<p>Okay. So my daughter who always hung with the creative writing club kids has morphed into a physics kid. She is putting that down on her applications as her intended major. Yes, she's done really well in it. Her physics teacher tells her (and us) she's gifted in physics. But what exactly does one actually do with a physics degree? I'm thinking "Big Bang Theory" . . . Will she be an eternal grad student/post doc? There are certainly worse fates. I just have no sense of what this course of study leads to. She is also interested in mechanical engineering but not enough to put it down on the applications and write an engineering essay.</p>
<p>My nephew works for a financial firm, dealing with derivatives. He got BS in Physics and Math. I think he programs financial models.</p>
<p>I have a physics degree and I worked in aerospace doing similar work to the engineers. Then I also got an engineering degree and the work I did didn’t change that much, until I went into semiconductors and then the energy sector where I currently work.</p>
<p>I don’t see why she couldn’t do what this guy did -
[Bud</a> Tribble - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bud_Tribble]Bud”>Bud Tribble - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>or what this guy did for that matter-
<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Judge[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Judge</a></p>
<p>But people keep posting on here that times are different now.</p>
<p>My friend’s son (optics degree) is working with a film/video production company. He is doing 3-D and advanced type stuff. However, he always had a side interest in performing and filming.</p>
<p>D1 earned a physics degree 3 years ago and is now in med school. Her classmates are working in all the following professions: investment analysts for financial firms, meteorology grad student, astronomy grad student, grad student at CERN, law student, high school math & physics teacher, science & math instructor at community college, clothing designer, insurance underwriter/analyst, cell tower design/placement (antenna & signals patterns) for a national cell carrier, energy use analyst for the regional electric company, computer programmer for a tech start up, lab techs at national research labs and with the Air Force Research Lab, analyst for the city planning dept., and one is a google employee (not sure what he does exactly).</p>
<p>Physics majors have a tough time getting good physics research jobs.</p>
<p>However many are recruited to do other jobs such as engineering (in situations where PE licensing (where an ABET accredited engineering degree helps) is not required), computer software development, and finance (the latter two are often not difficult for math-oriented people to pick up and learn). Of course, there is also teaching physics in community college or high school.</p>
<p>You can check the physics entries in the <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys.html</a> .</p>
<p>Not to be a contrarian here, but the idea that non-comp sci / comp eng STEM majors can ‘pick up and learn’ software development is a bit oversold. I deal on a daily basis with software development and believe me, unless we’re talking simpler stuff, a good physics, math, or the like major with a handful of comp sci courses can’t hold a candle versus a good comp sci or comp eng person (real comp sci stuff, not IT).</p>
<p>There are exceptions - the best machine language coder I’ve ever seen (we used to hire them back then when embedded computers were not so powerful) is a guy with an MS in Psychology who learned programming as part of his research (EKG to PC in the early 1980’s). But he’s a genius, and not very many of us are :-)</p>
<p>This past summer I had an intern from a well known school - a Mech Engineer of all things, with a handful of comp sci classes (CS minor). While he was very good, he had his limitations - especially in the more ‘corporate’ aspects of software development (formal stuff, requirements, designs, life cycle, and the like). Again, contrary to popular belief, even full time software developers don’t spend all day coding… Certainly, programming languages or computer architecture are a lot easier than particle physics, but there’s use for both.</p>
<p>Sound/audio engineering (you can double major in Physics and sound engineering at many schools)</p>
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<p>Probably not the average ones. But I do know a number of physics majors who did well in computer software jobs. Obviously, if your goal is a software job, it is a better idea to major in computer science. But it is not impossible for a physics (or math) major to switch over and learn the needed concepts (though it would certainly help to have at least the introductory computer science courses, or (better) a minor in computer science, if the idea is to use computer software as a backup job if physics research turns up nothing).</p>
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<p>Older computer science graduates may not have learned this type of stuff in school either, since they may have studied computer science before computer science departments started offering courses in software engineering methods. Of course, they would have had to learn this stuff on the job in the absence of a course in school.</p>
<p>In some schools, there is now a software engineering major which has several courses for more in-depth study of software engineering methods, though that is probably not as valuable as additional courses on various computer science topics that one would otherwise take instead (assuming one takes the introductory overview course on software engineering).</p>
<p>Oil companies hire physicists</p>
<p>D1 got a degree in Physics and got a good job as software design engineer. She seems to enjoy it and is successful and well-regarded at work. The other software engineers sometimes bring her their fancy higher math functions to write and code.</p>
<p>I think applied physics opens a lot of doors in career planning. Pure physics are mostly in research and teaching.</p>
<p>Thanks, guys. Not the direction I would have predicted a year ago but sounds like a very good one. I am reassured.</p>