alt Hacker NewsPolitely, absolutely not.
Physics as a domain is a nightmare. Even the employment statistics are hard to understand because, like Philosophy, only the best of the best pursue it.
I've had countless friends throughout my PhD studies tell me that their decision to pursue a PhD in Physics ruined their lives. (Which is an exageration, but you get the point.)
The bottom line is that you should pusue Physics only if you still want to in the face of excessive media/reccomendations/statistics telling you not to.
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At least in europe you can do a 3 year Eng Phys BSc and if it doesn't pan out you can do a master in EE or MEng.
That's funny because so many of us in my PhD philosophy program would say: I should've been a physicist, philosophy ruined my life. I had a physics prof who told me it was foolish to go into philosophy when I could've been a physicist and I thought I knew better. Oh well, I probably would've been a software engineer in the end no matter what.
Counterpoint: my entire physics phd cohort is doing great now and it didn’t ruin our lives.
I think better advice is “do you want to work in this specific lab for 5 years?”, not “do you really want to do physics”? Talk to the lab members, learn what they do.
Pick any field and you'll find countless PhDs eager to tell anyone who will listen all the ways it ruined their lives.
i would make a similar argument for entrepreneurship and most things: do it only if you can’t bear the thought and reality of doing something else.
My university had a great Physics department (Nobel laureate level), but every year you’d have a bunch of junior year (year 3) physics students desperately trying to switch into engineering as they realized that making a go of a pure physics degree was going to be more difficult. It was a consistently repeating pattern.