I’ve long toyed with a mid-life pivot into a different field. Mostly, I lean towards IT as the most practical for me, but I love the idea of finally studying a hard science, which I grew to love, but never really got a good formal education in.

I’ve heard/read, for example, that there aren’t necessarily tons of astrophysics jobs out there, so if you only have a bachelor’s degree, you might have a tough time. I don’t even know that this is true, but I use it as an example.

What are the hard science fields that would be the opposite of this? I could imagine there might be a lot of Chemistry-related jobs, for example, maybe? But I have a hard time imagining what you could do with a pure Physics degree (without also focusing on Engineering or something supplementary)? Would Biology get you anywhere by itself?

Or is it just the hard truth of all hard sciences that you’re pretty much worthless with just a four-year degree, from a job perspective?

  • @FourPacketsOfPeanutsEnglish
    2•1 month ago

    All hard science? No not at all. Lots of unemployed / underemployed PhDs, mathematicians, astrophysicists, engineers etc. Even in IT a degree doesn’t automatically get you somewhere. Past HR screening maybe, but one of the best developers I worked with was self taught after quitting as a boxer.

    What’s actually happening is that technology is a growing job market in general. That has the effect of hoovering up more science graduates than other fields. But it’s not the case that if you’re a general scientist / programmer / engineer you’ll still get something. Not at all. It’s still tough unless, deliberately or accidentally, you hone in on specific skills and jobs in demand.

    Generic front end web developer jobs that pay well for a mid career change? Very tough to find.

    Data science though? Get a qualification in that and get hoovered up.

    Economists get paid miles more than physicists. Data scientists get paid miles more than basic web coders etc.

    Look at the job market and listen to what it’s doing and what it needs. If I was back at uni again I’d be making sure data science and business analysis were strong tools in my belt. It’s a tricky time to tell what’s going to happen to general developers. Maybe AI accelerates those jobs, or maybe it presses salaries down? But developers in niche products in demand (CRM, ML, AI, big data, dev ops, security) it’s still going wild out there, get hard to find qualified people who know what they’re doing, businesses with big budgets in these areas etc