Physicists and Astronomers
While physicists and astronomers only hold about 16,000 jobs in the US, and almost all of those are in basic research or in teaching more people to become physicists and astronomers, there’s two very interesting reasons to highlight the professions.
Both jobs, and thus their training, are heavily (even hugely) math based. Typically someone will hold more than one college degree, their first, then a Master’s and if they want to do either research or teach college degree programs themselves, then a Ph.D as well.
That it is hugely math based means that, along with mathematicians themselves and software programmers, we’re dealing with the extreme end of the male brain spectrum here. Other than that amount of empathy required to carry on normal life (and often not even that much) we’re very definitely looking for the extreme systemizers here, as measured by our EQSQ personality tests.
To those of us who aren’t highly systemising (after all, these people are in fact trying to work out why the universe works the way it does, it’s difficult to think of something more inquisitive about systems than that) this might actually sound a little boring. It isn’t, as anyone who has read Richard Feynman’s memoirs will know. It’s also pretty well paid, around $100,000 a year for those who have the specific talents required.
However, there’s a second reason why physics as a college degree can be recommended. Those who get a really good degree in the subject are in very high demand on Wall Street where they are known as quants. You can, if you’ve got that right sort of mathematical brain, earn quite literally a fortune, building the mathematical models of the markets which the traders then use. There are even rumors around of people who take that first degree, go work in the markets for a few years to build up their bank balance and then go back into academia to do what they really want to do: research and teach.
December 2nd, 2006 at 12:15 am
I have a friend who’s getting his PhD in physics at Cornell, and he’s struggling a bit with the job prospects. Not that they’re few. They’re a bit dry. Or with the military, and he’s not sure how he feels about contributing his intellectual work toward military ends. We’ve never chatted about his Wall Street options, though he’s not that fond of cutthroat capitalism. Perhaps my friend is a bit too balanced! Anyway, he’s looking into the variety of ways to make a difference using his physics degree. The folks over at Camp Energy prove he’s not alone. Cool project, huh?
December 3rd, 2006 at 9:29 pm
Those with advanced computer programming skills (and degrees) also are getting into Wall Street. Actually, there’s a fear among brokers that computer programmers are going to take over Wall Street completely. I used to work for a start-up computer software company that developed their own automated High Frequency Trading (HFT) algorithms, which trading firms or individuals used to make trades for them. It takes a highly-systemizing mind to create these kinds of algorithms. The owner, a Stanford-educated Computer Software mega-brain, was extremely on the side of systemizer, having nearly zero capabilities in empathy.
As for physicists, I’ve known a few, and I have to say, like Millie’s friend, they’ve all had rather strong empathizing sides. And possibly the greatest physicist of all time, Stephen Hawking, seems to have his share of empathy. When speaking of his diagnosis with Lou Gehrig’s disease, he spoke of a boy he saw in the hospital who had died of leukaemia: “Clearly there were people who were worse off than me…Whenever I feel inclined to be sorry for myself I remember that boy.”
Hawkings also made a recent public statement that if the human race is to survive, they will have to inhabit other planets. What kind of mind does it take to come to that spectacular and creatively practical conclusion?
December 8th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
Lucy, that last question… well, we’ve known that for a long time. Jerry Pournelle has been saying it for decades.
I’ve worked in the financial markets as well and while there are indeed those extremely well paid jobs there for programmers and physicists (and other maths geeks) and those with the required intelligence, there’s one thing that I think does mean that computers aren’t actually going to take over the whole market. There’ll be an increasing place for them, especially in arbitrage, but I don’t see the humans being pushed out just yet. You see, in hte short term, markets simply aren’t rational, so they cannot be computed. They’re made up of human beings reacting to stimuli and that means that the participants need to have emotional intelligence too. It isn’t ‘what should happen to prices when x happens?’, rather, ‘what will everyone else think will happen when x happens?’
Tough to program for that, really.