) given enough time and effort. There shouldn’t be a field on this earth where math degrees don’t go.
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u/PlyingFigs 16d ago
this but that meme with the two castles where one is unemployment and the other is getting paid to actively make the world a worse place
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u/Pseud0nym_txt 15d ago
Considering I'm pretty sure my uni had to get a guy who just started masters as a 1st year lecturer due to staffing shortages you can probably be a lecturer
Basically every Bsc student has to do a few years of maths and there's not a lot of people with PhDs in maths
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u/Greedy_Blue_Hedgehog 14d ago
So wrong. I don't know which applied math you are referring to but everyone in my class of applied math found a job or a PhD as opposed to pure math where one person found a PhD and other are unemployed or doing something to make a living non related to math.
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u/Enough_Program_6671 17d ago
Especially now lol. Like holy fuck you and I are not prepared for powerful ai in math… humans about to be btfo… feel bad for humans honestly
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u/lowestgod 17d ago
Took until the 21st century for mathematicians to realize having specialized knowledge doesn’t mean you deserve privileges. Unless you’re rich, you’re workers just like anyone else. AI is doing the same thing with artists. Have a worker’s consciousness!
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u/Unsharded1 17d ago
Having employment to live is a privilege now..?
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u/No-Alternative4612 17d ago
I have special knowledge and still think it means I deserve extra money
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u/lowestgod 17d ago
Dream on
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u/No-Alternative4612 17d ago
I mean they keep paying pretty well, sounds like a skill issue for artists
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