1/4/24, 12:12 PM Pure Math PhD Job Opportunities?

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r/math • 10 yr. ago

okamcam

Pure Math PhD Job Opportunities?

Hi r/math,

I'm currently working towards a PhD in pure mathematics. It's becoming more and more clear to me that a job
in academia is either out of reach or undesirable to me for other reasons. My friend also in the department tells
me that completing a PhD will overqualify me (us) for nonacademia jobs, while my feeling is that a PhD can
only help in the nonacademia market.

So a few questions:

What kind of jobs outside of Academia (by this I mean post doc / professorship) are available to a pure math
PhD?

Will actually finishing the degree be helpful in getting one of these jobs? (Or, will it hurt my chances as
opposed to going after the positions with just an Ma )

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Spetzo • 10 yr. ago

I can only offer my own experiences: after getting a Ph.D. and completing two postdocs (one teaching-
focused and one research-focused), I applied for about 60 jobs in various non-academic venues; your
Google, your Amazon, a few finance positions, government labs, anything-and-everything that I could
find. (Also about 150 academic job applications, but I presume you don't want to hear about those.)

I had a ten-minute interview at the JMM with one financial firm, a phone interview with Oak Ridge labs,
and traded a couple emails with a cybersecurity firm. That was it.

If the job you want isn't doing mathematics, then getting a Ph.D. in mathematics is at best a lateral move.
Think of the job you want, and then train for that.

Sorry.

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perpetual_motion • 10 yr. ago

Ugh. And not two weeks ago the top voted comment on another post related to jobs was "well if you
have a PhD in math you can always just go into finance. You're guaranteed to get a decent job".

Seriously people, which is it? I'm in my senior year of undergrad trying to figure it all out. Right now
absolutely nothing is appealing.

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dm287 • 10 yr. ago

It really depends on your thesis, your school and how "pure" your research has been. Doing a Ph.D
in probability is significantly different from one in Set Theory. Also, a lot of the top-tier schools
have good industry connections among professors and alumni, so that's a big factor too. Compare
Harvard's Statistics program (which has huge wall street connections) to a random one from an
unknown university. There's a lot of factors that go into a Pure Math Ph.D.

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holomorphic • 10 yr. ago

If you want a job in industry, you will still need marketable skills. You need to know how to code,
you need to know some stats, etc. If your particular area of research has applications (or could
have applications) that could be used by industry, that would help too. (e.g. if you know a lot
about cryptography)

Pure math can be marketable in that employers know that that means the person is very smart.
But they also want people who can actually do the work, too.

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Spetzo • 10 yr. ago • Edited 10 yr. ago

That comment was full of crap. Mathematicians had a decent route into finance back in the 90's
and early 00's, when everybody was clamoring to get into this wacky "mathematicians saying
things about money" thing. But now the hiring is just about maintaining levels, and in the interim
tons of schools have started producing MS and even PhDs in "mathematical finance," so someone
who just finished a thesis on some intricate point of category theory is going to have a rough time
of it.

edit: one thing that I tell people who complain about how ridiculous tenure is? By the time you're
tenure-track, you literally have no other job options. If you get denied tenure, it's not like you can
go be a professor somewhere else. While there are exceptions, you've basically been blackballed.
You're now about 35-40, with no skills, and set loose on the job market.

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eat-your-corn-syrup • 10 yr. ago

set loose on the job market.

I wonder what happens to these people who got denied of tenures. What are their options?
Not sure if they have connections to start a business or anything.

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Sparling • 10 yr. ago

If you want finance there are sometimes math finance courses within the dept. They should get
you through your first 2-3 quant exams.

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LRonKoontz • 10 yr. ago

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I would say you have no chance of getting a good finance job straight after your Ph.D. unless you
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went to an Ivy League school. Log In

I suspect that the reason you are getting conflicting information is the following. Academics know
fuck-all about the non-academic job market. They love to assume that they can trivially get any
job they want. People that have actually tried to enter non-academics are different. They know
that this is bullshit.

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Certhas • 10 yr. ago

No. It's simply the case that both exist. It depends a lot on the precise details of your
background and on your ability to function in a different world. Having done postdocs also
hurts you.

There are jobs in insurance that have PhD basically as a prerequisite. Other people I know that
dropped out in mathematical physics were able to get cool research jobs in a small company
on something utterly unrelated. Define is a consultancy business that specializes on maths and
physics people coming out of academia.

There are options, that is not to say that these are not competitive, and you have to realize
your specific advantages and disadvantages when coming form an academic background and
adjust accordingly. If Spetzo is not even getting interviews one possibility is that his CV and
cover letters suck, or he isn't applying for the right type of jobs. Academic CVs are extremely
different from job application CVs, and some I've seen don't adjust nearly enough.

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[deleted] • 10 yr. ago

Good finance firms will no longer hire you unless you're trained in both. Why would the pay to
train you on their dime when there's now many candidates trained in both?

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[deleted] • 10 yr. ago • Edited 10 yr. ago

Pardon the hijack: you did a teaching postdoc and then got accepted for a research postdoc, or the
other way around? I'm always worried that looking like I'm too interested in teaching will "poison" me
for more research-focused jobs. Any advice on that?

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tamrielicwarrior • 10 yr. ago

Just out of curiosity, what are doing now? Are you in academia?

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Spetzo • 10 yr. ago

one of those 150 schools gave me a phone interview, then an on-campus interview, then they
offered the position to a colleague of mine, he turned it down, and then they offered it to me. I
just started my second year.

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Spetzo • 10 yr. ago

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Yes. At the conclusion of my second postdoc, I had zero job prospects. It was actually an
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international postdoc, and I had preemptively arranged to hang out in the US for a Log In around
month
the time when academic positions have their interviews. Sitting around all day in my girlfriend's
apartment coming to terms with the fact that I was going to be unemployed was not fun. Since I
hadn't worked in the US in over a year (international postdoc) I was ineligible for unemployment
benefits, and the criteria for general welfare was to have less than $2k in assets, which meant my
plan was to move back in with my parents, try to find work tutoring rich kids, and study on my
own to be an actuary.

So I went back abroad to finish my postdoc, but I stopped doing any real work for them, just
studying finance and learning to code all day. And then that one school contacted me, I had a
phone interview two days later, and a week later they said they wanted to interview me.

So I quit my postdoc a couple months early, packed up all my stuff, and flew back to the US for an
interview; either I got this job, and finishing the postdoc didn't matter, or I was leaving academia,
and finishing the postdoc didn't matter.

I got the job. (After they first offered it to a former colleague of mine, who turned them down.)
I've been there a little over a year. I like it.

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DrSeafood • 10 yr. ago

What is a "teaching-focused" post-doc? I thought all post-docs were basically original research.

(I'm a senior pure math undergrad, aiming at PhD so I can be a lecturer.)

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Spetzo • 10 yr. ago

There are a fair number of what are called "teaching postdocs," where you carry (typically) a 3
course per term teaching load. You get paid much better than an adjunct, you generally have a bit
better choice of teaching assignments than adjuncts, and it's a fixed 2- or 3-year thing, rather than
term-by-term employment. But the tenured faculty still tend to view you as some sort of
subhuman creature.

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LRonKoontz • 10 yr. ago

My experience was very similar to Spetzo. I got a Ph.D. in pure math, but didn't even do a post-doc. I
decided to try and enter non-academics. This resulted in almost 2 years of unemployment where I
eventually got a position in which i was severely over-qualified and horribly under-paid.

Since then I have learned to program, and I have transitioned into being a Data Scientist. My current work
does not touch on my pure math training at all. With that said, I feel that my experience from graduate
school made it so I can pick up many "difficult" technical skills quickly.

Really the only natural avenues for pure math Ph.D's are jobs as an actuary, the NSA, and some financial
institutions (if you went to an ivy league school). If you want real opportunities you need to gain many
skills in IT, e.g. programing, machine learning, etc.

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andyrewsef • 10 yr. ago

If you want a PhD for getting a nonacademic job, then your options are the NSA, government, finance,
and programming (if you learn it). Although finance and programming don't require a PhD, even at some
of the highest levels in the job market. If you want to be an actuary, all you need is your undergrad in
math or economics. My guess is you want to work for the government. But you should still think about
whether or not being a graduate student for 6-8 years is worth it. If you really love math that much, do it
though.

11 Share

omgdonerkebab • 10 yr. ago

Remember: it's not about whether you think/know you can learn complicated things on-the-job quickly
and become a valuable employee. It's about whether they think it. And they usually don't.

Source: finishing my PhD in theoretical physics.

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Certhas • 10 yr. ago

Try smaller companies and specialized consulting places like d-fine. They are more likely to look at you
as a high risk high reward person.

That also means, be proactive. The people I know who got the best positions wrote to employers they
thought would fit, without waiting for them to have positions advertised.

3 Share

[deleted] • 10 yr. ago

I was told by one of my math professors that roughly 50% of American citizen PhD math grads get
offered government jobs every year. Most of that means cryptography, as far as I understand it. It's also
supposedly rather lucrative.

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[deleted] • 10 yr. ago

Summary of this thread: Look forward to being a PhD working at McDonalds.

3 Share

Lazay • 10 yr. ago

As someone only entering into second year University what would the challenges of getting into an
academic position entail? Granted I certainly do not wish to teach at grade schools

1 Share

joblolabinette • 10 yr. ago

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