Thirteen tips for engaging with physicists, as told by a biologist

This is a rather fun reading, and it has a bit of truth if we (physicists) do a bit of self-reflecting on how we operate.

I think I'm going to post the link to the LMS for the general physics course I'll be teaching this Spring for Life Science/Pre-Med majors. 😄

And then there's a reverse flow, where you get 12 tips for engaging with biologist, as told by a physicist. Even a lot more self-reflection there!

In the end, biologists and physicists gain a lot from talking to each other.

And oh, Happy New Decade, btw!

Zz.

Initial Employment Of US Physics Bachelors

The AIP has released the latest statistics on the initial employment of Physics Bachelors degree holders from the Class of 2013 and 2014.

Almost half of the degree holders left school to go into the workforce, with about 54% going on to graduate school. This is a significant percentage, and as educators, we need to make sure we prepare physics graduates for such a career path and not assume that they will all go on to graduate schools. This means that we design a program in which they have valuable and usable skills by the time they graduate.

Zz.

"I Want To Do High Energy Physics"

So you are a physicist in the US, and you're having a casual conversation with a bunch of new physics graduate students. When you ask them what they intend to major in (a very obvious question to ask in a situation like this), some of them say "I want to major in high energy physics".

What do you say in return? Do you just say "Well, good luck!" and leave it at that? Or do you feel a sense of responsibility to tell these students of the prospect that they will face here in the US for someone with that major?

This issue is nothing like the issue with students wanting to do "theoretical physics", because these students, presumably, a smart enough to know the area that they are going into. However, while they have a good idea of the nature of the subject matter, they have very little idea of the funding, job prospects, etc. of those people who graduated with that degree. And for HEP, the outlook is even bleaker than a lot of the other areas in physics for someone who wants to have a career in that field. The US funding for HEP has consistently been cut year after year, and especially more so after the Tevatron at Fermilab shut down. While many in the US collaborate on work done at the LHC, funding for the HEP division of DOE's Office of Science continues to shrink, and it doesn't look any better in the future.

So, knowing all this, what would you say to such students? Do you try to persuade them to change their minds and tell them that it is not to late to switch to a different field of physics? Do you lay out the reality of the situation? Do you tell them that if they still wish to continue, they need to be prepared for the possibility that they will not be able to pursue a career in such a field?

In my case, walking away and not say anything is not an option. I somehow feel some level of "paternal" responsibility towards these kids, and I can't just let them go into something blindly without at least giving them some dose of reality. Whether they listen to it or not is an entirely different matter, but at least I tried.

Zz.

"Should I Go Into Physics Or Engineering?"

I get asked that question a lot, and I also see similar question on Physics Forums. Kids who are either still in high school, or starting their undergraduate  years are asking which area of study should they pursue. In fact, I've seen cases where students ask whether they should do "theoretical physics" or "engineering", as if there is nothing in between those two extremes!

My response has always been consistent. I why them why can't they have their cake and eat it too?

This question often arises out of ignorance of what physics really encompasses. Many people, especially high school students, still think of physics as being this esoteric subject matter, dealing with elementary particles, cosmology, wave-particle duality, etc.. etc., things that they don't see involving everyday stuff. On the other hand, engineering involves things that they use and deal with everyday, where the product are often found around them. So obviously, with such an impression, those two areas of study are very different and very separate.

I try to tackle such a question by correcting their misleading understanding of what physics is and what a lot of physicists do. I tell them that physics isn't just the LHC or the Big Bang. It is also your iPhone, your medical x-ray, your MRI, your hard drive, your silicon chips, etc. In fact, the largest percentage of practicing physicists are in the field of condensed matter physics/material science, an area of physics that study the basic properties of materials, the same ones that are used in modern electronics. I point to them many of the Nobel Prize in physics that were awarded to condensed matter physicists or for invention of practical items (graphene, lasers, etc.). So already, the idea of having to choose between doing physics, and doing something "practical and useful" may not be mutually exclusive.

Secondly, I point to different areas of physics in which physics and engineering smoothly intermingle. I've mentioned earlier about the field of accelerator physics, in which you see both physics and engineering come into play. In fact, in this field, you have both physicists and electrical engineers, and they often do the same thing. The same can be said about those in instrumentation/device physics. In fact, I have also seen many high energy physics graduate students who work on detectors for particle colliders who looked more like electronics engineers than physicists! So for those working in this field, the line between doing physics and doing engineering is sufficiently blurred. You can do exactly what you want, leaning as heavily towards the physics side or engineering side as much as you want, or straddle exactly in the middle. And you can approach these fields either from a physics major or an electrical engineering major. The point here is that there are areas of study in which you can do BOTH physics and engineering!

Finally, the reason why you don't have to choose to major in either physics or engineering is because there are many schools that offer a major in BOTH! My alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Go Badgers!) has a major called AMEP - Applied Mathematics, Engineering, and Physics - where with your advisor, you can tailor a major that straddles two of more of the areas in math, physics, and engineering. There are other schools that offer majors in Engineering Physics or something similar. In other words, you don't have to choose between physics or engineering. You can just do BOTH!

Zz.

Going Around In Full Circle

I guess I am old enough to sometime look back on my career and be amazed how it has turned out. At this point, I think I've gone a full circle and coming back almost to where I started.

When I was doing my PhD research, it was in superconductivity. I was doing experiments on tunneling spectroscopy of high-Tc superconductors. Then I moved and did my postdoc in photoemission spectroscopy, and a large portion of the material that I studied were superconductors as well. Next, I switched careers and went into accelerator physics and learned a whole new field of study in physics. Eventually, I found my niche and went to study and make photocathodes for accelerators, which made used of my knowledge and skills from my photoemission work.

And now, things have come full circle. I've started work on studying and producing superconducting photocathodes for superconducting RF guns. I've gone back to the first area of study that I started. Although, I must admit that this study utilizes my knowledge from both areas that I've specialized in. So I'm actually rather excited to go into this.

Still, it is funny how life takes you on your journey.

Zz.

Would You Hire Peter Higgs Today?

This is a rather thought-provoking piece on how competitive it is now in the physics job market, especially for academic position. Peter Higgs was asked if he thinks that he could get a job in today's environment. His answer was "No".

Low productivity, Higgs believes, would sink his chances for an academic post in today's job market. In the 49 years since he wrote the papers laying out what physicists now call the Higgs model, he has "published fewer than 10 papers," The Guardian notes.

Fortunately for his career, at the time Higgs did his groundbreaking work he had a faculty post at the University of Edinburgh, where he is now a professor emeritus. His scanty publication record made him "an embarrassment to the department when they did research assessment exercises," he says, as quoted in The Guardian. Only a 1980 nomination for the Nobel Prize kept him from being let go, he told the paper.

We need to keep in mind that times have changed. Things that used to work, or things that one can get away with a couple of decades ago, may no longer work now. I cringe every time I hear advices being given to people by using the examples of Einstein and Galileo and Dyson, etc. as indicating that something can be done that way. This totally ignored the reality of today and how things no longer work the way they did back then.

Zz.

Physics Departments Without A Single Female Faculty Member

Before we start, let me emphasize that I'm a man, but I've been involved in promoting women participation in science, and especially physics, for years. Anyone who has followed this blog would have read several items on this issue, and also my activities in this area to promote women in science. I definitely think that there is an under-representation of women in physics, and one of the ways to improve that is to make the field more enticing and more familiar to them, both in terms of the subject matter, and the working condition.

Now, having said that, you know what's coming next is not going to be pretty. This is a news article that reports on a recent statistical analysis/modeling done by the American Institute of Physics. It aimed to address that fact that fully 1/3 of the physics departments here in the US do not have a single female faculty member. But one shouldn't stop there, because the statistics included schools with small number of faculty members (often less than 10), and these tend to be the schools that do not have any female faculty members.

The AIP ran a simulation that takes into account the number of available female faculty members and the available positions, and came out with the conclusion that the lack of female faculty members in these departments is consistent with the statistical distribution, and not due to any inherent bias.

A new report from the American Institute of Physics -- based on simulation analysis -- concludes that the large number of departments without a single woman is to be expected and is not the result of discrimination. Some experts on women and science, however, disagree.

The institute's report says that there are two factors that explain the distribution of women among departments: the size of departments and the total number of female faculty members available. There are many departments with only two or three physics faculty members, the report notes. So "it is unlikely that these departments will have a woman among the faculty because the overall representation of women among all physics faculty members is low," the report adds.

To put it simply, say that you have 100 balls. On the table, you have many compartments of various sizes, some able to contain 20 balls, while others are big enough to have only 2 balls. If you toss those 100 balls up in the air and let them land randomly into those compartments, the argument here says that naturally, the smaller compartments will have a higher probability to end up with having NO balls.

Whether one buys into the parameters set up for the simulation is another matter. But taken at face value, I don't see anything wrong with this. It is certainly a first attempt at trying to figure out if the lack of any female faculty members in these small departments are due to some inherent bias, or simply out of statistics. It is a scientifically valid methodology to START and investigate an issue. Now the next logical step is to re-examine if the parameters used are valid, or accurate. Maybe some of the assumptions used are debatable, etc., and thus, the simulation should be tweaked.

What annoys me is the response being given to this study. I certainly expect disagreement with the conclusion, but the counter-argument that has been given is purely speculative!

Janet Bandows Koster, executive director and CEO of the Association for Women in Science, said via e-mail that the report "a disappointment."

She urged physicists to study the concept of "implicit bias," which she said might have something to do with the pool of women in the discipline. "We know that most people are reluctant to accept that they are biased, and scientists in particular pride themselves on their impartiality. Yet scientists are humans raised in societies, and thus are subject to collective messages that suggest men are suited to science because they are independent and analytical whereas women are better suited to care-giving and cooperative enterprises."

It's too easy, she said, to focus only on the relatively small number of women in the field. "Inferring there is no hiring bias because the 'n' is so small for female faculty is essentially like granting a papal indulgence to physics departments across the country," she said.

I'm sorry, but that is stupid! You are countering a statistical analysis with nothing more than a speculative fishing expedition! That's like saying you don't agree with Special Relativity because you don't like the look of the equation!

And no one here is saying that there is no hiring bias. A statistical analysis such as this can't come to such conclusion. What it does say is that the lack of female faculty members in 1/3 of the physics depts. cannot be attributed to gender bias as the main factor, because statistical analysis alone can account for that observation! As scientists, we need to know what statistics say, and what they don't!

The PROPER way to counter something like this is to look at the validity of the parameter used, to see if the model is accurate, and to show where it might have missed something, NOT to simply insinuate that there are biases. For someone who is supposed to represent an association of women in SCIENCE, she sure used a lot of hand-waving, unsupported argument to counter a scientifically-derived conclusion.

Zz.

Why Do Physicists Gravitate Towards Jobs In Finance?

This is a take on why physicists gravitate towards a job in the finance world.

Then again, perhaps it is not surprising that so many physicists wind up working in finance. After all, they are good at using mathematics to solve real-world problems and the money is good. There is more to it than that though. There are mathematical links between physics and finance that go back at least to 1900, when Frenchman Louis Bachelier wrote his Theory of Speculation, in which he used the mathematics of a random walk to analyse fluctuations on the Paris stock exchange. Five years later, the same ideas were used by a young Albert Einstein to explain why pollen grains zigzag when they are suspended in water. His explanation invoked the idea that very large numbers of tiny molecules, much smaller than the pollen grains, are responsible for kicking the grains around. This was a crucial insight and provided one of the earliest convincing confirmations of the existence of atoms. To make the parallel with the financial markets, we might say that stock prices are kicked around by myriad unknown factors in the marketplace. Today, these ideas have been developed into a means of computing the value of sophisticated financial instruments and the management of risk.

Now, I'm skeptical with the first assumption that there are physicists who "gravitate" towards a job in finance. I am not sure to what extent these people AIMED for such a job, or rather if they took it due to other circumstances. Would they have taken it if they had other jobs in physics that pay close to what they would be making? Did they graduate with the intention of take such jobs in finance?

Furthermore, I've mentioned a few articles in which these theoretical model in finance and areas dealing with social and human interactions and activities (what is often called as psychophysics) are being called into question.

In any case, this is an article that covers what is going on in the UK, and it doesn't look to be that much different than what is happening here in the US.

Zz.

Not All College Degrees Are Created Equal!

I read this report either earlier in the year, or late last year, but forgot to write about it till now.

I know that I've written several "philosophy-bashing" posts in this blog. It's not that I was trying to pick a fight against philosophy in general, but rather I'm trying to tackle the often overblown perceived-importance of this field in its contribution to science as it is practiced today (I profess zero knowledge of its importance in other fields).

While those discussions are based on opinions, to some extent, this one isn't. A study done out of Georgetown University has listed Philosophy/Religions Studies major as one of the worst major in college based on the unemployment rates of its graduates and the starting salary. The only major that's worse is a degree in Fine Arts. A summary of the report can be found in this news article.

Physics/Physical Science didn't fare that badly in this study. Of course, the unemployment numbers do not clearly say if those who are employed are working in their chosen fields, or if they are employed doing other things. Previous statistics from the AIP indicated that a lot of physics degree holders outside of Academia and Research Lab are employed as "engineers, computer programmers", etc.

Zz.

From CERN To Goldman Sachs

When I read this article, my first reaction was "Is this new?"

This news article is describing the case of a CERN physicist being hired by Goldman Sachs, thus changing his career from high energy physics (presumably) to quantitative finance.

Ryan Buckingham, a particle physicist with a PhD from Oxford University, spent three and a half years at CERN before joining Goldman Sachs in London as an associate in the credit and mortgage structuring team earlier this month. He declined to speak to us and Goldman didn’t return our request for comment, but it seems that the path from CERN to investment banking is a well trodden one.

“CERN is the place to find top PhDs in physical sciences and computing,” said Dominic Connor, head of quantitative finance recruitment firm P&D Quant Recruitment. “Working at CERN is one step up from having any old PhD. There a lot of people who have doctoral degrees, but you know that if someone has worked at CERN they will be very good indeed.”

Buckingham isn’t the only CERN alumni working in finance. Alexey Afonin, a vice president in strats and modelling at Morgan Stanley used to work there too. So did Anne Richards, the chief investment officer at Aberdeen Asset Management. So did Nikolaos Prezas, a quantitative researcher at J.P. Morgan and plenty of others. Most people seem to work at CERN early in their careers, and then move into finance.

Which is the reason I am puzzled at why this latest "acquisition" by the financial world making it into the news. Especially here in the US where funding for high energy physics is so crappy, a lot of PhDs in this field have to go look for employment elsewhere. Most of the people who work at CERN are not guaranteed at a long-term employment. Postdocs, for example, don't get to stay for as long as they want. And with their knowledge in statistical analysis and computational analysis skills, it is not a surprise that the field of quantitative analysis would swallow these people up.

Zz.

Recent Physics PhDs - Skills Used and Satisfaction With Employment

The AIP has released its latest statistics on recent PhDs. This one is from the graduating class of 2009 and 2010, meaning that these people graduated and entered the job market at the height of the economic meltdown. This survey asked about the skills used in their jobs, and the level of satisfaction in those jobs.

The non-surprising aspect here is the set of skills needed between postdocs and those in the private sectors:

Differences by type of position can be readily inferred from the previous figures. Postdocs were far more likely than PhDs in the private sector to regularly do basic research and utilize advanced physics principles regularly in their work. A large proportion of PhDs in the private sector were regularly involved in design and development, applied research, and quality control.

These differences reflect inherent differences in these types of employment; postdocs are temporary positions with research agendas largely motivated by scientific exploration, while jobs in the private sector typically involve producing a tangible product for a customer or providing a service to a client.

A lot of data also on the job satisfaction, and whether they had sufficient mentoring from their advisors.

Zz.

Job Advertisements For Theorists and Experimentalists In Physics Today Apr-Aug 2012

Continuing with my survey of the physics jobs advertisements in Physics Today, here are the statistics that includes the Aug 2012 issue.

1. Number of jobs looking only for experimentalist = 43
2. Number of jobs looking only for theorist = 14
3. Number of jobs looking for either or both =31

The ratio of jobs seeking experimentalists only to the jobs seeking theorists only is still above 3.

Zz.

Physicists Going Into Finance

This is an excellent article that explores one job path outside of Academia for physicists.

Today that balance has changed. According to AIP data, in 2010 the number of physics bachelor's degrees and Ph.D.s awarded in the United States set or equaled respective all-time highs. One year after finishing their Ph.D.s, 60% of physicists were in postdocs. Nearly half of all physicists work in industry, and only about 35% work in academia. This reflects two trends, Czujko says: a relative decline in the number of tenure-track academic jobs in most physics fields, and increasing opportunities in certain fields for math-savvy physicists.

If you are in the middle of pursuing your PhD, even if you have no interest in pursuing the financial field for a career, this article should be read so that you are aware of the job situation that you are going into. In all my advice to physicist students pursuing a career in physics, I've always stressed that need to have as wide of an experience as possible, and to be open to explore other areas. Most of our plans do not happen the way we intended, and you just never know what you will need when you jump into the job market.

Zz.

Job Advertisements For Theorists and Experimentalists In Physics Today Apr-July 2012

Continuing with my effort at counting and categorizing the number of job advertisements listed in physics today, I have now included the July issue of Physics Today. Here are the latest counts:

1. Number of jobs looking only for experimentalist = 34
2. Number of jobs looking only for theorist = 9
3. Number of jobs looking for either or both = 22

So the ratio of experimentalist-only job to theorist-only job is ~3.8. It means that the job opening for experimentalists is almost 4 times as many as for theorists.

Zz.

Job Advertisements For Theorists and Experimentalists In Physics Today Apr-Jun 2012

This is a follow-up to the previous post I did in counting the different number of job advertisements in Physics Today. This time, I've included the job advertisement that appeared in the June 2012 issue.

So here is the job distribution:

1. Number of jobs looking only for experimentalist = 25
2. Number of jobs looking only for theorist = 7
3. Number of jobs looking for either or both = 21

Again, I've tried to not double-count, i.e. if I recall seeing the same advertisement for the same position in an earlier issue, I do not include that a second (or third) time. So I'm trying to count the number of unique jobs being advertized.

Additional note: a lot of jobs that are included in #3 (i.e. seeking for either experimentalists or theorists) are often temporary teaching jobs. I decided to include them in the count even though one may not consider this as the start of a career.

Zz.

Son Of A Physicist!

Oh no, I wasn't cussing! :)

Throughout history, there have been many situations where the off-springs followed in the footsteps of their parents. The world of physics isn't an exception. There have been many notable parent-offspring physicists - the Bohrs, the Braggs, the Thomsons, etc.

Strangely enough, in my circle of physicist friends at work, I know of no one whose offspring is following in his/her footsteps. Zilch! None of the kids want to go into physics. Granted, majoring in physics is not one of the more popular line of study in college, so the odds are already stacked against it. But I would think that if there's demographic that would be more amenable to wanting to do physics, it would be from this group of people, since at least one of their parents is a physicist.

So I wonder why don't I see more of their kids going into physics? Is it because the parents are trying to get the kids to carve out their own destiny? Is it because the kids have seen the nature of the work and decided that this isn't something they want to do? Or is it due to something else?

What about you? Are you a physicist with a child/children? Any of your kids are inclined to go into physics?

Zz.

Job Advertisements For Theorists and Experimentalists In Physics Today Apr/May 2012

Anyone reading my blog on the Problem in Pursuing To Be A Theorist would have read comments that disputed my claim that there are less job positions for theorists to practice what they want to do versus that of experimentalists. To make a check on how far off (or on) I was, I did a quick count on the job advertisements on the pages of Physics Today April and May 2012 issues. I look at each advertisement, categorize the job description into three categories:

1. Job looking only for experimentalists
2. Job looking only for theorists
3. Job that either has no clear description, or a job that either a theorist or experimentalist can do. This is often a position higher up in administration, i.e. director of a projects or lab, not something that a new PhD or Postdoc would qualify for.

What I discovered was this distribution:

1. Number of jobs looking only for experimentalist = 19
2. Number of jobs looking only for theorist = 5
3. Number of jobs looking for either or both = 14

I discounted job advertisements in the May issue that were identical to the ones found in the April issue.

From looking at this quick count, we see that the ratio of experimentalist-only jobs to theorist-only jobs is almost 4:1. I will not be surprised that this is a common ratio if I were look at other issues. Maybe I'll check the job listing on the AIP webpage and see what this turns out to be.

Zz.

The Problem Of Pursuing To Be A Theorist

First, a declaration. I'm NOT a theorist. I'm an experimentalist (and proud to be one, damn it!) :) So one can say that my take on this can easily be inaccurate and based on superficial observations. However, having looked at it for many, many years, and talking to many theorists for quite a while, I think I have a view that isn't too far off for someone who isn't one.

This thought came up because I keep coming across students just starting out (some even still in high school) wanting to be theoretical physicists. Neglecting the fact that many of them have a mistaken idea of what "theoretical physics" is, I think that most (if not all) of these kids do not realize just how difficult it is to not only graduate with a PhD in physics, but also having the chance to actually be employed as a theorist.

Let's start from the most obvious: there are more experimentalists than there are theorists working in physics. Regardless of the field of study (outside of string/etc, I mean), experimentalists tend to outnumber theorists, often by a lot (see, for example, condensed matter physics and accelerator physics). So already the "phase space" for employment does not look very appealing to theorists.

Experiments and experimentalists tend to bring in more funding to a particular institutions. Now granted that in many of these funding, both theorists and experimentalists are involved. But even in such situation, the funding proposal tends to have more experimentalists than theorists. This is also one reason why there are more employment for experimentalists than theorists.

A project may get by without a theorist, even if it requires theoretical work. More often than not, an experimentalist can pick up the task that a theorist does, but it is more daunting for a theorist to do an experimentalist job. I'm not saying that this is true all the time, but in my experience, I've seen experimentalists do theory (especially in high energy physics), or use tools such as packaged software to perform theoretical simulations (especially in accelerator physics) without officially needing a theorist. Now, they may consult a theorist on site, but such tasks are often done by experimentalists without needing to employ another theorist to do such jobs. I haven't seen the reverse yet in my experience, i.e. group of theorists taking on jobs done by experimentalists, without needing to hire or have the presence of experimentalists. In fact, last time a theorist got close to my vacuum components, he ruined it by touching a clean part with his bare hands!!

Finally, the competition for the few positions in theoretical physics, be it in Academia or other institutions, is fierce! I do not envy the theorists at in this aspect. Because of the small number of positions available, even the good ones will have a tough time finding a job in their respected fields. In fact, if you did not come from a top-tier school, and your mentor isn't a "brand-name, world famous theorist", there's a very good chance that you will not get accepted to such a position in a good institution in your field. I think that the "pedigree" factor is a lot more prominent for theorists than for experimentalists, mainly because of such limited job opportunities. There are just too many outstanding candidates. What this means is that newly-minted PhDs from less well-known schools or supervisors seldom have a chance for employment as a theorist in their fields, leading to many to go into other fields or even outside of physics completely.

I'm sure there are many exception to what I've just described. But I believe that, on average, this is what is going on based on my years of observation. So, are you a theorist? Did I get it right, or was I just blowing smoke?

Zz.

Data On Career Preference

Hum... I don't think I've ever seen this type of data/survey before. This is a report on a recent survey of graduate students in science and how their career preference change over time as they go through their graduate program.

Here's the result that has gotten the most press: Academic research careers were less popular with the late cohorts than the early ones in all disciplines, suggesting, perhaps, that graduate students are disillusioned by exposure to the lives and careers of their faculty advisers.

There's a breakdown of the study into various subject areas, and you may read that for yourself.

But the implication to such a shift is interesting, and something that I've tried to instill into students who are interested in majoring in physics.

Instead, we should all be worrying about the difficulty Ph.D. graduates often have locating jobs in, and making transitions into, some of those other work sectors that they appear to view favorably. We also need to worry about whether science careers in any sector are sufficiently rewarding, remunerative, and stable to justify the long time investment, the frustrations of training, and the forgone earnings; if they're not, we can't expect the most capable young people to choose careers in science. Instead, they'll choose other careers with better prospects, like finance or figuring out how to make people click on banner ads on Facebook.

We should also worry about whether those students are receiving the training they need to compete for jobs in sectors beyond academia. Our graduate programs already do the most important thing extremely well: The best way to convey strong analytical skills is to teach students to be outstanding researchers. But there is plenty of room for improvement when it comes to even the most basic professional skills.

Definitely! It is a FACT that there aren't that many tenure-track faculty positions in most fields, and this includes physics. Students going into such fields with the sole aim to obtain such a position need to have a reality check so that they can best prepare for other possible careers.

Zz.

How Do Physics Careers Compare To Others?

A brief analysis of a recent ranking of 200 jobs, in which a career in physics was ranked surprisingly high - 25.

You can read of the ranking in the link given in the article, and also the analysis of what was missed and what wasn't. But in the end, I tend to agree with the writer, even taking into consideration that I, unlike him/her, is not a science/newspaper reporter.

Important factors like these are often glossed over when these career rankings are compiled, but there's certainly not an easy way to quantify all of these factors. Furthermore, weighting all of these factors for everyone doesn't work well: Diverse people are going to value different things in a career.

While these career rankings can be fun and interesting, I don't think they're quite as helpful as they claim to be.

Zz.