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> I personally consider a physics degree to be a top tier signal of programming ability

Some CS programs have moved away from heavy maths requirements over the last 2 decades, outside a few maths-heavy specific CS courses.

Physics degrees still mean you have very decent maths, but CS degrees are not necessarily as strong a signifier of it.

I suspect that is the difference, particularly if you are actually working on tricky programming tasks.

>Physics degrees still mean you have very decent maths, but CS degrees are not necessarily as strong a signifier of it.

That and they necessarily have to learn a lot of CS just to do their own degree work. It's like wondering why cross country runners perform well at other sports too, their sport incorporates the 'hard' part of most sports, the running and endurance aspects.

> Many of the best co-workers that I remember had physics degrees. In fact, it was so pronounced I personally consider a physics degree to be a top tier signal of programming ability, but that's my own personal prejudice.

You're basically just using it as a proxy for general intelligence, the _average_ physics major's IQ is around 130.

Yep. IMO that's the way ANY degree is looked at (aside from Medical, Law, etc.. you know the drill).

You want a lower level administrative job? You better have a degree so we know that you're not stupid. Now you get to pay off your loans with 20 bucks an hour.

I worked at a fortune 50 company that hired engineering graduates with masters degrees as contractors to break down cardboard boxes and manage stockrooms.

The degree was just a fancy filter if could read and write. If they worked out, they would be eventually hired direct into less mindless tasks.

Not all of the contractors were worth retaining.

I don't know about that. I feel like if big tech moved away from IQ test like questions like the MS/FB of old then there was a reason.

And that reason was legal precedent: it's illegal to administer an IQ test as a condition of employment. So they administer a disguised IQ test in the form of Leetcode questions instead.

Huh? They used to ask brain teaser like questions, not anything that I would consider to actually be an IQ test or really even all that close to one in a legal way.

That is exactly what I said.

The whole point is to have a test that is correlated with IQ, and does not look like an IQ test in a legal way.

No it isn't. Plenty of big companies administer IQ tests as a condition of employment.

I guess there are military aptitude tests. And I am curious about which big companies administer an undisguised IQ test to applicants.

It appears that an IQ test can be administered if it can be argued that a certain score is required to do the job, and the test is not simply a way to discriminate. It sounds like a court case waiting to happen though: how does one prove what score is required? Easier if your defense is "we never administered an IQ test, tour honor".

For knowledge work jobs there's no defense required. Again: gigantic, risk-averse corporations, household names, do IQ tests (or equivalent tests) for some of their positions. The Wonderlic company exists specifically to market these tests for job search programs.

The reason everyone doesn't test IQ is that it's not very useful, not that it's legally risky.

People think it is because there's an subtext that everybody would hire straight off IQ scores if they could, which supports a (frankly gross) biological essentialist argument a lot of edgy nerds are fond of. But the whole argument is fractally mythological.

> Many of the best co-workers that I remember had physics degrees. In fact, it was so pronounced I personally consider a physics degree to be a top tier signal of programming ability, but that's my own personal prejudice.

Hah, I also noticed that. For some reason, ex-army programmers really excel in their junior years (or sometimes even just months), too. Do you think it's the attitude towards problem-solving?

I really don't know. This is spitballing, but I think maybe physicists are clever analysts while CS people are prone to "clever" implementations.

I remember thinking "oh, you understand, like actually understand" to them in particular, so maybe it's that they spend more time understanding before doing.

"ex-army programmers really excel in their junior years"

My feeling is that they're just built different, military, especially in US will either teach you or make you disciplined (not something I'd say about my country, you'll learn how to get hazed and drink). If you have a task, well, you better solve it quick, no distractions.

I understand the concept of "liberal education". Perhaps if I lived in a country that values having an educated populous, I would go that route. The truth of the matter is that I am a 41 year old adult in the USA. It's not in the cards for me.

> Many of the best co-workers that I remember had physics degrees. In fact, it was so pronounced I personally consider a physics degree to be a top tier signal of programming ability, but that's my own personal prejudice.

In my experience those with math degrees too. Maybe the structured methods of analysis and problem solving.

In my experience, math majors can do some pretty incredible acrobatics (in a good way), but their documentation, systemic performance awareness, and overall design sense often lag behind. These are things they usually pick up outside of the degree, and they have to break some bad habits learned during it (e.g., single-character-variable soup).

I agree with a sibling comment that physicists often seem to make the best coders, for some reason.

My hypothesis: it's because physicists are rigorously trained to model real-world systems directly. What would be considered an "advanced" modeling problem to most would be an intro problem to a physics student.

Math is absolutely related, but I think the secret ingredient is "mathematical maturity" — the ability to fluidly jump between layers of abstraction. Mathematicians are good at this too, but physicists go a step further: they are trained to ground their abstractions in concrete physical phenomena.

Mathematicians ground systems in axioms, sure. But physicists have to tether models back to reality — to processes and measurements — which turns out to be exactly the skill set that makes for good programmers and system designers.

Huge generalization, obviously.

But personally, I've noticed my own programming ability increases the more physics I learn. Physics gives you a systematic framework to reason about complexity — and physicists get the luxury of a "relatively simple" universe compared to fields like chemistry or biology. They're working with rich systems described by just a few tightly-coupled parameters. And the kicker: a lot of those systems are 100% repeatable, every time.

That kind of structure — and the habit of respecting it — is priceless for engineering.

As below, Physics and Maths degrees tend to have high entry requirements, large amounts of hands on (classroom or labs) hours, lots of highly focussed students. I observed this while studying Electronic Engineering, which I would say is similar but more practical and with lower entrance requirements. I'm not sure where computer science would fit into this as it's a newer discipline with less stringent core requirements. Other IT courses may be less rigorous and include people that are less focussed on their education relatively.

As above I would say that the physics students I know are often the ones going furthest in their careers either in research, computing (know a few at google), consulting e.g. PWC etc

> Many of the best co-workers that I remember had physics degrees. In fact, it was so pronounced I personally consider a physics degree to be a top tier signal of programming ability, but that's my own personal prejudice.

I’ve also found this to be true. And math degrees.

> but I can say that people I interviewed with degrees generally did better

I can also confirm that.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that people with a formal degree are on average better prepared to interviews.

But sadly, it has absolutely no correlation with work performance. Zero, none.

In fact, I can say that the overwhelming majority of non graduates did far better on the job: more motivated, stays longer, hungrier to learn and prove themselves.

That's funny, one of the best programmers I've ever know had a physics degree

I think those type of people just have really good analytical thinking

I'm a grad student and I help grade exam papers of mostly entry level ML related subjects. And boy, the aerospace and physics department folks are ahead of the curve by a significant amount. I guess four years of strong mathematics does that to you.

Physics degrees are the low-key blanket STEM degree.

You can find people with physics degrees working in pretty much any technical field.