> Moreover, I don't think it's fair to say that people waste their time doing a PhD in physics. Sure, they could be learning a lot more job-specific skills, but the point is that the people who do a PhD in physics absolutely have the ability to learn those things. I'm sure if the physicist used PCA it wouldn't take him long to learn plenty of other ML techniques.
I sympathize with your situation as someone who accidentally got into computer science. As much as I have tried to portray myself as a fast learner or someone who can learn on the job, a secret in Industry that I have learnt is that very few people care. Most managers are looking for someone who can fit a resource need yesterday. To illustrate: the other day I was talking to a recruiter from BigCo, the recruiter strongly suggested that I write code on the whiteboard in an actual programming language rather than pseudo-code. This seemed strange because BigCo is known for their algorithm intensive interviews. Then, I was talking to a friend who works for BigCo2 and it all made sense: if there are two candidates A and B, of whom you can hire only one and both A and B solve the algorithm but B appears to be able to write the code with very few mistakes on the board, you are probably going to hire B mainly because B appears to fit the hole in your organization. Now, as much as people like to protest they are not like that, companies are hierarchies of managers, managers who have concerns and reports to file. The physicist who used PCA would probably have been able to learn everything else in 6 months. Who is going to spend six months paying him a shit ton of money while he learns or maybe doesn't? I am not saying everyone who gets hired is hired with an expectation of being productive from day 1 but you have to be productive sooner than later.
Ultimately what am I saying? If you are thinking of going into industry; get real. Get all the skills necessary, your resume in order. There will be millions of blog posts bemoaning the disconnect between industry and PhD or how the interview process is broken. However, all that fluffy bullshit is not going to bring a paycheck down the line. What is going to get you interviews is having "good internships", code on Github. What is going to get you a job is the ability to convince a collection of random people that you are worthy of getting a job. Sure, the stochastic nature of the game means there will be some moron who thinks that him dropping out of high school and spending the last five years writing spaghetti code for industry makes him superior to you. Or you may have an attitude that you spending five years writing research papers makes you better. Ultimately, all that doesn't matter.
I sympathize with your situation as someone who accidentally got into computer science. As much as I have tried to portray myself as a fast learner or someone who can learn on the job, a secret in Industry that I have learnt is that very few people care. Most managers are looking for someone who can fit a resource need yesterday. To illustrate: the other day I was talking to a recruiter from BigCo, the recruiter strongly suggested that I write code on the whiteboard in an actual programming language rather than pseudo-code. This seemed strange because BigCo is known for their algorithm intensive interviews. Then, I was talking to a friend who works for BigCo2 and it all made sense: if there are two candidates A and B, of whom you can hire only one and both A and B solve the algorithm but B appears to be able to write the code with very few mistakes on the board, you are probably going to hire B mainly because B appears to fit the hole in your organization. Now, as much as people like to protest they are not like that, companies are hierarchies of managers, managers who have concerns and reports to file. The physicist who used PCA would probably have been able to learn everything else in 6 months. Who is going to spend six months paying him a shit ton of money while he learns or maybe doesn't? I am not saying everyone who gets hired is hired with an expectation of being productive from day 1 but you have to be productive sooner than later.
Ultimately what am I saying? If you are thinking of going into industry; get real. Get all the skills necessary, your resume in order. There will be millions of blog posts bemoaning the disconnect between industry and PhD or how the interview process is broken. However, all that fluffy bullshit is not going to bring a paycheck down the line. What is going to get you interviews is having "good internships", code on Github. What is going to get you a job is the ability to convince a collection of random people that you are worthy of getting a job. Sure, the stochastic nature of the game means there will be some moron who thinks that him dropping out of high school and spending the last five years writing spaghetti code for industry makes him superior to you. Or you may have an attitude that you spending five years writing research papers makes you better. Ultimately, all that doesn't matter.