For their battery replacement program, my serial # did not come up as affected and they refused to service it over the phone. They quickly changed their minds when I showed up at the Apple store with a battery so swollen it was pushing through the trackpad.
Seems like the study is largely inconclusive because creativity is difficult to measure.
I will say from my personal experience that I am far more creative when I am unmedicated versus when I am medicated. I've come up with great patentable ideas while unmedicated, but I am incapable of actually drafting up the patent applications unless I take my meds.
For me, taking ADHD meds is analogous to decreasing the RAM in my brain. I juggle fewer ideas and am able to concentrate on just one thing and actually produce something.
Kudos to you for sticking to something for (at least) 8 years - it's very very easy to become discouraged, so it's inspiring to someone continue to press forward after so many years.
Most people who go to Harvard have to get very high scores on the SAT/ACT, which include math sections that are of, at least, remedial math difficulty.
The American Dream is the polar opposite of relying multiple generations to achieve stability. The general interpretation of the American Dream is the notion that any one person can achieve success by working hard enough.
If you are an engineer and the company primarily makes money through cold calls by salespeople, then the salespeople are a revenue generating center and you are a cost center. A company increases profits by increasing revenue and reducing costs, so you can figure out which group will be prioritized when it comes to promotions and bonuses.
From my experience both interviewing and hiring, a physics degree absolutely will not help you in tech. You will have more credibility than any non-STEM graduate, but employers will constantly wonder if you've bridged the gap created by your lack of a CS degree.
I guess my experience has been the opposite. On every software R&D team I have been on, there has been about an even mix of computer science, physics, and mathematics with a few sprinkles of data science from the biology fields. Especially by year 5 or so - who can tell the difference between a computer scientist that knows physics and a physicist who knows computer science?
The only skills a person needs to learn coding is the desire to learn coding and the persistence to do it.
This has been my experience within teams as well, but it was clear to me that we were hired in spite of our degrees rather than because of them.
I do not regret my physics education, and I would encourage young people who are passionate about the subject to pursue it. However, I think that they should go in knowing that unless they intend to stay in academia/research/defense, a physics degree is, at best, a signal of intelligence, and, at worst, a signal of overspecialization in a disparate field.
I have worked with physicists. The ones that had respect for software engineering and learned it were excellent. I loved their math skills and they often provided interesting insights. there were others that kept writing crappy research code and didn't want to learn SW engineering practices. That didn't work too well.
I would say GP's claim applies best for the first job, where that question of the gap is most visible.
I studied physics and later entered tech. The first proper development job was the hardest to get, because it was an uphill battle to prove competency.
To generalize the problem (because, hey, I got a math degree): someone inside one specialization often doesn't know how to account for what another specialization represents in terms of the skills and capacities involved.
Which means to handle that case, you more or less have to learn to do it for them. Half of which means learning enough about the target specialization, half of which is a skill that has a lot in common with pitching a startup.
I would think that might be true right out of school. But with a little bit of experience and maybe some cool projects under your belt, I would think a physics degree would look very good for some of those really specialty, high paying jobs.
But I can definitely see how it wouldn't help at the onset.
So you think a CS chitty is automatically the best possible career in development no wonder you used a throwaway handle.
I would have said having a good grounding in physics or engineering can be a plus having to work from first principals rather than using memorised algo's for w=example.
"So you think a CS chitty is automatically the best possible career in development no wonder you used a throwaway handle.
I would have said having a good grounding in physics or engineering can be a plus having to work from first principals rather than using memorised algo's for w=example."
Then you should have said that rather than whatever it is that you just typed.
I make a new throwaway every month so I don't get attached to HN karma - which often clouds your thinking for fear from judgment from the community.
If you actually read my posts, I have a physics degree.
Did you sign a contract promising a certain level of work? Do you have documented communications between the two of you whereby you stated that the job "was outside of my knowledge and did not feel comfortable"?
In all likelihood, he sounds like a scummy client trying to rip you off. Unless you agreed to a 3rd party audit prior to starting work, it is also unlikely that he has the right to withhold your last paycheck.
