> Lots of physicists ended up working in business.

But usually still in roles that benefited from their studies.

And arguably lots of non-technical roles benefit from social science / humanities studies.

If you want to lead a team, or eventually a large organisation, there are worse things you could do than spend 3 years learning about people.

If you want to lead a technical team or technical organization you should be technical. Developing people skills doesn't take a degree in gender studies. It merely takes giving a shit about improving and talking to people.

Non-technical leadership leading a technical company is why Intel is in the dire straits it is today. When you put a marketing person in charge of Xeon and they parrot about diversity instead of executing on the business it's obvious where the problem is. Notice all the competition is led by technical leadership: AMD is led by a PhD in EE, Nvidia a Masters in EE. Intel's former leadership was technical until they were pushed out by non-technical bean counters.

>And arguably lots of non-technical roles benefit from social science / humanities studies.

If by "benefit" you mean "are filled with busywork and the latest cultural biases and performative ceremonies", then yes :-)

Studying complex financial instruments?

https://youtu.be/Elyfo1DIlzs

Most of a physics degree is applied maths. If they use their math skills the degree wasn't a waste.

Technically, parts of the degree were wasted (everything to do with actual physics) and the maths education was just a side effect that could have been given more efficiently with a maths degree (or even some other kind of education).

Possibly … I know quite a few of these (now retired) ex-physicists. Most got jobs that only expected a Bachelors, not an advanced degree at all.

But I’m sure there’s selection bias here.