7 Eye-opening Ways That Physics Grads are Untapped Tech Talent

Today, after 5 long years, I graduate with a Bachelor of Science, Major in Physics from the University of British Columbia. 

Looking back on my degree, I notice something surprising. It wasn’t until my third year that I learned what Physics really is, and adopted the mindset that comes with it. Now that I'm graduating, I realized there are common misunderstandings about Physics degrees.

What does a Physics grad have to offer headhunters and employers? Well, I’m glad you asked!

1. The Physics mindset

The mindset starts with the culture. Science and Engineering have a culture of collaboration and group learning. It encourages the sharing of ideas since classmates are all striving towards the same objective correct answer (i.e. x = 5). In contrast, if you share your ideas in Arts and people use them, it's called academic misconduct and you could get expelled.

In this way, Physics builds a solution-oriented, problem-solving mindset.

Physics students are skilled at identifying relevant variables to a problem. They are constantly boiling down complex problems into simple parts. That way the solving process starts with a sense of direction.

This mentality makes Physics grads highly effective problem solvers.

They are constantly challenged to take what they know and transform it into a solution. To get through the piles of homework, Physics students are pushed to be relentless. Needless to say, they can be directed towards any goal.

"Physics brings a broad perspective to any problem. Because they learn how to consider any problem, they are not bound by context. This inventive thinking makes physicists desirable in any field." - the American Physical Society

Physics grads are also talented in identifying and managing metrics of success. For example, throughout my degree, I used a very direct, introspective and qualitative metric of success. Simply, I would ask myself, yes or no, how well do I understand the material in front of me right now?

Physics students have intuition for when they thoroughly and functionally grasp an idea.

Generally, in Physics, if you haven't been confused about an idea then you definitely don't understand it. In this sense, confusion is not a barrier, it's a checkpoint to understanding for Physics grads.

Failure is embraced as a stepping stone towards success, a valuable principle in any industry.

2. Asking high-quality questions

On my first day at UBC, the President of UBC gave advice in his commencement speech. He said, "Think about your learning," and went on to explain what meta-cognition is: think about your thinking. It is wise to apply this idea in Physics or any challenging work environment.

Being able to ask good questions about problems is far more valuable than knowing solutions to problems.

High-quality questions direct you towards a deeper understanding of the challenges you face. Asking good questions is also valuable for conversational and interpersonal skills.

Part of the process of getting to the core of a problem is critically thinking about it. A Physics grad might ask,

• What are the keywords in the problem and what do I know about them?
• What information is given that could suggest a solution?
• What is the nature of the solution? Is it a number, true or false, a qualitative metric?
• How can I bridge the knowledge gap from what I know to what I need to know?
• What resources do I have available to figure this out? Where can I find other resources?
• What are checkpoints towards a solution?
• Have I done similar problems in the past?

The skill of asking high-quality questions brings versatility and practicality to any skill set.

Problem-solving is always, first, problem-understanding and problem-researching before it is knowing the solution. This is partly how many Physics grads manage to power through challenging material or any todo's of the workplace.

3. Affinity for research and meta-problem-solving

I mean this in multiple ways. Physics students have years of experience applying the scientific method with a fair amount of statistics to do research in a laboratory setting. Experimentation is half of what Physics is.

But research is a more general tool. Problem-solving with research is using Google, books, online journals, forums and approaching people to gain knowledge.

Meta-problem-solving or resource hunting is recognizing when to seek out new problem-solving resources themselves when current resources are inadequate.

For example, in one of my Physics classes, we were taught to search for online journals in UBC's online repertoire of journals in case any particular one didn't contain what we need. I had to stop and look at my current set of means for problem-solving and realize I can and should seek our new resources when needed.

Physics students excel at building a repertoire of resources and expanding it as needed to meet challenges.

Cutting edge challenges won't be solved by archaic solution and Physics students are geared to be adaptable.

Here is a chronological list of resources a Physics student might use when tackling tough homework questions.

1. Any hints in the question itself?
2. Do I have any immediate insight into the subject?
3. Refer to a textbook or book
4. Refer to written notes
5. Google search the key terms of the problem
6. Refer to an online resource such as Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, Physics forums, etc
7. Discuss the problem with peers
8. Email your Teaching Assistant (TA) or immediate supervisor
9. Email your prof or higher level supervisor
10. Finally, at the failure of all familiar resources, Physics grads seek out new resources

(anyone have a Chegg account?)

4. Visual and creative thinking

Visualizing abstract systems and using that visualization to explore how a system works is a very important skill in Physics as well as in tech. Physics is written in terms of Math and to work with it one must often jump between a world of algebra and a visualization of it.

Throughout my Physics degree, I've had to modify my mental imagery of many physical phenomena and objects in order to account for new information inconsistent with older mental imagery. For example, you might imagine light as a particle but then encounter a scenario where it behaves like a wave and be forced to change your mental image. This is the well know particle-wave duality of light.

This creative process common in Physics can ward off the source of many wasted business hours – the ever-present ghost that haunts failed projects: miscommunication.

"We think we're speaking very well and we're communicating but what we're really doing is having some kind of big translating scheme going on for translating what this fellow says into our images which are very different [than theirs]." - physicist Richard Feynman, in Ways of Thinking

As Feynman suggests, navigating different perspectives arms Physics grads against miscommunication.

Besides being comfortable with the abstract nature of many tech systems, recent Physics grads can use their veteran imagination skills to empathize and negotiate. They can use their questioning skills to figure out if there's a perception gap before closing a deal.

5. A versatile technical skillset

In our technology-driven world, where science issues are centre place and tech mediates more and more of our daily lives, scientific literacy is as important as reading/writing literacy.

Physics is stellar at preparing students for analytical or technical work as well as being functional modern citizens.

The American Physical Society writes that Physics also gives students communication skills to bridge the technical - non-technical gap required in sales, product consulting, product management and marketing.

My degree taught me much more than just Physics itself.

A Physics degree includes varying levels of math, computer science and statistics giving Physics grads a wide range of hard analytical skills. Not to mention, UBC Science has a communication and breadth requirement; I gladly complemented science with studies in Economics, Music, other Sciences, French and English Literature, Philosophy of Law, Semiotics/Linguistics and, the coolest course I ever took, the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine.

Navigating diverse disciplines in a Physics degree brings a rich understanding to concepts in Physics while promoting an appreciation of the multi-faceted nature of ideas in our modern world.

The technical skillset applies to more than just technical problems so Physics graduates have a highly versatile skillset.

Surveys of recent graduates indicate that they view the “general problem-solving skills and modes of thought” obtained from their physics education to be more important than the specific details from their various courses. - UBC Physics undergrad brochure

Physics has also been described as a strong component of the liberal arts. See: Physics as a Liberal Art, Is Physics the Most Fundamental of the Liberal Arts? and The Study of Physics Within the Liberal Arts.

Physics provides critical awareness of cutting-edge issues, a positioned sense of history, an articulate disposition and an invigorated mental capacity to become a highly functional, thoughtful worker.

Professor, Dr. James Charbonneau, a Physics and Astronomy faculty member at UBC summed up the versatility of the Physics skillset well.

You can take out the 'physics' from Physics problems and put in anything. - Dr. James Charbonneau, UBC Physics professor

6. Physics grads are lifelong learners.

It's important to me that I have room to grow in any job that I take. I think my degree had a part in this. They say any post-secondary degree makes a person a lifelong learner and it's worth repeating here.

Students that pursue any specialization, including Physics, are highly trainable. A university education fosters curiosity and comfort with complexity.

The feeling of specialized knowledge has a lasting impact on a person, giving them a high ceiling for future learning.

Hiring a Physics grad can be a worthwhile long-term investment especially with the ability to adapt to a fast-paced tech world.

Once you have learned how to ask questions - relevant and appropriate and substantial questions - you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know. - Neil Postman & Charles Weingartner 

7. Physics grads are innovative

Economics shows how innovative technology drives an economy and gives the tech industry long-term momentum. Hiring recent Physics grads plays well into that business strategy.

Physics grads are pushed to critically evaluate conventions and to have a free willingness to test and adopt new conventions. This mentality is at the core of forward-thinking tech.

Not coincidentally, if you look at the history of many cutting-edge tech jobs, its Physicists that invent them. Quantitative analysis of financial markets, big data and other jobs emerging as part of the 4th Industrial Revolution were spearheaded by physicists.

In this sense, Physics is entrepreneurial.

Physics provides the solution to problems that don't yet have solutions and for problems that aren't even well defined.

As we saw before in #3, Physics concerns students with the means available for taking on a challenge. Meta-problem-solving allows for optimizing the problem-solving process. The effect of is this is that,

Physics grads are less vulnerable to dead ends when facing tough challenges often found in cutting-edge tech.

Grit and perseverance are qualities that come from being in a constant cycle of personal scientific revolutions, in the Kuhnian sense of scientific revolution: they are introduced to new terminology, ideas, conventions and tools sometimes inconsistent with previous ones, on a term-to-term basis over 4 years. Physics students have to be open-minded. It's humbling, to say the least.

For example, Newtonian mechanics, something you learn in high school, is built on fundamentally incompatible ideas than Einsteinian mechanics, something you might learn in the second year of university. You might use Newtonian mechanics but understand Einstein challenged the idea of space and time that Newton (and you) took for granted.

How do Physics students not get 'stuck' when facing new challenges and exhausting their problem-solving resources? Let's look back at number 10 on the list of resources a Physics student might use when tackling tough homework questions:

Finally, at the failure of all known resources, Physics grads seek out new resources

It takes a conditioned mindset to hit your head against the wall trying to figure something out but instead of giving up, recognize that as a sign to find new resources. This drives innovation.

TL;DR Physics grads are uniquely strong candidates for work in the tech industry since they are

• strongly dispositioned to innovate
• ask good questions
• are relentless problem solvers undiscouraged of failure
• have a creative analytical approach to technical problems
• have an efficient solution-oriented mindset
• have strong visualization skills allowing them to think from others' perspectives
• comfortable with complexity
• don't get stuck facing tough challenges even after exhausting solution resources
• have an affinity for research
• and have a rigorous, versatile technical skillset.

While biology and chemistry favour memorization skills and math favours formal logic, Physics might be the strongest Science degree for a framework of problem-solving. Physics students are fertile ground for innovative growth in tech from their technical skills and mindset. A Physics grad's problem-solving abilities are strong such they carve out their own solution to new challenges.

A determined Physics grad with a sense of direction is unstoppable