Funny, but I do feel like there's not much you couldn't throw a team of programming physicists at, if not just for their widened perspective and the fact that they have such a good springboard to study anything else - wouldn't work if they had the attitude of the guy in the xkcd comic of course.
The latter point is why you can often do well with physics dropouts (e.g. ABD ph.d students,disillusioned post-docs); good problem solving skills but less hubris.
Of course physicists are not the only example of this effect.
