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Breaking Away from Programming?
Captain Numerica asks: "I've been working as a programmer since I graduated from high school. I've been paying my own way through college, and now I'm about to graduate with a BS in Physics. I plan on continuing my studies to a PhD in Physics, but first I need to get on my feet financially, as a fellowship/TA position isn't yet sufficient for the debt I've accumulated in my more irresponsible years. I'm leaving my university with a great deal of programming experience -- a fact that I might want to advertise to potential employers. However, at the same time I don't want to become type-casted as just a programmer, as my real skills involve analytical and experimental physics. Has anyone working as a research engineer/scientist come out of college under similar circumstances?" For those of you with significant programming skills, but the wish to focus in areas more suitable to your education, how did you avoid falling into the Programmer IT Trap?
"I plan on continuing my studies to a PhD in Physics, but first I need to get on my feet financially"
You should concentrate on getting your PhD first, even if that mean more debts, because having a PhD--especially in Physics but that doesn't really matter--you will be able to negotiate much higher rates than people with the same or better skills but with lower degrees. It will also mean that your work will most likely be more research-related, which is much more rewarding and indeed important than another so called Real World(TM) cubicle monkey. So don't even think about it, get your PhD first and then start getting some Real Money.(TM) I wish you the best luck.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
If you feel the burnout starting to set in, you might take the year off and teach private school. They can't get enough physics teachers and you would have very little trouble finding work for a year or so.
If you are looking for something longer term, many financial organizations higher physicists for their problem solving skills as stock market analysts. PhD's are often highly desired for those positions, but not required.
But if all else fails, work is work - suck it up and do what you can until something better comes along. Even if it is programming.
Given that you said you are soon to graduate, just remember that specifically what you do next in your career will not necessarily determine where you end up down the road. Don't lose sight of the fact that you have your whole life ahead of you. Most people coming right out of college are programmed (pun intended) to try to land the perfect, career-launching job. While this is the best case scenario, your best bet is to approach your career life as a realist.
Certainly don't sell yourself short, just don't expect to land the perfect, high-paying, life-fulfilling job right out of college. Use this time to try to realistically focus on where you want to end up, and let it happen. Obviously your milage may vary, and this depends on many factors: Education, experience, region, specific field, economy, etc.
Also, don't lock yourself into one specific geographical region unless it is absolutely important to you. You have the most flexibility at your stage in life than at any other time, so if the job market in your area seems bleak, by all means, branch out and see what's available in other regions.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
... if you are absolutely, positively sure that physics research is what you want to do with your life. Your debts, if they're student loans, can be deferred while you're in grad school. (And if they're not student loans, then get all the loans you can and put them toward paying down your other debts -- 3% student loan interest beats 15% credit card interest any day of the week.) In the long run, you'll come out ahead, financially, professionally, and personally.
OTOH, if you're not absolutely, positively sure, then just get a job and work hard and make as much money as you can for a while, and then after a few years, when you've paid down your debts and hopefully have some money in the bank, you can decide if you really want to commit yourself full-time to research.
In any case, don't worry about being typecast, IMO. Grad school admission committees aren't going to look at your work history and say, "Oh, this guy's just a programmer, we can't possibly teach him physics." If anything, they'll be more impressed by a wide variety of experience -- not to mention that there is a desperate need, in just about every scientific field, for researchers who also know how to program. And once you have your Ph.D., nobody cares what you did for a living beforehand. One of my best professors put himself through school, from day one as a freshman to the day he got his doctorate, as a short-order cook. Nobody in the department ever asked him to fry up some bacon and eggs.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Physics is one of the hardest fields to find a job, especially if you only have a B.S. Most companies will prefer a Masters when it comes to the research positions. You have programming skills which you should advertise to no end to make yourself stand out. You should also consider getting an IT position or an entry level position as a research assistant in companies where aerospace is prominent part of their business. That way once you have your M.S. or Ph.D you can transfer within the company. Good luck.
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
Look for a job with a government agency that does both research and computer-based simulations. Examples: NOAA, NIST, NREL for unclassified work. Out here in Colorado a fair number of grad students similar to you go to Los Alamos for summer jobs.
There are a few options to get paid and get a PhD at the same time. I would recommend looking at companies like General Atomics. I know that at GA, they employ a lot of computational physicists on their fusion project who are also faculty members at various schools around the world. It's possible to have both a job and a research project. On the other hand, there are probably a handfull of such opportunities worldwide.
/year /year /year
It makes no sense at all to go out and establish yourself with a company only to throw it away after a few years by leaving to work on a PhD.
Getting a PhD in Physics is not easy, and is definitely NOT something you can do while working a serious job.
In addition, you may want to look at what a PhD will get you. It's basically a membership card into the "physics club". This gets you access to government grants, academic institutions and conferences. These things are technically open to anyone... but you really need a PhD just to make the first cut where jobs and money are concerned.
The downside of a physics PhD is that it really doesn't guarantee you that much. You will have a job in physics should you want it. That job will likely pay slightly more than what you could make now. Look at it this way:
Research Fellowship: $15k to $30k
Postdoc position: $30k to $50k
Assistant Professor: $40k to $70k
It will take about 10 years to get to the Assistant Professor level should you decide to go the academic route. If you want to go industry, why get the PhD if you have the skills you want to use right now? I'm not sure the 6 years of time off are made up for by the added pay.
I find I have the opposite problem: I often get hired on as a programmer, but inevitably my job becomes sysadmin and tech support. "Oh, I know I should be talking to the other guy, but he doesn't know how to..." and so on. Eventually, I gave up and got a sysadmin job.
By a strange coincidence, now as a sysadmin I'm asked to fix things that the developers have written, and to write internal tools.