In case anyone thinks this is hyperbole, here is a lovely example. My daughter worked for an airline company in Hong Kong. They decided they wanted to get rid of their non-Chinese staff. One of the people they got rid of was responsible for a seemingly trivial task - renewing some sort of license needed to run their web server in the US. So, after he got laid off, it didn’t get renewed. The company was planning a big promotion for one of the busiest flying times of the year - but the web site went down because of this and they lost hundreds of millions of dollars in business. The company went under - not only for this but because it was owned by one of the big companies invested in real estate. But it didn’t help.
We used to be paid by the number of records loaded; but Experian unilaterally changed the rules. Now er get paid for records that get queries. It’s not nothing (about $120,000 per year), but not major. The bulk of the money comes from membership dues, selling Experian/Equifax/D&B and our own credit reports, collections, and education. Still, members aren’t going to want to pay for crap reports; and as I said, we don’t get paid for records that aren’t in the database. We also get money from Equifax for the data we send, but I don’t know how much.
Membership orgs are losing members. Many of our members are very enthusiastic, and praise our services. But I think membership has been dropping for 20 years.
This morning I applied for a Junior Mortgage Loan Officer position in Bellingham. I don’t have any loan experience (other than my own mortgage), but I believe my skills are transferrable. My cover letter had bullet points that related to theirs, and I added my LinkedIn profile link. I also sent two letters of recommendation.
Key Responsibilities
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Manage active loan files from application to closing
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Track loan conditions, documentation, and timelines
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Communicate with borrowers, real estate agents, and internal teams
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Assist with loan structuring, pricing, AUS, and pre-approval preparation
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Maintain accurate CRM and pipeline records
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Support buyer follow-up and warm opportunities
Qualifications
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Prior mortgage or real estate industry experience preferred
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Strong communication and organizational skills
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Ability to manage multiple files in a fast-paced environment
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Coachable, accountable, and career-oriented
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Comfortable working in-office consistently
Best wishes. I agree, i think your skills are transferrable and you would do that job really well.
Oh, the pain…
I think I’ve said that I write up to three output files, not necessarily in the same formats. I reminded Tampa that they need to provide all output files. I received this reply this morning:
I talked this over with [programmer] and he said you guys are responsible for converting files to the Experian/ Equifax format. We may be able to assist in the future, but for now we are just sending the raw files back.
Um… No. Here is my reply (and I copied our president, whose idea this whole thing was):
Once I am no longer here, it will be impossible to convert the files into Equifax and Experian formats because the reformatting is done with my Easytrieves, so you will need to do it with your programs.
You will also need to clean up the files before you return them.
So Tampa and our receptionist receive the files. Tampa does nothing (other to load them as received) and sends them back to our receptionist completely unchanged. Why bother having the receptionist do anything? Let Tampa send the files to Experian and Equifax. Let Tampa send all of the programming requests to Experian and Equifax, and then wait months and months (and months) to get verification package. Let them review the verification package and give the OK to load. There is no way our receptionist is equipped to do what Tampa needs to do… even if we weren’t getting rid of Easytrieve.
Well, that was quick.
La Jefe to Tampa: Help me understand this exchange. You and I discussed multiple times that Tampa would send the data back formatted for Experian and Exquifax.
Tampa to La Jefe: Yes, I am working on getting the data into the Experian and Equifax format, but it will take a little time for me to get the formatting created. We will be handling it for you soon, but I am just getting my hands around the formatting for each.
Apparently La Jefe was ‘a little stressed’ when I copied her on the email in my previous post.
And rather different from the reply you got.
For each of my three layoffs, aside maybe from the first one where I was naive about the whole process, this is about the point where I would shift from “Let me do everything I can to help.” to “Let it burn.”
See, here’s the thing: I care about our members. I want them to succeed, and to receive good information to make their credit decisions. For as long as I’m here, I will do what’s right for our members.
I get it. I cared about my teams and folks left behind. But I also realized my mental health was important and that I couldn’t take on battles and stress over things that leadership demonstrated unequivocally didn’t matter to them.
Physics is one of those undergrad degrees essentially useless for anything except getting into a post-Grad program.
I’m not going to stress over it. But I’m not going to be quiet about it either. For the next five or six weeks, I am still the Data Operations Manager; so I’ll do what I can. I’m no longer going to send cleaned and formatted files to Tampa. They can do what they want. After I’m gone, the others will get what they get.
ETA: I’m sorry for our receptionist. I would not be surprised if she finds another job in a few months. I love her manager. We’ve known each other for 16 years. I think it will be up to her to train a new receptionist/Customer Care rep./data handler. (She wrote me a nice letter of recommendation on LinkedIn.)
How about writing up your responses to each question as it arises, then when it comes up again, politely responding that you answered that in writing to X on XX/XX/2025?
Not a layoff, but when I left my last role I hit that moment a few days before my actual departure. I had been heavily involved in defining a new process and I was handing it over to someone else who I was pretty sure was going to completely botch it. I was in meetings and getting frustrated and not really able to guide them back to recognizing the bureaucratic trap they were setting up but I just didn’t have time.
I told my manager why and where they were going wrong and I stopped attending those process meetings. Best decision I made in the wind down. I don’t actually know how that’s all turned out. As much as I poured myself into it, it ultimately doesn’t even matter to me.
Document what you can, hand it off, and move on. You can’t run all legs of a relay.
I could be mistaken, but I was under the impression that bankers love physics degrees because they are good at writing formulae, algorithms, developing models, etc.
Is that the purview of PhDs only? If so, interesting, because BS in chemistry/biology has no trouble getting hired into pharma/biotech.
Possibly, but I would suspect that they would be much more interested in a graduate with a business degree, with a specialization in accounting or finance, as such graduates also would have experience and education in the exact sorts of formulas and models which are used in banking and finance.
So they are prized, and it is at the PhD level (I had read a number of times that physics is highly sought after).
I’ve taken both physics and business classes (admittedly at the undergrad level), and I’ll tell you the math in physics was well beyond that in business.
Having gotten a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in business, and having had a lot of friends in college who were engineering majors: I absolutely agree.
In order to gain entrance to the undergrad business program, one had to complete a bunch of prerequisite courses, including two semesters of calculus. But, they weren’t the same calculus classes that the engineering and science majors had to take: they were “business calculus” classes, which focused on the sorts of calculus equations which were commonly used in finance.
Even more importantly: the business calculus classes taught you how to read and use a differential equation, but they did very little to explain what, exactly, a differential equation was – which, I discovered in talking with my engineering friends, was a big part of the foundational learning in “real” calculus classes. My science-oriented friends understood how calculus worked; all I had to learn, for business school, was how to use the results.
It wouldn’t surprise me if, as that article mentions, finance firms and investment banks are now valuing people with heavy-duty quant skills (though I’d be curious to see some actual stats on that, beyond that article, which is, frankly, an opinion piece, even if it may be an informed opinion). But, as you note, it may be at the PhD level where a physics degree could get you a job in finance; I strongly suspect that, for entry-level jobs with a bachelor’s degree in that field, a business degree in finance or accounting is still going to be preferred over a BS in physics.
I don’t have stats but there are definitely a lot of quant and data scientist jobs on Wall Street, Silicon Valley and pretty much every industry.
Oh, absolutely; the big ad agency where I worked until earlier this year had an entire data science department (and, yes, some of the leadership in that group had PhDs). Hell, I am technically a quant jock, as my master’s is in market research, the first decade of my career was in market research, and I still do quantitative analysis from time to time.
Even so, and to reiterate the second half of my post which you quoted: I’d be surprised if such jobs at companies that are not engineering or science-related (e.g., finance, advertising, etc.) are going to be seriously looking at someone with a BS in physics for an entry-level position; they are going to want candidates whose education, internships, etc. also gives them other important skills and experience for that particular industry, and that likely means someone with a related degree.
But, what the hell do I know? I’m almost 40 years removed from being an entry-level person. Maybe I’m flat-out wrong.