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Comment by _236436532 | Hacker News Reader

I almost joined his lab around 2014 as a PostDoc (without knowing about the Google deal, which was not yet official I think) but eventually I stopped the application process because I wanted to pursue my own startup instead. Today I kind of regret not having stayed in quantum computing as my startup was only modestly successful and as I would probably have been much better off working for Google, in retrospect. I'm working on my next startup now but I keep wondering if I should go back to quantum computing eventually, I'm not sure though if I'm still relevant as my PhD dates back to 2013 already (I had good results though and did it in a renowed QC group on superconducting qubits).

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As someone who started off in "quantum" in similar conditions around the same time, but decided to stay on the academic researcher track:

A great deal of the recent progress has been on honing, parallelizing, and automating the same processes one used to do by hand/at small scale in 2013. You'll probably instantly recognize most of the things going on in the lab, and could become productive on a short schedule.

However, I'd be wary of the medium-term prospects of the field: The discord between the perceived and actual capabilities of the hardware remains as big as ever. You could consider re-entering the field if you're happy contributing to incremental technological advances relevant to other researchers. Progress with meaningful societal or economic impact is probably much further off.

Thanks for sharing your view, I appreciate it! The point you mention was a large factor in my decision. Most of my former colleagues and advisors also "abandoned" superconducting quantum computing later to work on more fundamental research again (e.g. inventing new types of qubits) as they weren't interested at all in the engineering aspects of building a quantum computer. Personally I always enjoyed applied research so I think I would have had fun working on "engineering" problems as well, on the other hand I get to work on challenging computer science problems now too and in addition I can mostly decide myself what to work on (as long as I turn a profit, though). Maybe I'll return to QC after my current startup, which I think will turn out better than the last one!

An observer can't tell if you are successful or not. But are not Schrödinger's cat questions typical in quantum computing?

I guess :) Just interesting sometimes to wonder where one would be if one would have chosen differently at a given point in life.

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