December Video--What do non-academic physicists do?

"Go down in the lab and fiddle with the lasers" or sth like that: You should make merch with this! Cups, Shirts ...

At 5:30 on Fridays, I don't wanna go home, I wanna be AT home already.

Your comment about what constitutes “work” in academia is so true, but tbh I do my best thinking and planning over coffee with my colleagues 😂 I think the reason academia feels so stressful and like you work so much is because you’re always thinking about it and thinking of ways to improve your work, and you know you’re “supposed to” to be working, so you end up just stressing in your thinking time instead of enjoying the fact you get paid (pittance) to think ! (Edit; you do address this later in your video lol) So then people feel the need to pad out their time worked, or, even worse, just sit in the lab and do “busy work” in an effort to fit in, which perpetuates the cycle. I want to stay in academia because I (currently) love the freedom and fluctuating intensity, but it’s not the constant 100% work machine everyone thinks it is.

Canadian engineers get a ring and not a sword. My engineering cousins and friends have the ring while I don't because I went into a computer science program that was in the faculty of math.

Working in the dreaded quantum computing field; yeah it’s gauche but the money is exceedingly good and the heat death of the universe can’t come soon enough.

Have you considered doing a video on all the cool things things hydrogen does (and doesn't) do? [Looking at you palladium >.> ] For example - Hydrogen decrepitation in magnet manufacturing, Hydrogen's role in anaerobic bacteria, Hydrogen movement through Nafion, and Hydrogen movement in the interstellar medium.

I am already a degreed engineer, so the self taught physics might not be as applicable. but I am recovering from a head injury, and wanted to reassure myself I had the knowledge I used to, so I took your book recommendations and bought two of Shankar’s books, Basic Training in Mathematics and Fundamentals of Physics. I started the math book and promptly realized my math issues were earlier, and ended up going through everything from basic arithmetic up to high school geometry, at which point I switched to dopamine games because I had enough math to get by at my job but still needed the process flow cognition and silly building games are good for that. I’ve graduated dopamine games (they got boring, thank goodness) and now I’m going back to math and physics. I bought myself an FE book this year. I figured doing all this work, it’d be cool to have a fun acronym to show for it. Thanks for what you do! Your videos have been a good benchmark, you explain well enough that I could still understand without my faculties being back, and as I recover, I rewatch your videos and my understanding is more advanced and I learn something new! You’re great, this has been great for me, thank you for sharing your knowledge.

Would you be more intrested in staying in acedemia if the pay/similar were better?

"Code Tests" or "Art Tests" are mostly BS for free work. BUT they do have genuine uses if used right. Like to show that the employee can adapt and understand someone else's code, work collaboratively, identify issues and maintain the required standard. But that's more of a short, "non work" test that they created for that purpose.

Yes, the video was interesting and worth making.

Well in defence of the academics (I know! poor academics, right?), they are probably in a pretty hectic schedule, by which I mean high number of tasks that eat up a lot of time. For example, all the various activities associated with teaching courses, all the various activities associated with other departmental affairs, etc.. For someone not trained in managing a steady stream of many (albeit small) activities almost everyday, this can be quite a bit to get used to. You are usually alone in the sense that usually you are trying to build your own unique voice within the scientific community, especially in your early career. This is also quite stressful and is somewhat tied to your students research, which you are also somewhat responsible for. And all activities mentioned above aren't even too related to "doing research". I know these barely count as excuses, but I beat myself up way too may times for being that person in the meeting who doesn't "do the work" beforehand, especially when talking to people from industry. So I personally prefer "unfulfilled desire" to "incomplete tasks" to describe the lackadaisicalness XD.

You're absolutely right to refuse to do unpaid work to get a job. There's been a decent push against that practice but they get away with it because not enough people do refuse to do that garbage. Fortunately in my 20 years in the tech industry, no one has asked me to do more than a basic whiteboard challenge (but I've also had to work with actual hired programmers who couldn't write a for loop)

So far I have only a couple of random little reactions but there's more kicking around upstairs. We'll see if anything precipitates out. One, I'm a coder, but at the antipode. AMR is a thing that Lenny might have spewed talking at us about lattice field theory but if so it didn't stick. Probably he just didn't go far enough into details. I'm learning about it now. Thanks. Anyway on the personal stuff. I read your cues when you almost talk about things that cross boundaries. It's good that you've thought that through. I don't have expectations that you're gonna spill your guts to us. I feel I know enough about you to get your lessons that you put into your essays. A million followers all thinking they are your best friend isn't your brand. No offense, but you're a regular Joe Polchinski. Bill Unruh, John Preskill etc. A real physicist, & not a rock star. Anyway, yeah, draw your lines, tell us what you want to, don't go too far just to bond. You bond already just fine. We are happy here in our little orbitals. We feel you. Where you point, we're gonna look. No, thank *you* for being here.

Physics PhD, engineering career as a dev at Microsoft since the early 2000s, never got laid off, so ymmv. Projects for 2025: retire and leave the country.

can we all build a radio telescope ? we need a home depot component and supply list and a Build and Capture Data from a Radio Telescope 101

If you want to share that helium paper, digital libraries like libgen accept submissions.

Great perspective on physics in the "real world". Many years ago (1960-70s) I was a scientific programmer at Lincoln Labs and got to work with a number of physicists and mathematicians writing and maintaining code (Fortran IV on an IBM 360 mainframe) for radar images, nuclear effects, satellite and missile orbits, etc. In the morning seeing a 3' stack of paper at your office door meant that your overnight run crashed and it printed an entire memory dump. The scientists were great to work with and treated the programmers with respect.

Nice anecdote on beer, I had a similar experience and hate it

It is amazing to hear that there's an academia version of skiplagging flights

So as a Physics PhD turned Data Scientist, I will say a few words in defense of the field: DS is about *modeling* large, complex systems. Whether that's tracking social media influence, forecasting credit card chargeoffs or making recommendations for what campus recruiting programs can do to attract diverse talent, what a good physicist brings to the role is their understanding of how much complexity is needed for the model—when are second- or third-order effects important?—and how to build confidence in their hypotheses. That said, the AI hype train has ruined the job family, and I'm actively trying to shift my career back towards physical sciences. Talking "dream jobs," mine would be to do weather modeling for NOAA. But with the election, that dream is now four years further off. 😞

So where is the video link?

I just got a walking desk also! Sadly my company didn't pay for it, but I work from home, so it's just mine to do with what I want. My advice is to start slow and easy and build up. Walk for a period, sit for a period. But maybe I'm just really out of shape.

Thumbs up on the Tesla Coil - I wanted to make one but I guess there was a warning about interfering with radio frequencies. Consequently, I found a small tesla coil kit - a tesla coil about the size of a crayon on amazon, made in China, but I lost it.

This reminded me of Ghostbusters: "Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything! You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there! I've WORKDED in the private sector. They expect RESULTS." My 2025 goals is to try to stay out of the US as much as possible. I'm watching this from S. Korea (just went through an attempted coup! Slept through the whole thing), and I'm extremely privileged to be able to spend many weeks at a time working remotely, and man, I just don't need to be in the US for the next few years.

Hi! I was trying to find a way to contact you regarding something you mentioned on this video, but I couldn't find any contact information. If you're open for a short chat, send me a dm in here (I think that's something a creator can do in Patreon). Br, Alia

I was interested in this even though I voted for Helium. I didn’t really know about nonacademic physicists— my PhD is in classical history and your options are academia or teach in schools! I have comp sci / mathematics undergrad (I did a dual degree BSc/BA which is a thing here) so I always intended to fall back on that anyway. My goals for 2025 are ride my bike further and faster.

My goal for 2025 is to find a new job. Angela, I enjoy the way you talk about things. You're fun to listen to, and you spark a sense of wonder in me when I watch your videos. You make me want to get my camera out and go take more pictures, hopefully to learn more about taking better pictures.

I work in engineering consulting, and the vibe is very similar about quitting to be a baker, etc. I always wonder if it also has something to do with the physicality of it. making something tangible with more clearly defined parameters of what "complete" looks like.

Thank you so much for sharing your stories. I loved to learn about living as a researcher outside academia. Some jobs like counseling sound awful but in general it is nice that we get to continue our nerdy lives outside the schools. :)

For me 2025 is going to be strange. I'm turning 50. I just got forced out of my tech job after 17 years for asshole political reasons, but I was also bored and jaded anyway. So I'm taking a time-out. In particular I'm intending to not even think about getting another job for a few months. I'm going through Khan Academy to brush up my mathematics and then maybe physics, just because I've always wanted to. I'm writing. I'm reading. I'm following up on a personal coding project I left by the wayside years ago. I'm trying to improve my health and physical disability. And my kid just got diagnosed on the spectrum, and their traits match mine, so I'm basically reframing my life history in the context of being on the spectrum (which in hindsight is glaringly obvious) And I'm drawing cartoon rabbits... I spent a day or two doing 2D animation of cartoon rabbits in Procreate this week. Turns out I don't actually suck at it. Some of that might… just *might*… end up as part of a YouTube series I'm pondering. I never wanted to be a content creator, but I feel I might have some things I want to say. 2025'll be interesting, I hope.

Is this related to your job? Predicting the effect of solar flares on satellites, power grids, infrastructure? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/what-a-major-solar-storm-could-do-to-our-planet Excited for the "Starship Troopers" podcast. Any chance you cover the movie also? I like the satirical slant it takes. Happy holidays

100% true on the code interview being unpaid labor. tech often just has no clue how to actually hire and often make up absurd reality show esqe contests internally. its f'd up

Oh, was there a 10k special? Where can one find it?

I subscribed specifically because it is interesting to hear a regular person talk about their experiences in academia, a field I never entered. So, don't worry about videos like this not connecting, it's why a lot of us are here! For future science topic ideas (and maybe this is just not your field at all, idk), I'd like to know more about the things that prevent us as a species from becoming spacefaring. Things like: space debris making orbital traversal dangerous, limited amount of rocket fuel chemicals on the planet, or whether space elevators are actually viable or just a sci-fi concept. I would just really like for humans to travel the stars one day but I'm worried we'll lose the opportunity at some point due to the above.

Do you feel popular portrayals of Physicists (Big Bang Theory/Love, Theoretically) have had an impact on what non-Physicists think you (or other physicists) actually do? If so, how do you handle that?

Oh man, code tests like the ones you described are garbage. My current company which is great required one but it took less than 2 hours. When they asked me to have it to them the next day I said "no, I have a job already, I can take a look this weekend". I swear the reason they hired me wasn't for doing some braindead code test, it was because I said no to working extra hours during the week.

(lawyer here, but this is not legal advice) Don't post copyrighted material behind a paywall. That is a copyright violation.

I’ve been meaning to read Starship Troopers for years. I think I’ll pick it up to better enjoy the podcast with.

Interesting to hear that physicists want to become bakers. As someone in IT (that started with a bachelor's in Physics) everyone talks about being a goat farmer.

When I was a child wondering what adults do all day I would have loved a video like this. Turns out, I managed to find a job that was both physically and mentally exhausting, and after a total mental-physical breakdown I've been wheelchairbound and unemployable for two years now. Take care of yourselves, people.

I had thought that non-academic physicists developed death rays for the government, or maybe for James Bond villain types like Elon Musk. Long ago I had a physics professor who suggested that after you get your BS in physics you could go to law school and become a patent lawyer. Apparently there is good money there.

God, this is 100% correct about how academics are borderline obsessed with talking about how much they work, but then... never seem to be working...? Or at least the ratios are wildly different. I am a current PhD student in Anthropology (obviously a bit different from STEM topics, but I expect a lot of the academia parts transfer) and many of my peers seem to talk about working for at least 40 hours a week, plus the actual work time I guess. Some of them do have a lot of contact time (i.e., the forensic people have to spend a lot of time physically in the lab or field research center), but a lot of that seems to be hours-spent rather than hours-worked, if that makes sense. Not to say that there aren't periods where there's a high workload (I just submitted 65 pages of final papers for the end of the semester), but in general I have never worked less or had longer deadlines. I also maintain a part-time job in industry (I'm a professional archaeologist in industry and have been for 7 years now since I took a break between BS and MA; CRM work is mostly legal compliance for construction, etc.) and we actually have tractable deadlines, meetings, deliverables, etc. that make a lot of academic assignments seem extremely cushy. I spend a lot more time *thinking* through my school topics, but I definitely spend a lot more time *doing* industry work. I am fortunate that my university guarantees a stipend that's decent for the cost of living in the area, but, boy, industry is a way better time:dollar ratio. I think for the social sciences there's often a less direct translation from degree to industry job (your title won't often be "anthropoloigist", though the archaeologist industry is surprisingly robust and I beg students to consider it), but the professorship prospects are beyond dire in my opinion/experience. All that to say, industry with an advanced degree is great.

Hearing you talk about Academics vs Industry it reminds me of that quote from Ghostbusters Dan Akroyd "Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything! You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there!"

No questions or insights from me, just wanted to say that you're freaking cool!

We actually sold/sell equipment to Sandia :D IMHO you can do interesting work just outside research in non-government funded companies. We have a bunch of materials research and some limited other research going on in our company here in Vienna.

🙋🏻‍♀️ I mastered out of my MatSci degree, ask me anything! Angela, your videos are few years ago really helped alleviate my guilt in leaving the program

That was great! One of the key things you kept saying is "you can do anything", which is sort of the cool thing about a physics PhD. You generally have the background you need to move into anything. For STEM-ish people who want to contribute to helping kids learn what scientists do, sign up to be a penpal for Letters to a Prescientist, where you exchange four paper letters with a kid who would probably otherwise never encounter a scientist. You help them see scientists as regular people like them and describe the path you took, because many of them have no realistic way to even know where to look to figure out how to end up in science. I did the switch out of academia ~35 years ago and don't regret it at all. After undergrad with a BS in physics I worked at a small materials startup for a couple years as a "test engineer" where I tested all the materials and built up systems to test them. Then went back to school and got a PhD (experimental physics), intending to go back into industry. I ended up at an FFRDC (a national lab by another name, but worth looking up to understand the relationship of national labs to gov't money) doing aerospace. It's run by a university, and I can masquerade as an employee of the university for funding purposes, and mostly do stuff that's basically aerospace engineering. My early work path was much like yours - doing all the same stuff as in grad school. I slowly drifted into doing stuff where I do the technical management on outside contracts (I don't need to build up another vacuum system or cryo system or DAQ system): when we pay other companies to do complicated things, I work with the company to make sure what we get is what we need. I translate the technical needs into contract instructions and then deal with all the ambiguities and things that go wrong technically. On the side I have my own research program that's funded in fits and starts, so it's much like being faculty, but I deal with outside technical people where the teaching would be. And the pay is way better than academia, with most of the flexibility at this point.

I've been in tech (not big tech, no interest in that life) for 25 years, and coding interviews are so common and also rarely done right. Totally agree that the ones asking for extensive tests outside the interview itself can f right off. This is especially true of the algorithm tests for jobs that will never need you to do that type of work, ever. An actual example I've done: "Write a program that can generate all possible answers for an arbitrary N by N grid using the Boggle rules. Start with a 4x4 grid, but expand to a 20x20. The performance difference between grid sizes should remain linear." This involved taking an English dictionary, moving it to a Trie, and then finding all the words for each starting location on the grid. Data structure 101 essentially. The work I'd be doing at that job? Data entry style websites. Absolutely ridiculous. As an interviewer, I would much rather just spend an hour talking tech with someone. Ask about projects and technologies used, delve into them. How much a person knows comes out pretty quick if you're also knowledgeable on the subject, but it feels like the coding test is put in place to filter people out way too early, and by people who don't really know the subject matter.

My perspective, as the husband of a (business) tenure-track research professor, is that academics are bad at time management in multiple directions. Sure, a failure to adequately predict how long something will take (though for her it's mostly because there's always 5 competing projects going on so maybe one is unexpectedly urgent right when you planned on working on the first one). If it doesn't matter if something takes 2 weeks or 4, then you don't need to wear a project management hat. As long as you're not upsetting your coauthors, it's fine (though not cancelling the meeting is super rude, what the heck). But also (and I think it's why academics talk about working all the time), academics will work around the clock. My wife will call her co-authors at 11pm because she's working on a paper and needs input, and it's fine because _so are they_, or at least see nothing wrong with an impromptu 30 minute work conversation late at night. Even if it's 40 hours of work a week, it's scattered all over to when they have uninterrupted blocks of time, not locked in a 9-5.

You are someone I would love to know.

Angela for President.

Because I worked for an electric cooperative that had several types of engineers with extra specialty degrees, nobody without an engineering degree could use the title "engineer." The perfect description of my job was software engineer, but instead, they called it systems analyst and later systems administrator. I actually wrote each of my job descriptions because I was the first web developer; I got to write the job description for each of the four times I received promotions. So I had input on what the position would be called, as long as it wasn't software engineer. The one time I did a code test, they basically had me do a couple of algorithms and some advanced SQL with no reference material. I handed it to the recruiter when I was done, and she was shocked by how much I got right from memory alone. It was stupid. But I really wanted a job. She never found me one. I have two goals for 2025: 1. Start some kind of daily or multiple times a day math/science quiz/puzzle Bluesky account. 2. I want to write a novel or episodic series, but I want to build the history, culture, and a conlang that influences the events and maintains consistency throughout the works.

re the cardboard: paint it green (or some solid color) and you can greenscreen it to be different every video.

What's the helium paper you're looking for? I used to do superfluid helium and still have a big box of old papers and lots of books (plus still know a few people who might have stuff).

Happy for both videos! ☮️ ❤️ 🛸