14.ai (YC W24) is hiring engineers in SF to build an AI-native Zendesk (14.ai)

1 points by michaelfester 1h ago 0 comments

Spice Data (YC S19) Is Hiring a Product Associate (New Grad) (ycombinator.com)

1 points by richard_pepper 1d ago 0 comments

Ashby (YC W19) Is Hiring Design Engineers in AMER and EMEA (ashbyhq.com)

1 points by abhikp 4d ago 0 comments

EasyPost (YC S13) Is Hiring (easypost.com)

1 points by jstreebin 5d ago 0 comments

Tesorio (YC S15) Is Hiring a Senior GenAI Engineer (100% Remote) (tesorio.com)

1 points by FabioFleitas 5d ago 0 comments

OneSignal (YC S11) Is Hiring Engineers (onesignal.com)

1 points by gdeglin 5d ago 0 comments

Axle (YC S22) is hiring product engineers (ycombinator.com)

1 points by niharparikh 6d ago 0 comments

Mbodi AI (YC X25) Is Hiring a Founding Research Engineer (Robotics) (ycombinator.com)

1 points by chitianhao 6d ago 0 comments

ReadMe (YC W15) Is Hiring a Developer Experience PM (readme.com)

1 points by gkoberger 7d ago 0 comments

Weave (YC W25) is hiring a founding AI engineer (ycombinator.com)

1 points by adchurch 8d ago 0 comments

Depot (YC W23) Is Hiring a Community and Events Manager (Remote) (ycombinator.com)

1 points by jacobwg 8d ago 0 comments

CoLoop (YC S21) Is Hiring AI Engineers in London

1 points by mrlowlevel 8d ago 0 comments

Trellis (YC W24) Is Hiring: Automate Prior Auth in Healthcare (ycombinator.com)

1 points by jackylin 9d ago 0 comments

Type (YC W23) is hiring a founding engineer to build an AI-native doc editor (ycombinator.com)

1 points by stewfortier 10d ago 0 comments

Foundry (YC F24) is hiring staff-level product engineers (ycombinator.com)

1 points by lakabimanil 13d ago 0 comments

GoGoGrandparent (YC S16) Is Hiring Back End and Full-Stack Engineers

1 points by davidchl 13d ago 0 comments

Kyber (YC W23) is hiring enterprise account executives (ycombinator.com)

1 points by asontha 14d ago 0 comments

Converge (YC S23) well-capitalized New York startup seeks product developers (runconverge.com)

1 points by thomashlvt 17d ago 0 comments

Great Question (YC W21) Is Hiring a VP of Engineering (Remote) (ycombinator.com)

1 points by nedwin 18d ago 0 comments

Coverage Cat (YC S22) Is Hiring a Senior, Staff, or Principal Engineer (coveragecat.com)

1 points by botacode 19d ago 0 comments

Kaizen (YC X25) is hiring engineers to build browser agents that work (kaizenautomation.com)

1 points by michaelssilver 20d ago 0 comments

Infracost (YC W21) hiring first PM to shift $600B cloud spend to proactive (ycombinator.com)

1 points by akh 20d ago 0 comments

Sei (YC W22) Is Hiring a Full Stack Engineer in Chennai, India (ycombinator.com)

1 points by ramkumarvenkat 20d ago 0 comments

Artie (YC S23) Is Hiring Founding AEs (ycombinator.com)

1 points by j-cheong 21d ago 0 comments

Cedana (YC S23) Is Hiring a Systems Engineer (ycombinator.com)

1 points by neelm 21d ago 0 comments

CodeCrafters (YC S22) is hiring first Marketing Person (ycombinator.com)

1 points by sarupbanskota 21d ago 0 comments

PAX Markets (YC W25) is hiring a founding principal hardware (RTL) engineer (ycombinator.com)

1 points by etep 22d ago 0 comments

Sendblue (YC S23) is hiring senior engineers (ycombinator.com)

1 points by rhaber 22d ago 0 comments

Thunder Compute (YC S24) Is Hiring a C++ Systems Engineer (ycombinator.com)

1 points by cpeterson42 27d ago 0 comments

Optery (YC W22) Is Hiring in Engineering, Legal, Sales, Marketing (U.S., Latam) (optery.com)

1 points by beyondd 28d ago 0 comments

QuestDB (YC S20) Is Hiring a Technical Content Lead (questdb.com)

1 points by nhourcard 28d ago 0 comments

Ask HN: What to do with a pure mathematics degree?

2 mareoclasico 11 8/20/2025, 11:13:17 AM

I'm going to finish a degree in mathematics next year (in Europe).

The catch: I'll be 37 when I finish. I had a change of careers later in life.

I'm a bit lost on what to pursue professionally. I've looked into getting a Master's in quant/finance or AI research but I've read you need to be a young genius in order to get an interview in most of the prop shops, and for AI I don't know how feasible that path is right now for a regular guy like me.

I get the impression that I need some graduate program after my degree in order to pick up programming and other "useful" skills, and to be honest, I'm kinda looking forward to it.

If you are in some sort of industry that uses math or math-adjacent skills I'd love to know what would you do in my situation, any advice will be golden.

Thank you!

Comments (11)

bjourne · 5m ago

According to the pure math graduate I know, job prospects are not good. Teaching is what is available, but then you also must have some experience in pedagogy and education.

EmanuelB · 7h ago

I know companies that hire people that ”only” do mechanical. They don’t do any programming. Maybe some very basic scripting some of them. Just apply for jobs and see what is out there. You will never know everything there is to know anyway.

mareoclasico · 4h ago

I'm not opposed to learning programming btw! it's just that I'm very lost on what's out there and wanted to know possible industries/jobs that I might not be aware of.

jjice · 1h ago

FWIW, the pure math and physics folks I know usually pick up programming very quickly and I've found that generally they're very strong at it.

mareoclasico · 13m ago

Yeah, already touched the usual stuff: C++, Python, R...

But the question is what to do with that! haha

snyena · 7h ago

I am in the gambling industry. Online casinos often look for game mathematicians and sometimes even sportsbooks need mathematicians for price modelling.

www.pentasia.com www.bettingjobs.com etc.

mareoclasico · 4h ago

Super interesting. Thanks a lot. Is it difficult to break into the industry? What kind of skills are they mostly looking for?

kingkongjaffa · 7h ago

> get the impression that I need some graduate program after my degree in order to pick up programming

You don’t have to do that. Check out free resources like cs50x and freecodecamp

mareoclasico · 4h ago

Yeah of course! but I meant learning a bit of programming on top of AI research or Quant analysis or something like that. And I guess having the degree doesn't hurt.

sargstuff · 7h ago

Description fits requirements to take certification exams for actuary work.

mareoclasico · 4h ago

Oh I thought those exams were a thing in the US, but not here in Europe. I'll do my research. Thank you!