Ask Lemmy

I utterly despise programming. I can not think of a more miserable, dreary existence than becoming a professional programmer

That's hilarious to me because I feel the exact opposite way. Love programming except when it involves heavy math (e.g. lighting). Saps all the enthusiasm out of me. I hope you find the right career path for you because from reading your comments you seem super stressed and overworked!

Does your university have a career center? Check them out because a lot of times they have good relationships with large companies and smaller local companies and know what the job market is like. Usually this just involves making an appointment with a career counselor and telling them exactly what kinds of things you like doing (math-related) and don't like doing (programming, bureaucracy.) There are jobs that have titles with words like "Analyst" and "Design" that might be right for you; the career center will be able to point you in the right direction.

Your MS degree already puts you ahead of 95% of everyone else, all the PhD would do is add 4%. :)

I gotta be honest though, I don't know what jobs require a math degree, maybe something in aerospace? Could be a good gig under a new Trump/Musk administration, lots of money going to SpaceForce I expect.

I think generally speaking mathematicians are hired by insurance companies, the government, local administration. Random facilities that deal with studies and statistics... There is some overlap with computer science and there are a lot of technology companies out there, dealing with all kinds of domains, Analysis such as signal processing, statistics, more applied things that require maths for engineering, more abstract things like proofs that algorithms do the right thing. Optimization, robotics...

I mean if you dislike sitting in front of a computer in some office, all day... Teaching might be a good call.

Or see if you like electrical engineering. That includes some more at hands dynamics. And you also do a lot of calculations and integrals. I'm not sure how easy it is to get there without studying it. But some aspects of engineering might require formally trained mathematicians.

I have a friend that had an MS in math and he worked for an airline doing very long term forecasting to determine flight schedules to maximize efficiency. He found it a bit depressing though as what he would submit would never be done as it went to other groups who modified it as it got closer to now. In other words he made idealized plans that would be modified based on reality.

As an algebraic topologist who did not even touch anything less "pure" than PDE during my master's degree, I would say the following: You have many possibilities, but you might have to rebrand yourself a little.

I went into a government job (DM me for details as I am already too identifiable). I was really unsure about going the PhD route or not, and ultimately opted for what I thought would make me the most happy. I am pretty sure it was right for me, though it is a little bittersweet in retrospect.

In my opinion the people matter more than the place, and with sufficient freedom and autonomy a mathematician can make any task interesting. Think about how you can make your skills useful for other things than pure maths (in a manner you could also enjoy) and sell yourself to an employer on that premise.

What about the public service? I don't know about where you live, but in my country the public service doesn't care what degree you have, just that you have one. Look into the graduate programs of your local/state/federal governments.

If you are interested in the following field let me know,as I actually am looking for a Math or/and Geoinformatics graduate next year: Basically we are looking for someone who can transfer rather large amount of data (anonymous patient data, location based social and economic data, general healthcare data,etc.) into an universal and reproduceable mathematical model that improves predictions on healthcare case loads, especially in terms of urgent and emergency care. In a second step this then must be transferred in a location based model to generate heat maps.

The overall goal is to improve the distribution of healthcare providers, ambulances,etc. in systems with a high degree of governance.

While we generally do work for insurance companies these are not US insurances but rather public insurance systems.

Shoot me an DM if you are interested.

I know a little about the academic system. it's not an easy market to succeed in. but if you do it's a wonderful life. you're free to work on problems you find interesting, without worrying about whether or not they are profitable.

sounds like you genuinely love doing research in math, given that you put in a lot of time and voluntarily turned down a cushy job.

my suggestion is to put your nose to the grindstone and pass your quals. it's not easy and not everyone makes it... but it sounds like the path to the career you want is this way.

Bureau of labor stats is a good resource for seeing which careers require which degree, and where people with different credentials are getting hired.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/field-of-degree/mathematics/mathematics-field-of-degree.htm

How broadly do you dislike programming? Data science kinda stuff could work for you if the main focus is on modleing and understading data, even if that means actually implementing the models and the algorthms by programming.

All of them except the licensed trades. You can get any of those jobs by undergoing the proper training.

But basically go on indeed and browse the list of jobs. You can have any one of those jobs, in principle.

AI is currently all the rage. I know a guy who does neural networks training, and it's the closest job to Pokemon trainer that you can have. He does not know any programming language, it's all purely data processing, and it requires a heavy math background. It's still an 8 hours per day job in a corporate environment, and a half of it is fixing his computing farm, because there's no dedicated sysadmin for replacing burned videocards.

Another math-heavy option is signal processing. I've worked in a company which produces wireless communication hardware, it's like 200 people, and there were two signal processing guys who patented an algorithm which increases data throughput by something like 0.5% in some specific high-noise scenarios, they are listed together with CEO on their website About page. That said, all the easier tasks for signal processing are already done, we're already at the theoretical limit of Shannon theorem, so you'll only be making gradual improvements.

I would also recommend cryptography research, but it requires a lot of coding knowledge, even if you're not writing any actual code, and paranoia is pretty much a requirement.

It's an absolute long-shot, but are there any careers that feel like the research part of grad school, but without the stuff that's miserable about it (the coursework and bureaucracy)?

There's no getting away from the bureaucracy, but it is possible to get career positions in academia -- and I don't mean as a professor, either. Check your university's job site. If they're big, they almost certainly have one. Get to know your professors too, and make sure they're aware of the things you're good at (even beyond your immediate subject area if you have additional hobbies/interests/skills) so they can help you find a landing place if things don't work out where you are. If you're willing to do programming -- even if you don't like it -- there is a hell of a lot of stuff that needs to be done in academia, and some of it pays enough to live on. It's possible to carve out a niche and evolve a role into a mix of stuff that you're good (enough) at but dislike, and stuff that you like but which doesn't necessarily always have funding if there's some overlap...

Quantitative finance. They want people with a math background to model the market.

You could also teach, either at the high school level or community college.

Give programming a shot. And I mean real programming, not the abomination you mathematicians and physicists call "programming".

Chances are that you will like programming, you just have to actually learn it. And if you won't, at least you know for sure.

Real talk, programming is your best bet. Companies don't hire "smart" people anymore in the hopes they can teach them to do the job, so the math background doesn't really put you ahead of someone with specific training.

If you hate programming though, I would pop back into undergrad and get a second bachelors in Accounting (you should be able to skip all the gen ed reqs). You could prob do it in 3-4 semesters.

are you good with digital signal processing? every radar manufacturer needs this

Do you want fries with that?

Start bulking up by eating well, solid exercise routine, a bit of help from anabolic steroids. Pose with a formula-filled blackboard background shirtless while flexing your biceps for Instagram and Twitter. Become the math bodybuilding icon. Make jokes like "my muscles are not differentially equal to yours". You should build an audience, and after that you'll be able to expand into sponsorships, and OnlyFans. You can also do IRL prostitution, and earn thousands of $ per night. The key is to target either old hags, or rich homosexuals.

Good luck. Let your biceps look like the bell curve of a Gaussian distribution