> SV type stuff?
I was being purposefully vague--I just meant the Silicon Valley scene. I have a college friend who just got a cool job there, and some family friends, too. It sounds like a fun place from the culture side, but also from the technology side--specifically, I'm amazed by what a small team can do in a 48-hour hackathon with today's technology. The one that comes to mind is that "Infinite Scrabble MMO" from about 18 months ago. 150 man-hours can produce that? Wow.
I did research in undergrad (mostly over the summers, but a bit during the year). I had a lot of fun, and it was motivating work. But it was programming work! I wrote a bunch of data analysis code and did a little bit of GEANT simulation stuff, and it all felt more like programming than physics. And the "physics research" (experimentalists) that I have seen looks more like engineering (designing/building some apparatus, then fixing all of the problems...).
It just seems so slow-moving compared to the software industry. There's a lot less room for individualism, and it feels like you've got a lot of really smart people doing a lot of menial, commodity tasks (I'm thinking of every PhD candidate and postdoc I've ever known).
I'll have to give theory a closer look. It's hard to see myself in it any time soon, because there's more material I'd need to learn first.
(I think I'm rambling to myself now.) All this, I think, is to say that I'm pretty sure the physics charm has worn off. Unless there's something really exciting around the corner, I think I'm over it.
I seem to have written this comment as if there's some point I'm trying to prove. Habit. Sorry about that! Thanks for the advice and encouragement, and I'll keep my eyes open!
I was being purposefully vague--I just meant the Silicon Valley scene. I have a college friend who just got a cool job there, and some family friends, too. It sounds like a fun place from the culture side, but also from the technology side--specifically, I'm amazed by what a small team can do in a 48-hour hackathon with today's technology. The one that comes to mind is that "Infinite Scrabble MMO" from about 18 months ago. 150 man-hours can produce that? Wow.
I did research in undergrad (mostly over the summers, but a bit during the year). I had a lot of fun, and it was motivating work. But it was programming work! I wrote a bunch of data analysis code and did a little bit of GEANT simulation stuff, and it all felt more like programming than physics. And the "physics research" (experimentalists) that I have seen looks more like engineering (designing/building some apparatus, then fixing all of the problems...).
It just seems so slow-moving compared to the software industry. There's a lot less room for individualism, and it feels like you've got a lot of really smart people doing a lot of menial, commodity tasks (I'm thinking of every PhD candidate and postdoc I've ever known).
I'll have to give theory a closer look. It's hard to see myself in it any time soon, because there's more material I'd need to learn first.
(I think I'm rambling to myself now.) All this, I think, is to say that I'm pretty sure the physics charm has worn off. Unless there's something really exciting around the corner, I think I'm over it.
I seem to have written this comment as if there's some point I'm trying to prove. Habit. Sorry about that! Thanks for the advice and encouragement, and I'll keep my eyes open!