When I was searching for a job I narrowed things down to quantum computing. Inside of this truly exciting and emerging field, there were multiple positions. There were spots for theorists and experimentalists, with the usual barrier in between them. I am a trained experimental physicist so I focused on the jobs that I could tell a story related to my Ph.D. training.
What I am going to write has nothing to do with what kinds of jobs I applied to, or the jobs for experimentalists or theorists. I will write about my current perception of a few companies deciding to go for quantum.
Previous to the quantum race many companies related to quantum already existed. Like IBM and Intel, with their scientific researching laboratories outputting already scientific literature. Then, the time to ramp up industrial level quantum came an these big corporations decided to open their quantum departments. A small percentage of people, within the multinationals, took the job of doing quantum. On the other side of the spectrum, you had start-ups popping out from the ground all quantum in all corners and sides from wherever you looked at it. I think there were also a few big companies that decided to make spin-offs and fund their own mini quantum company.
This afternoon I made the contrast between two different companies I applied to. One of them is old and known with a quantum division. The second one, a startup with just a few years under its belt. The older company has more employees and more clients, the startup less of everything. Nevertheless, I did not realize that what matter to me was the number of people doing quantum inside of each company. The big enterprise has a handful, max ten people pushing their quantum division. The startup had all their 60 employees pushing quantum forward.
At the moment of making a decision, the impression of big, got me. I felt compelled to join the older and known, but with less impact on quantum. Fortunately, I went for the smaller company. There were many factors for that and my thought process was not like the one described above. Nevertheless, now I have a justification in my hands.