My advisor made the exact same point. Although we did receive funding from startups to work on adjacent problems.

Physicist here.

Since you probably have a good background in optimization, work through problems in:

- Taylor for Classical Mechanics or Goldstein (a bit more advanced) - Griffiths for E/M and Quantum.

For stat. mech. I find the chemists have more intuitive textbooks.

- Introduction to Modern Statistical Mechanics by Chandler

That's how I learned; on a good ol'fashion gentoo box.

learned so much about os stuff and kernel drivers, etc...

It was like diving in the deep end of a pool though.

Gentoo was the best Linux class until their Wiki nuked itself(can’t remember what happened exactly). I started with Ubuntu around 2007, got tired and moved to Gentoo right away. My Pentium 4 was heating up my whole room compiling things all night. Good times.

I'm happy you posted this.

Most of my cohort are now data scientists or ML/AI engineers.

Honestly, the trend I seeing is that weaker students -ie can't find data science or consulting jobs- move on to post-docs.

Although, there are the dedicated few academics that also move on to post-docs as well.

Physics research always involves statistics, cough, 'machine learning' cough so that's how people are selling it these days.

I'd take a post-doc simply to avoid either of those careers.

Hahaha, some of the people I considered the most academic in my physics cohort are going consulting.

After 5-6 years of making 25k per year and working long hours (which is not bad given the cost-of-living where I was in grad school is low), the salary becomes a very real draw.

This is a good point. There are too many confounding factors. I recently finished my PhD and reflecting back, it was hard and a lot of work, certainly not what I imagined as an undergrad. I worked most weekends and holidays and have a few projects that failed and grants I couldn't produce the results, subsequently losing funding. It was a bit debilitating watching friends and family enjoying the 9-5 lifestyle.

Honestly, what kept me afloat were my Chinese and Indian colleagues that pretty much lived in the office but were candid about the experience.

I'm not staying in academia because physics AP's don't make that much compared industry positions (I want a cybertruck :) ).

However, I'm glad I finished, because it's opened quite a few doors in industry to work on cutting edge tech with problems I want to work on.

On the contrary, what kept me alive during the PhD was that if I do well, I won't have to get a 9-to-5 job

Yeah, you’ll get a 7 to 7 job.

Excuse you, academics at the top of the food chain have the complete freedom to choose which 60 hours to work every week.

I knew professors that slacked around all day long. In principle, you can work only one month per year writing an excellent research paper. And of course, planning your lectures during the rest of the time.

This is not my experience with the newer generation of professors in STEM.

Writing that paper means making getting funding and that means networking (giving talks, creating/maintaining collaborations), participating in inter/intra department grant writing, managing students to produce the work, etc.

Of course you could write an amazing research paper but more often than not it won't go to an amazing journal unless you have positive connections in the field (-ie potential reviewers and editors).

Papers in good journals -> Easier to get grants.

A major part of the tenure packet is grants and awards.

Teaching is not the top priority.

You can live just off your usual salary, you don't need grants if you're frugal.

Typically the university pays professors salary and gives you a startup fund.

Professors have to bring in grant money to fund students, build a lab, travel to conferences to advertise the work, etc.

Plus the university gets a little slice of the grant.

If you don't bring in grants you'll be fired. And good luck funding a lab w/o grants.

Not everywhere is like the US.

Well, there goes my weekend :)

This hits close to home.

What, you don't want to be a 10th year grad student then post-doc till your mid-to-late 30's?

Also, to be honest, those problems are kind of boring.

:)

-- phd in physics.