# What to do in industry **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 22, 2014, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247 "2014-08-22T22:21:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Itself](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d07c76/32.png) [@Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Itself)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2014, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/21 "2014-08-24T10:53:10Z")
> [@FinsToTheLeft](#): > > The hot career that we are seeing is Data Scientist. You just need to find an industry - Petrochemicals to Healthcare - that you have a personal interest in. I don’t have any personal interest in any sort of industry, really. Maybe I should, but I’ve always wanted to be a mathematician; I like theoretical math, researching math, proving theorems, solving math problems, and so on. Unlike the engineers and industry scientists I’ve talked with, I genuinely have zero interest in making a marketable product or fixing a coding bug, and I derive no satisfaction from seeing people use whatever product or software or etc. I make. I like low-dimensional topology, representation theory, and so on, and it’s hard to move from working on and caring about that sort of thing to working all day with petrochemical or health care data. > [@JWT\_Kottekoe](#): > > If you “certainly don’t want to go into industry,” no manager will want to hire you. Damn, I knew I shouldn’t have put that at the top of my resume. > [@FordPrefect](#): > > You could always try writing a web comic. That would require some skill with drawing or humor, and it’s hard to make a self-sustaining comic. ---
**Author:** ![Itself](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d07c76/32.png) [@Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Itself)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2014, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/22 "2014-08-24T11:05:23Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > I’ve known several mathematicians who worked as programmers, analysts or consultants; generally the “programmer” phase was short, as they tend to be good at analysis and good analysts are much more difficult to find than decent programmers. True, but it’s my understanding that you generally have to spend a while at the programmer phase before proceeding to the analyst phase, and it’s not a guaranteed thing. > [@Nava](#): > > Making math “meaningful” doesn’t mean “simplifying”. I can’t remember his name, but it took a poster in these boards for me to understand set theory. All those years I’d been asking “but what IS a ring?” and none of my teachers had thought of telling me “a ring is 'any set of mathematical entities which has the properties we call ‘properties of a ring’ - the list of properties is the definition.” When the Dean of my HS asked one of my classmates whether the new math teacher was as bad as he’d heard, my classmate (the best student I’ve ever met) answered “all the math I learned in the two years I had her, I learned from Chemistry and Physics, not from Maths.” Maybe using integrals to calculate a distance is a simplification rather than a purpose, maybe “the definition of any type of set is its list of characteristics” is a simplification, but I suspect both have more to do with too many teachers not knowing what they’re having to “explain”, and thus being unable to explain it (reading the book \<\> explaining). Sure, and that’s bad teaching. But there aren’t immediate applications for the sort of math I’ve been working on (as, for example, in connecting integrals to physics), and it’s not the sort of thing I can put in laymen’s terms. Take [spectral sequences](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_sequence), for example. They’re a tool used in homological algebra to compute various other things in homological algebra that mathematicians care about for various mathematical reasons. They’re certainly useful; see the list of sample sequences of that wikipedia page, for example. I don’t know, though, any way of explaining those applications or spectral sequences themselves to a layman, and there’s really no reason why a layman would care about them at all. And spectral sequences aren’t particularly esoteric or advanced; they’re just grubby and complicated. I don’t have any real interest in teaching or presenting math, at least up to the undergrad or so level. The sort of explanation that would be in demand for marketing flacks, documentation writers (external documentation, anyway), pop-science books, etc. wouldn’t involve patiently writing down the definition of, say, a ring and giving examples. There’s no shortage of books like that; pick up any first-year abstract algebra text, for example. It’s more along the lines of showing how rings pop up in your daily life, or how they’re related to more concrete, familiar things, and so forth. I can do that sort of presentation, but it’s nothing I have genuine interest in. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2014, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/23 "2014-08-24T11:18:11Z")
Well, OK then. ---
**Author:** ![Itself](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d07c76/32.png) [@Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Itself)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2014, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/24 "2014-08-24T11:40:07Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Well, OK then. Yeah. Sorry. I appreciate the thought, though. > [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > I’m neither an actuary nor a mathematician, but FWIW I’ve read more than once that the actuarial profession consistently ranks high in job satisfaction, compensation, and employment opportunity. I’ve read that too, and it’s a bit surprising; actuarial science is one of the professions that you usually hear nothing at all about. Hmm, it’s something that I’ve really never considered. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2014, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/25 "2014-08-24T23:52:15Z")
Statistics for quality control ? Currently when industry sends staff to do statistics courses, the Engineer or mathematician then gets recruited into the MEDICAL industry… so perhaps a medical biostatistics course ?. I know someone who is B.Engineering and Masters Medical Statistics. ---
**Author:** ![Cunctator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/43a26b/32.png) [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/26 "2014-08-25T01:36:31Z")
> [@Itself](#): > > I’ve read that too, and it’s a bit surprising; actuarial science is one of the professions that you usually hear nothing at all about. I don’t know why it’s surprising. Actuarial science provides a challenging and rewarding career. And as I noted above, there are plenty of actuaries who started their careers as maths PhDs. ---
**Author:** ![Psychopants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Psychopants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Psychopants)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/27 "2014-08-25T01:43:36Z")
Why not start your own company? ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/28 "2014-08-25T01:46:43Z")
> [@Itself](#): > > I’m using ‘industry’ as simply the opposite of ‘academia’, but I’d prefer something like a government research lab to a tech company. I know someone who works for [National Vital Statistics](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss.htm). He said they loved to hire mathematicians. I work at [AFRL](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Research_Laboratory). They also love mathematicians and engineers. ---
**Author:** ![Itself](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d07c76/32.png) [@Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Itself)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/29 "2014-08-25T02:20:59Z")
Thanks for all of your suggestions. > [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > I know someone who works for [National Vital Statistics](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss.htm). He said they loved to hire mathematicians. > > I work at [AFRL](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Research_Laboratory). They also love mathematicians and engineers. I’m not really so much concerned finding any sort of job at all (at the very least, tech and finance companies like mathematicians) as finding one I’ll enjoy or find satisfying. I just don’t find statistical analysis very rewarding, even if it’s for a good cause. The AFRL looks neat, though— probably much more applied than I’m interested in, but this is a fall-back idea anyway. > [@Psychopants](#): > > Why not start your own company? Because the risk is too high, and everything I’ve looked into on the subject suggests that you should start your own company if you have a genuine passion and drive for business and your product in particular. > [@Cunctator](#): > > I don’t know why it’s surprising. Actuarial science provides a challenging and rewarding career. And as I noted above, there are plenty of actuaries who started their careers as maths PhDs. It’s surprising because it’s (at least in my experience) a very low-profile sector. I’m not sure about the rewarding part; helping insurance companies save money via mathematical modelling is a fine, high-demand application for math, but it’s not really something I can be proud of contributing toward. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/30 "2014-08-25T06:39:16Z")
> [@Itself](#): > > That’s quite a bit of an assumption to sense. Back when I was in getting my PhD, I would meet about once a week with my advisor (and this was math, so we weren’t meeting regularly in a lab or other setting), plus email for specific questions. I actually have worked in industry before, and there the expectation (despite having a very smart manager who also thought I was very smart) was regular status updates, individual meetings, team meetings, and so on— about half a day’s worth of meetings per week. It’s unreasonable to generalize from that particular experience, but it does agree with anecdotal reports of my friends in similar jobs. Academics go to plenty of meetings too, and have all sorts of departmental responsibilities. I think the real problem would be that the managers will give you a problem to work on, not tell you to find something. > [@](#): > > Well, no, it isn’t the place for me: I don’t care about practical applications, I don’t have any interest in the sorts of problems industry solves, and I don’t want to spend another N years after N’ years of academic positions to get the same level of autonomy. Ideally, I’ll stay in academia. But if that doesn’t work out, what’s the best alternative? Why would you think about going into industry, then? Heck, even in academia you have to work on the stuff you get funding for. Though at least you only write grant applications for stuff you like. But if it isn’t hot, you may not get any money. > [@](#): > > It is harder, unfortunately. Private, industry research labs aren’t really a thing anymore; there’s Microsoft Research, Bell Lab, something with Google…and that’s about it. There are tech company positions that involve research and publication, even if they aren’t specifically research-oriented. Even when I was at Bell Labs, over 90% of people were doing development jobs. My group was 50/50 R and D, but our R was a bit closer than the Area 11 R. I suspect Bell Labs today has little real research unless you are already famous. Google, as I understand it, gives everyone 10% of their time to work on stuff they like. But you have to do stuff they like for the other 90%. I still do some research stuff, but it is despite my management not because of them, and I can get away with it because I’m well known and close enough to retirement to not give a crap. Most new PhDs we hire get sucked into the work they have to do to earn their keep. Even 20 years ago people from IBM research had to get contracts from the business units. Maybe you need to find a patron. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/31 "2014-08-25T06:43:43Z")
> [@Itself](#): > > True, but it’s my understanding that you generally have to spend a while at the programmer phase before proceeding to the analyst phase, and it’s not a guaranteed thing. Assuming you can learn to program worth a damn, and more importantly show that you can, someone who can get a PhD in math shouldn’t have a problem. In any case none of the software I’ve ever worked on had the programmer/analyst split - it was more people who understood the problem defining and doing the work. That’s less common in that it requires subject matter expertise. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/32 "2014-08-25T06:46:17Z")
> [@Psychopants](#): > > Why not start your own company? You did notice that he said he wasn’t interested in marketable products? I never was interested in startups since I have wanted to do at least some work that was forward looking, and startups can’t afford that kind of thing. I do respect people who go into them, not for me. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/33 "2014-08-25T09:45:16Z")
> [@Itself](#): > > True, but it’s my understanding that you generally have to spend a while at the programmer phase before proceeding to the analyst phase, and it’s not a guaranteed thing. No, you need to be a programmer before becoming a programmer-analyst or technical analyst. Sort of like being a private before becoming a sergeant. But you don’t need to be a programmer before being a functional analyst. We analyze the users’ requirements and put them in terms the techies can understand. And yes, I just gave myself a butterbar 😛 I’ve been in projects where I worked directly with wet behind the ears programmers (in one case I got to dictate from the OSS note, the document telling the programmer in programmerspeak what to do), others where I worked with experienced programmers and others where I worked with a programmer analyst who took my explanations and rough pseudoprogram and turned it into techspeak for the wet behind the ears programmers. ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/34 "2014-08-25T10:47:48Z")
What about joining the NSA or whatever its equivalent is in your country if you are not American? Definitely they _will_ employ pure mathematicians in order to research arcane crypto stuff. (Not getting into moral implications here – just strictly from the point of view of finding a job that will allow you to work in mathematics to the hilt) ---
**Author:** ![AnaMen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dfb087/32.png) [@AnaMen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AnaMen)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/35 "2014-08-25T14:52:06Z")
> [@JoseB](#): > > What about joining the NSA or whatever its equivalent is in your country if you are not American? Definitely they _will_ employ pure mathematicians in order to research arcane crypto stuff. > > (Not getting into moral implications here – just strictly from the point of view of finding a job that will allow you to work in mathematics to the hilt) He doesn’t want a job that will allow him to work in mathematics; he wants a job that is “enjoyable” and “rewarding.” His job has to “matter” and be “nontrivial.” He has to have the “autonomy” to work on things he is “personally interested in,” without any supervisors getting “in the way.” He is not interested in teaching undergrads or below. He has “zero interest in making a marketable product.” He is a very very special snowflake and deserves to be paid for doing whatever he wants, regardless of whether anyone else benefits ever from his “work.” He says “I don’t care about practical applications, I don’t have any interest in the sorts of problems industry solves, and I don’t want to spend another N years after N’ years of academic positions to get the same level of autonomy.” Can’t someone please just pay this man for being so smart and special? Not smart and special enough to have his pick of jobs in academia, mind you, but he ought to have a nice office and a grant anyway. Are you under 40, **Itself**? If you got a Fields Medal, your future in academia would be assured. Maybe you should work on that! ---
**Author:** ![Dorjan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dorjan/32/12440_2.png) [@Dorjan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorjan)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/36 "2014-08-25T16:06:51Z")
Outside of academia, math exists to be used. It has to be applied in SOME type of way, or it has no value. If you are that gung ho about avoiding applied math in any form, you are pretty much stuck with academia, so all those things you were griping about having to do to stay in academia along with getting lucky, I hope you are doing them! ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/37 "2014-08-25T16:08:38Z")
**Itself** , I think you need to put some serious thought into your expectations of the real world. Outside academia, all math is going to have to be applied in some way. ---
**Author:** ![Crotalus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crotalus/32/41_2.png) [@Crotalus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crotalus)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/38 "2014-08-25T16:23:34Z")
For some reason, I am reminded of: [QUOTE=LLoyd Dobler] I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/39 "2014-08-25T18:39:32Z")
Dear **Itself** , With all due respect to the particulars of your background in Mathematics and Academia, your stated limitations and desires are, frankly, universal. All people in all career fields want what you want, to a great degree (autonomy, interesting and rewarding work, etc). Since that is the case, what you are expressing is a baseline - for everyone - it’s like desiring light, and gravity, and air to breathe. So, what to do with that? Acknowledge it as a universal human baseline, and move on to the practical matters (in other words, stop talking about the baseline stuff). ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247/40 "2014-08-25T19:08:52Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > … > Hell, in Law… does anybody take a mathematical approach to law? Is it possible to calculate the probability and risk-reward of taking on one client over the other - do people currently do that, and if not, why not? > … Or maybe even for advising clients, e.g. “Based on an analysis of 1000 sampled Aggravated Assault cases in this state over the past 50 years, the chance of getting an acquittal at a jury trial for Aggravated Assault when the prosecution does not have any DNA evidence, medical evidence, or bystander witnesses and is relying only on the testimony of the alleged victim is 95%. Don’t plead guilty, if you go to trial you’ll probably win.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-in-industry/696247.md?page=3)