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I know that this question may be considered "personal" or "career related", but I'll try to make it as general as possible, to make it useful to other people that may find in the same situation: I think that many people hanging around this site might face or have faced my same doubts.

I have a STEM background and work for a financial institution as an IT. I don't have a PhD. I have the opportunity to access, in parallel with my job, to a post-graduate master in Quantum Computing, with the teaching load of one university year, covering all the state-of-art of Quantum Computing and Communication. I am wondering whether or not to do it. According to this answer, there is no hope that Quantum Computers will become something as widespread as personal computers. Anyway, I feel like catching this chance because:

  1. It would allow me to study something I find interesting (but let's ignore this aspect)
  2. It would let me get a job related to quantum computing/communication in tech or financial companies.

My question focuses on point 2), and I would articulate it in this way:

  • What kind of job could I get, especially if I am a STEM employee in a financial institution?
  • Given that Quantum Computing will not "keep its promises" of replacing common computers, I would expect that when the hype surrounding this discipline reaches zero, I could (will?) lose my job. Is this possible?
  • Then, could my working experience in QC be "recycled" in some more standard jobs, possibly in the same industry? (I think to data science or stuff like that)
  • Do the previous answers change if one focuses on Quantum Communication vs Quantum Computing?
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    $\begingroup$ Welcome @wetrust - as you note, this site isn't intended to answer career advice questions as they're highly opinion based (quantumcomputing.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/319/…). You might try asking at Academia stack exchange, or refocusing your question to invite more objective answers. $\endgroup$
    – forky40
    Commented Nov 29, 2022 at 17:01
  • $\begingroup$ @forky40 I do understand your point, however, although my title question is surely "opinion based", does the same hold for the actual questions? I mean, are "what career path follows a QC course" or "how these studies might find application in other classical fields" still opinion based? $\endgroup$
    – wetrust
    Commented Nov 29, 2022 at 18:05
  • $\begingroup$ I don't have a nuanced take on where the line is drawn for those questions, they seem mostly fine to me. The bigger issue is with questions like "is this worth the effort?" or does this give you a better chance to get an "interesting" job. $\endgroup$
    – forky40
    Commented Nov 29, 2022 at 18:44
  • $\begingroup$ @forky40 I edited the question removing the parts you highlighted, I hope it is better now. Thanks anyway for the suggestions. $\endgroup$
    – wetrust
    Commented Nov 29, 2022 at 18:57

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Well, before starting my quantum journey, I was a "classical engineer", more especially, a Test Engineer, with background in STEM also... I started to learn quantum computing because I was fascinated by this field, and I validated a master degree in quantum computing remotely parallelly to my job, now I'm a quantum computing consultant. So to answer to your questions:

  • if you validate a degree in QC, or if you're able to justify some knowledge in QC, you could consider finding a job like quantum software developer, consultant, application engineer... This is the kind of profil that quantum start-ups will look for. But indeed, it also depends on the country you're based on, if there is no company in the quantum field, it could be hard to find a job.
  • QC has no vocation to replace personal computer, but today there are directions where QC is getting towards, I'm thinking of hybrid HPC/quantum computing, in Europe or example, many HPC centers will soon host QPUs. So there is a hype, yes, and nobody can tell what the future of QC will be, but there are again few years of field of applications and research before QC completely disappear if it does not reach our expectations.
  • QC fields of application are vast: combinatorial optimization, quantum machine learning, bio-informatic, financial... They all have classical counterpart you will gain in knowledges, these knowledges will be interesting in the case where you need to retrieve a "classical" job.
  • I'm not sure to well understand this last question, but I think Quantum Communications are more specific, much more cryptography/cybersecurity oriented and require a bigger background in maths, but at least it would be possible to find a job in technical support, or something like that, I guess.
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