[Falcorian]

As a Physics PhD, I certainly went into grad school wanting to get a faculty position; is suspect most people did in my cohort.

Of course we're mostly data scientists now, because only 5% win the faculty lottery.

Data science wasn't a path that existed when we started. I wonder if its existence changes what people going into a Physics PhD expect.

[musicale]

> Of course we're mostly data scientists now, because only 5% win the faculty lottery.

This seems like a sad waste of physicists, even if the faculty pyramid scheme is obviously unsustainable. I for one would like to see more actual advances in physics.

[knzhou]

What can you do?

Suppose you magically double the number of faculty positions. Within one year all of the new positions could be filled a hundred times over. Now you've back to the exact same scenario, except that now you also have twice as many slots for grad students, too.

[alexgmcm]

Create more national labs, research institutes etc. that widen out the end of the funnel without widening the start.

/fellow physicist who went into DS

[knzhou]

Perhaps, but many of these labs are extensions of universities. I do research at SLAC, a national lab which shares grad students with Stanford.

[tmoot]

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.

[frickinLasers]

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

[tmoot]

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.