Particle Physicists Facing Insane Competition For Work 226
Jim_Austin writes "Teams of hundreds of young scientists — including many grad students and postdocs — staffed the Large Hadron Collider and helped make one of the most important scientific discoveries in recent decades. Now they must compete for just a handful of jobs. Quoting: 'The numbers make the problem clear. In 2007, the year before CERN first powered up the LHC, the lab produced 142 master's and Ph.D. theses, according to the lab's document server. Last year it produced 327. (Fermilab chipped in 54.) The two largest particle detectors fed by the LHC, the A Toroidal LHC Apparatus (ATLAS) and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS)—which both independently spotted the Higgs—boast teams of 3000 and 2700 physicists. By themselves, the CMS and ATLAS teams minted at least 174 Ph.D.s last year. That abundance seems unlikely to vanish anytime soon, as last year ATLAS had 1000 grad students and CMS had 900. In contrast, the INSPIRE Web site, a database for particle physics, currently lists 124 postdocs worldwide in experimental high-energy physics, the sort of work LHC grads have trained for. The situation is equally difficult for postdocs trying to make the jump to a junior faculty position or a permanent job at a national lab. The Snowmass Young Physicists survey received responses from 956 early-career researchers, including 343 postdocs. But INSPIRE currently lists just 152 "junior" positions, including 61 in North America.'"
why not work for wall street? (Score:3)
they are always looking for quants from what i hear
Re:why not work for wall street? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:why not work for wall street? (Score:5, Funny)
No, we need a program to divert them from destroying society.
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Excuse me, the 60's are calling you back. Advances in cancer therapy with radiation, physicists involved. Guessing since this is slashdot, you are a male and stand a significant chance of prostate cancer in your dotage. There are other cancers for which it works.
And those naughty physicists who thought up quantum mechanics? Maybe you didn't get the memo, it's used in all the latest devices.
Lasers? Those naughty physicists again. Damn, they're everywhere.
GPS systems...damn, there they are again.
Jesus, grow a
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I take it your theory is that there were far more jobs for particle physicists back in the 60's?
Got any evidence for that?
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I was talking about physicists working for Wall Street, as the parent suggested.
A lot of physicists were working on bullshit investment theories which finally brought down the market and (since the financial industry is so well connected politically) a government bailout using your tax money.
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No, we need a program to divert them from destroying society.
A program?!? Nuh-uh, just put them in the same room with Triangle Man. Everybody knows Triangle Man beats Particle Man.
... And, uh, let's keep Universe Man in the wings just in case Triangle Man gets outta hand....
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(from yesterday's event)
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Finance is a huge brain-drain from science, and many young physicists do give up and turn to finance because there aren't enough permanent positions in physics. Personally, I would not have the counscience to work in a field as detrimental to society as finance, though, not matter how high the salary is.
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Bunch of quantum physicists on wall street? You know that's going to breed trouble. You won't be able to find your Bulls or Bears.
They'd turn all bulls and bears into cats?
Re:why not work for wall street? (Score:5, Informative)
Depends (Score:4, Informative)
However if you get away from the pure engineering jobs and start to look at R&D or even in finance and you'll see lots of physicists. The data mining you do for particle physics coupled with the logical investigative/inference skills and a good understanding of large computer systems is extremely useful for mining financial data and making predictions. I know many colleagues who have left particle physics for the finance sector. Likewise R&D often requires that you know how things work which is where physicists often have the edge on engineers - although you'll undoubtedly be work with engineers to build things. This is a very similar model to physics research and again I've seen many colleagues take this route too. While the job crunch in particle physics is very severe at the moment if you look at the overall employment rate of physicists it is extremely high partly because a physics degree is so flexible.
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Everything you are saying is wrong. There are no positions anywhere for them. No postdocs, no staff scientists at national labs and no tenure track positions at research universities. That leaves tenure track at little colleges and uni's with no grad physics or research facilities, or adjuct anywhere. Either of those will effectively end a young scientists career. So they either keep waiting an starve/work as janitors or they take a minor academic position that will end their ability to advance. It is
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Nope everything you are saying is wrong.
Phd's end up 1/3rd in Academia 1/3rd at national labs and 1/3rd in industry. We know this because as scientists, we study this stuff.
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/showpub.cfm?TopID=14
Capacity (Score:5, Insightful)
What this says is that every rich person in this country is lying through their teeth about needing immigrants. We have highly trained scientists and engineers. The percentages of people who have the right attitude and mental attributes to succeed in this line of work has remained constant for as far back as we've had standardized testing results. There has been no shift of the basic personality types from one to another; Each generation has had the same proportions as the previous.
What it means is that nobody wants to invest. And scientific progress is an investment. It doesn't give you the immediate payoff of, say, a sequel to the Fast and the Furious (what are they up to now, seven of those infernal movies?). Science isn't formulaic. There's no spreadsheet that says "And after you spend $100 million developing a drug for cancer, you'll get this as a reward. Spend $200 million, and you'll get a free t-shirt too." Science growth mirrors our own; We grow in spurts, with long periods where nothing seems to be happening, periods where change is slow, and occasional paradigm shifts.
This isn't very amiable to the current "get rich quick" culture the Boomers are espousing as they approach their retirement. They're sucking every corner of society dry looking for a quick way to monetize, any incremental way to earn a profit without much risk. And science... well, it's too risky for them. They don't care about future generations, or a cure for cancer, or putting men on the moon again. They want botox and comfortable retirements.
This is society reaching back and giving people who love science the middle finger. It's saying "We don't need you, because your contributions aren't immediate. You live in the future and we're trying to recapture our past." So unless science comes up with a cure for aging, or a time machine, it's not getting funding. And that's really all there is to this story. It's about greed, pure and simple. Nobody gives a damn about tomorrow, because for the people holding all the cash... their tomorrows are running out.
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Unless by "this country" you mean Switzerland, I fail to see the relevance of your rant.
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Unless by "this country" you mean Switzerland, I fail to see the relevance of your rant.
Well, my rants have a marmalade quality. If you like them at all, you're gonna love them and there will be nothing better. If you don't though, I have some good news: There's plenty of alternatives.
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Cloying and a little bit goes a long way.
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Unless by "this country" you mean Switzerland, I fail to see the relevance of your rant.
The LHC is an international collaboration - there are significant numbers of scientists in the US contributing to the design and analysis, including grad students.
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However, this is being seen in pretty much every single sector. Lots of people with degrees and an order of magnitude less jobs.
Re:Capacity (Score:4, Insightful)
Prosperity is mostly a result of applied cleverness and knowledge and not theft. Iron and carbon don't become steel without cleverness and knowledge. Niagra falls doesn't create power for factories without cleverness and knowledge. Fast computer chips don't exist without cleverness and knowledge.
We've tried spreading cleverness and knowledge through public education.
Some people just don't seem to want what the government gives away for free.
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Prosperity is a result of luck.
Cleverness can bias the roll of the die, but that's all it can do.
Re: Capacity (Score:3)
False and sad that you hold such an opinion.
Individual prosperity, yes, is a matter of luck (among other things). But building a prosper society is far from a lucky endevour: it's a matter of honesty and investment.
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Your chances of prosperity are greatly enhanced by getting an education in a field that has value to others.
Add some hard work and persistence to that and the odds go up even further.
Chemical Engineering PhD - 85%
Art History Dropout - 0.1%
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Prosperity is a result of luck.
Robert Heinlein had an interesting take on that.
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded â" here and there, now and then â" are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck".
Cleverness can bias the roll of the die, but that's all it can do.
And that's all it needs to do. Keep in mind that we can and so very frequently do reroll when the die comes up something we don't like.
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Cleverness can bias the roll of the die, but that's all it can do.
Cleverness is a gift. Learning and knowledge is a choice.
It so happens, that the choices you make can greatly influence the outcome.
Luck still matters; but aside from those who get really really bad dice rolls early on, your choices over time will have more of an affect than luck, on average.
The really bad dice rolls are things like having a genetic defect; blindness, deafness, permanent learning disability, abusive parents, deb
Re:Capacity (Score:5, Insightful)
"America for Americans." It's not racist at all! Ever think that maybe that prosperity was a result of theft and maybe it needs to be spread around instead of kept among white people?
I didn't really detect any nativism in the GP post. I personally favor open borders, both for scientists and avocado pickers, as long as they obey a few basic rules (i.e. work hard, don't hurt anyone, contribute to the general welfare, etc.). If someone in China or India thinks he or she can do my job better or cheaper, they're welcome to try. But I also think the claims of a shortage are self-serving bullshit by a clique of plutocrats who would happily fuck their fellow citizens for a new private jet. The only shortage is of people willing to do first-world work for developing-world salaries. Pointing this out isn't picking on the poor would-be immigrants who only want the same opportunities I have - it's merely the product of frustration at seeing the rich and powerful game the system yet again, and do so by lying through their teeth. If we're going to open our doors to foreign technology workers, it shouldn't be because some technology or pharma executive wrote an editorial in the WSJ.
Tech clustering have value... (Score:5, Insightful)
If we're going to open our doors to foreign technology workers, it shouldn't be because some technology or pharma executive wrote an editorial in the WSJ.
Well, said... As someone moving to SF on an H1B next month, I'm usually pro the H1B program :) :)
:)
But I do want to point out that not everybody abuses the H1B program.
I'm not relocation from a third world country, or to work at a third world salary, in fact could get similar wage here... actually I could just do job remotely.
Or get a well paying job at a company here... but the job wouldn't be as fun
I think mobility is important for many reasons, in my considerations are things such as SF having a lot of tech companies, startups and etc...
I don't know if I'll apply for a permanent visa at some point, but if I move back the contacts I'll be making will be invaluable, on both ends.
At the end of the day, if you don't let tech workers from around the world in, tech workers from around the globe will cluster in another valley.
Note. with all the NSA scandals, lack of welfare, poor security, crime, human rights violations, war crimes, etc. that the US has got going, I'm starting to wonder why I'm relocation.
On the other hand, I did all the paper pushing... So I might as well try it out
Anyways, feel free to tell me why the US is so awesome, I kinda need it...
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Re:Tech clustering have value... (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyways, feel free to tell me why the US is so awesome, I kinda need it...
It's flawed like any other country. People tend to focus on the bad news because a) it was the unquestioned superpower for nearly two decades and everyone loves a good fall-from-power story, b) they have a poor understanding of history, and/or were blissfully ignorant of reality when younger, so they subconsciously inflate current problems, and c) some people derive a twisted satisfaction from being prophets of doom. For everything you mention, if you look back a few decades you will find much worse examples. Crime peaked in the 1980s/early 1990s and has been in decline ever since. The spy agencies used to be far more aggressive in violating our rights - the big thing that's changed recently is that they have more technology at their disposal than ever before. As far as human rights violations and war crimes are concerned, well, they're small potatoes compared to the Jim Crow era or the Vietnam war. Not that we can't do better, but progress is incremental.
If you really want a perspective on how much it could suck, I recommend the book "Nixonland" - in many ways we're living in paradise compared to the hell that America once seemed destined for. Also recommended: "Postwar", which is actually about Europe, but also shows how an entire continent devastated by war - and at various points threatened by violent social unrest - ended up becoming a reasonably prosperous and pleasant place to live. I find books like these make me far less pessimistic about the future.
I've lived in the Bay Area for the last ten years, and there are few places I'd rather live. Despite being a native-born WASP-ish American, I still feel out of place here, just like every other corner of the earth; I'm not nearly attractive or stylish or sociable enough. But it's one of the few places I've been in where people don't give me crap for it, because this place is stuffed full of people far weirder than me, with a huge variety of backgrounds. The science and technology sectors here are equal to anywhere else in the world, as you're certainly aware. There is a small core of rabid left-wing activists who generally make pests of themselves, but otherwise everyone minds their own business most of the time. It is just as socially liberal as you may have heard, but not nearly as left-wing economically as its reputation suggests. You'll find relatively high support for progressive income taxes and public services, but we like our iGadgets and pricey apartments too. I have never heard anyone in the area ask a question like "what church do you attend?" (More common: "who's your weed connection?")
The best thing is that you can move here from anywhere in the world, and as long as you have something in common with at least a handful of people, you'll find a way to fit in, and in a generation, your children will be Americans in every sense. There aren't many countries about which you can say this. (Canada and England are major exceptions.)
My only big complaints about the area: first, the insane violence in places like Oakland and Richmond - it is easy to avoid most of the time but absolutely horrific to read about and vastly out of proportion to any lingering economic/racial injustice. Second, the large number of truly helpless homeless around. I'm not talking about the aggressive (mostly younger) and relatively sane bums who flock to SF - and are widely despised by most people who live here - but the schizophrenics and just plain miserable older folk for whom there is no good solution except to try to keep them clothed and fed and out of trouble.
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Ever think that maybe that prosperity was a result of theft and maybe it needs to be spread around instead of kept among white people?
Last I checked we had a global network of stealing with plenty of non-white people involved. Consider that evergreen standard of international stealing, the iPod. Workers throughout the world, some who are non-white steal wages from their employers while their employers steal the fruits of their labor. The process eventually transforms that into an iPod which I manage to steal from an online store in exchange for the theft of some of my hard stolen dollars.
Somehow all this sort of stealing ends up with p
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Hence, I offer you the Dark Enlightenment. [wordpress.com]
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You know, you could just do it yourself rather than depend on a middle finger-giving society. If a state of the art particle accelerator is too much for your personal finances, maybe you could find a bunch of people to chip in. A lot of the disease here is depending on society to fund your personal desires rather than doing them yourself.
You can fuck right on off with that though. If society can agree to stop leaching off the discoveries of scientists and using it to build more useless shit like MRIs and iWatches, then maybe we'll do that. Big science keeps those satellites you love so much in the sky, gives us those big bombs to blowup worthless desert trash, keeps t
Doing what you love (Score:5, Insightful)
Doing what you love rarely puts bread on the table and a car in the garage. Just ask a musician.
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My GF is a musician and makes six figures playing full time in an orchestra, so it does happen, even outside of popular music.
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There's another common: Only the successful are visible. The pop stars and major sports pros are international heroes, but no-one notices all the also-rans who didn't have the talent or the lucky breaks to make it to the top. This gives people a false perception of their chances, leading to lots of people choosing a career in which the chances of even financial independance are very low. It's a high-risk option.
Re: Doing what you love (Score:4, Funny)
And you'll be right. I bet he was talking abour his grandfather, not his girlfriend :)
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You just need to learn to love work that puts bread on the table. Electrical engineering is good at that. Analog RF is super good at that.
But if you a historian who specializes in Neanderthals... sorry, but your work does not put any products into stores, and doesn't make anyone's life better. It's a useful thing to do, but the overall value of your work, so far, is very low - on par with a drunken ditch digger. Even then, at the end of the day the digger will make a ditch that will be used to lay cable
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Re:Doing what you love (Score:5, Insightful)
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It was, but is becoming less so. Would you feel entirely comfortable steering your kids towards a shrinking field? Read the following: [computerworld.com]
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It was, but is becoming less so. Would you feel entirely comfortable steering your kids towards a shrinking field?
Automation reduces the need in workers across the board. However there are only few key areas, such as engineering and medicine, that are directly contributing to survival. They are also hard to learn, as opposed to basic agriculture and animal husbandry. None of that applies to less study-intensive and less IQ-demanding jobs. Some jobs are equally hard (a trader?) but they have no future. Ev
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Doing what you love rarely puts bread on the table and a car in the garage. Just ask a musician.
Also, what percentage of Screen Actors Guild members make a living at acting?
Frankly, my gut response to this non-story is "cry me a river".
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A much larger percentage than that of actors as a whole. It used to be possible to buy your way into SAG -- but these days, you only get in my being credited on enough SAG-eligible pictures. Except that the big-budget movies won't bring you on unless you're already in the guild, so you need to fight for every bit piece in a low-budget SAG picture (allowing non-member talent) you can get.
But really... a lot of it varies depending on
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Doing what you love rarely puts bread on the table and a car in the garage. Just ask a musician.
No. Doing what you love usually puts bread on the table and a car in the garage. The exception is many musicians.
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Doing what you love ...
Yeah right, insane competition, those mad scientist types always get the cool stuff, the money and the chance to rule the world.
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When times are good, pretty much all you hear is "follow your passion!"
This is good advise, but missing the catch:
Follow your passion, BUT don't forget about making sure you have a complete game plan, including a plan B ready to execute.
In other words: your passion is probably something you can excel at, because it becomes very easy to spend all the extra time practicing that you need. However, "follow your passion" doesn't mean -- stop thinking critically about your plans and your fut
On the plus side... (Score:5, Funny)
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When the resonance cascade occurs, we'll be able to just zerg-rush the bastards with PhD-and-crowbar equipped theoretical physicists. Aliens won't stand a chance.
True, but I'd rather they discover practical interstellar travel instead of being thrown in a meat grinder and set to puree. But hey, to each evil overlord, their own.
Re:On the plus side... (Score:4, Funny)
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In my mind, Gordon Freeman now has the voice of Sheldon Cooper
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It's hardly 'throwing them into a meatgrinder'. Nobody seems to know why a degree in theoretical physics gives you the power to single handedly cut your way through alien swarms, military black-ops teams, and some of the most horrifying violations of OSHA guidelines ever built; but it does.
Maybe if you're old school. If you've been watching the latest Trek movies, you know that all a degree in theoretical physics causes is nakedness [ignimgs.com].
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The game made that clear: Freeman wasn't the hero, his hazmat suit was. The thing shrugged off bullets, had a self-contained underwater air supply, ammunition monitoring system (Why?), augment movement rate, allow superhuman jumping range, even provides some level of radiation shielding.
Just what kind of hazardous material was that lab handling?
I suspect if you look closely you'll find the Stark Industries logo on there somewhere.
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I'm in the rare position of owning equipment that actually can suffer a resonance cascade. Co-own, anyway - friend and I build it.
The real effects of one happening are rather less dramatic though. Worst-case, it just blows up a very expensive high-voltage capacitor.
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But can they survive the reopening of the Medusa Cascade [wikia.com]; coinciding with the Earth for unknown reasons, suddenly appearing right by it, and suddenly unknown alien radio transmissions being received repeating the word "EX-TERM-INATE" over and over?
Funding pure research requires a wealthy society (Score:5, Insightful)
This should be no surprise, since these positions are for pure scientific research with no way to calculate the ROI for the money spent. Countries have debt problems caused by borrowing and their budgets are already stretched to pay benefits for retirees and other non-workers. Add a long recession, a weak recovery, and very little prospect for robust future economic growth, and ultimately you don't end up with the sort of fiscal environment that can support lots of pure research.
Wealthy societies have discretionary funds for things like pure scientific research. Poor societies have to struggle just to get by. If you want more pure research, you need more people in your society to be employed productively. And you need them to generate lots of wealth -- far beyond "the amount they need" or "their fair share" -- so there will be a lot extra left over for things like pure research.
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The labor markets are saturated, and wealth is concentrating on the top. There just isn't a market for lots of labor anymore, manufacturing is increasingly automated, services like retail is becoming more automated (thanks Amazon!), so why not soak the rich and use the money to support more research instead of letting all that capital idle at the top?
Because that's EXACTLY what is happening now. All that capital is idling at the top, the middle/lower classes are underpaid and underemployed and not generat
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Labor costs could be reduced without any wage or salary changes by cutting the costs of liability and regulatory compliance. Beyond that, various taxes could also be cut. Profitability could be increased through similar changes -- especially by cutting the US corporate tax rates from the world's highest to a rate more in line with international norms. If we want (the benefits of) a wealthier society, we should think about these and other ways our society can be wealthier.
Umm not. Labor costs are not particularly affected by regulation and liability. Nor are they affected by taxation. It is only corporate profitability that is affected. Which is already at an all time high. Corporations don't need to be more profitable to hire people. Corporate cash accounts are at all time highs.
The reason we have a labor glut? Demand is down and worker productivity is extremely high. So we have record low labor force participation. Unemployed people consume lots less than employed people.
D
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If you don't think labor costs are affected by taxation, you've never seen a paycheck.
Besides that, you have a lot of complaints. Do you have any ideas?
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Oh come on. Labor costs have nothing to do with the taxes you see on a paycheck. Those are the taxes that the employee pays, not the employer.
As far as ideas, sure, here's a few.
How about fixing the minimum wage? The value of the minimum wage has not at all kept up with inflation. In countries like Australia it's at $15. Accounting for inflation the US min wage is half what it was when first introduced.
A really stupid American idea is tying health care to employment. It should be a single payer system. The
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I like how you said "labor costs are not particularly affected by regulation" and then, in your very next post, you mention the minimum wage and health care, both of which are highly regulated and impose costs on employers for each employee hired.
Oh come on. Labor costs have nothing to do with the taxes you see on a paycheck. Those are the taxes that the employee pays, not the employer.
In addition to all the taxes deducted from the gross pay on a paycheck, employers in the US pay 6.2% FICA tax, 1.45% Medicare tax, FUTA tax, ACA tax for each employee with a health plan, ACA fines for each employee without a health plan, worker's comp, unemployment
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Most retirees worked for their benefits. They may be non-workers now, but while they worked they paid taxes into a retirement system and often accumulated their own capital in addition.
The fact that the government frittered away their contribution is not their fault.
The capital they accumulated should be and even sometimes is an important source of accumulated wealth that is invested into the economy. When it isn't, it's another government screw-up.
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My post wasn't about whose fault anything is. Saying "it's not my fault" doesn't make problems go away, nor does it make money appear. We have problems. Retirees are part of "we". Retirees should try to help solve the problems we have.
To bring the discussion back on topic: retirees should try to help make their society wealthier if they want their society to be able to fund pure research. Retirees might want to try producing more or using up less.
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This should be no surprise, since these positions are for pure scientific research with no way to calculate the ROI for the money spent. Countries have debt problems caused by borrowing and their budgets are already stretched to pay benefits for retirees and other non-workers. Add a long recession, a weak recovery, and very little prospect for robust future economic growth, and ultimately you don't end up with the sort of fiscal environment that can support lots of pure research.
Wealthy societies have discretionary funds for things like pure scientific research. Poor societies have to struggle just to get by. If you want more pure research, you need more people in your society to be employed productively. And you need them to generate lots of wealth -- far beyond "the amount they need" or "their fair share" -- so there will be a lot extra left over for things like pure research.
When you're doing basic research, you must figure on the ROI of your research being possibly zero. There's always a chance that what you're doing will pay off for society at some point in a big way, but the fact is most basic research doesn't. Most of it is exploring blind alleys and some of it has negative impacts so devastating that they may offset the value of a great deal of research. So yes, it's the province of wealthy countries who can afford to spend a good deal of effort on something that may no
They are so smart (Score:2)
Put em on Polywell (Score:2)
Since A-bombs stopped being cool (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't new. It's been that way in high-energy physics since A-bombs stopped being cool. After WWII, there was a huge interest in getting into physics, and large numbers of PhD physicists were produced. The U.S. Government hired a lot of them. Nuclear weapon design became excessively fancy, much to the annoyance of today's workers who have to maintain the old bombs.
Then, after the US had produced enough bombs for the next few world wars, the nuclear establishment wound down. Los Alamos got into all sorts of strange non-nuclear stuff like chaos theory. Lawrence Livermore became a senior activity center for aging physicists. The average age of the membership in the American Physical Society went up by six months each year. That was back in the 1990s. It hasn't gotten better.
When the USSR wound down, there was a US effort to find jobs for old Soviet nuclear experts. The worry was that they'd go to work for somebody who still wanted to build a bomb or two. Some came to the US.
Trillian (Score:3)
"Same as you, Arthur. I hitched a ride. After all, with a degree in maths and another in astrophysics it was either that or back to the dole queue on Monday."
Doug Adams has great insight -- see also... (Score:3)
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html [caltech.edu]
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science [greenspun.com]
http://disciplinedminds.com/ [disciplinedminds.com]
http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/182889/ [villagevoice.com]
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/04/05/1522215/getting-a-literature-phd-will-make-you-into-a-horrible-person [slashdot.org]
http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/bioforum/1997-December/025426.html [bio.net]
http://100rsns.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
Unreasonable expectations (Score:4, Informative)
Young people should not go into physics expecting to become tenured professors. It might happen, but it's unlikely. And besides, why would you want to? Because your professor thinks you should aspire to it? It's actually not that great a job.
However. physics is still a great field of study because you can take it so many places. You can do engineering that engineers can't do because while they know the shortcuts while you know the fundamentals. I know a number of physicists who work in medical imaging, for example. The best RF engineer I know has a physics degree. A physicist needs great math skills, and unlike mathematicians, needs to be able to apply them in the real world. A smart physics student will take some classes outside of physics, and make mental connections between fields. If you're at a university, you should exploit the situation (and avoid being exploited).
misoverestimation (Score:2, Interesting)
Getting a PhD is nothing like it used to be. The whole process has become industrialised since I was young, and - while it's excellent that there *is* so much support - it doesn't represent the independent intellectual achievement that it once did.
So, while I'm very happy that there are so many people training at this level, they shouldn't think they're that great.
NASA (Score:2)
Different to any other science? (Score:2)
I'd be interested to see how these figures compare to other sciences. I am a mid-career biologist (did eight years as a post-doc and have had a permanent research position for the last seven years). I've always felt that we lose about half of PhD graduates to other areas, partly because they don't want and to partly because there aren't enough jobs, and then about half of post-docs don't continue in science for the same reasons. Doesn't seem that different. I do remember that, when I was a post-doc, an emin
Job market realities (Score:2)
So, the short version is particle physics is exactly like every other profession in today economy?
Has been a while that I got my physics degree (Score:2)
Twenty years ago it was pretty clear that very few physics graduates would have a career in the field so little has changed in this regard.
You study it because it is fascinating stuff, not necessarily because you'd expect to make a living of it. Other work is financially much more rewarding, and it is fairly easy to branch out with a physics degree under your belt.
Government, society should encourage science (Score:2)
Instead of spending billions on Wall Street, the government should be supporting the sciences, by providing patronage for things like physics Phds and the like.
Much higher return methinks.
“Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it. ” Richard P. Feynman
The rest of society benefits when government and society puts money into the sciences instead of financial hustles.
Shocking? No (Score:2)
I'm kind of at a loss - there is nothing new here. HEP has always been a case of large numbers of grad students and post docs working on the cheap at the accelerator labs. There might be a bit of surplus from a rush in the years leading up to the LHC startup after a lull while it was built - and certainly the more complex detectors require more staff. And the Tevatron is now closed, though that was wound down over a number of years. But I think if one could get the figures, the employment in HEP at both
where are they? (Score:2)
I wish I knew where all of these out of work physicists are. I need one to design a klystron or gyrotron for me.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh? What're your requirements exactly?
There are several US companies/gov't labs/universities/foreign companies that can do this.
To name a few:
1) Radio Science
2) L3 (communications?)
3) CPI (communications and power industries, i think)
(on to labs.)
4) Navy Research Lab
5) Air Force Research Lab
6) Possibly some DOE labs have people who could (Sandia, Los Alamos, not sure about Livermore)
6a) Stanford Linear Accelerator lab (SLAC)
(on to universities)
7) MIT
8) University of Michigan
9) University of Mary
The trouble with man-power intensive projects.. (Score:2)
.. is that they can end up being successful, at which point they end.
In the decades leading up to the Napoleonic wars, Great Brittian had a continously growing navy, They built ships at a crazy rate, and were very successful capturing enemy ships and re-flagging them as Brittish war ships. They took in huge numbers of young educated gentlemen as midshipmen, (at age 12 or so) who later became lieutenants, and the leading edge of that Ponzi scheme made it to Commander and Captain. Once made captain, they we
Unpossible (Score:2)
Wait, so you're saying that if I go into the rarified field of theoretical particle physics, it's going to be hard to find a job? Crazy! I'm going to change my degree to Historical Russian Literature, that's much more market-attractive in an everyday sense.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait, so you're saying that if I go into the rarified field of theoretical particle physics, it's going to be hard to find a job? Crazy! I'm going to change my degree to Historical Russian Literature, that's much more market-attractive in an everyday sense.
I think your earnings would be higher if you learned six or seven languages, and offered your services as a professional translator. This despite Google translate threatening to knock such folks out of a job.
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wall street, looking for oil
what about any math heavy job?
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If you're still tipping 10%, I hope you like spitburgers.
Re:Expect Great Things (Score:5, Insightful)
With that kind of brainpower, there should be some startling developments in the next couple of decades.
It will be an interesting test of the fungibility of brainpower. You don't become some sort of high-powered physicist by being an idiot; but the process that produces physicists doesn't necessarily groom or evaluate candidates for doing not-physics, so we'll see what sort of not-physics they end up getting up to.
Re:Expect Great Things (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't become some sort of high-powered physicist by being an idiot
You do need to be somewhat of an idiot, at least about finances. PPs get paid very little in grad school, only a little more afterwards, and often end up in the unemployment line at the whim of legislative budget committees. The same thing happened when the SSC [wikipedia.org] was cancelled in America. Is there any other career where brainpower is rewarded less?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I was there when the SSC was cancel, ready to move to Dallas and then found I didn't have a job start date (cause it was canceled).
Luckily for that time, The Internet showed up and 15yrs later from that detour I'm trying to get back into pure Physics.
For the younglings of today trying to excerise the power of the Force (literally, f=ma, mind that), I'm not sure what they'll drop into if they don't get a position at places like LHC since headcount is very tight and current senior positions are occupied in yo
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You do need to be somewhat of an idiot, at least about finances
You confuse intelligence and greed.
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Simple fact:
Every tenured professor is expected to train N new PhD's over the course of his career, with N >> 1.
Exponential growth, meet finite resources.
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You do need to be somewhat of an idiot, at least about finances. PPs get paid very little in grad school, only a little more afterwards,
They know (or should know) that. Not everyone makes their career decisions about chasing as many almighty bucks as possible.
Some people have passions, aspirations, and things they can excel at that are more valuable to society and perhaps more fulfilling for them.
I'm sure some will switch fields to not particle physics. Others will find a position or a job they
Re: (Score:3)
With that kind of brainpower, there should be some startling developments in the next couple of decades.
They still need to find a way to eat. That's the point.
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Re: The problem is not enough physicists (Score:2)
I'm with you but on one thing: physicists make great managers... only when managing other physicists. The problem about management was never being smart enough but being dumb enough and good physicists have big trouble understanding others' stupidness. They can understand and manage ignorance but not stupidness.
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Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
No hints of physics beyond the standard model? Well, you should move to Japan and specialise in neutrino physics then. There's loads of weird shit beyond the standard model that the Super K managed to find. The fact that neutrinos have even been shown to have mass at all is a pretty damn big hint at physics beyond the Standard Model.