Slashdot Log In
Switching from Another Industry to Engineering/CS?
Posted by
Cliff
on Fri Jan 30, 2004 12:35 AM
from the jumping-tracks dept.
from the jumping-tracks dept.
WomensHealth asks: "I am a physician, but contemplating a career change perhaps 5 to 10 years down the road. In addition to medicine, what I've always loved is computers and technology, and I think I have a pretty good appreciation for both. What tips could computer industry insiders offer to one who is willing to pursue an independent educational path towards a career in a Computer Science field? MIT's OpenCourseWare seems well put-together, though one can't get a degree using it. How can an old newcomer break into the industry?"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Sure shot... (Score:5, Funny)
I'd recommend this... [cheapindiaflights.com]
Re:Sure shot... (Score:5, Interesting)
How bad is being a physician? I'd think you're probably making more than the average starting salary for programmers (keep in mind most of the people I know aren't even getting the average).
Parent
Cheap shot but ... (Score:4, Funny)
That's especially sad since here at Lake Woebegone, all the children are above average.
Parent
Re:Sure shot... (Score:4, Funny)
D
Parent
Re:Sure shot... (Score:5, Informative)
Work for the federal government. The pay may not be as sexy as private industry was during the dot com boom, but I've had a steady job for 6 years now since I got out of college, good raises every year, flexible hours, relaxed work environment, etc. I can guarentee you the government isn't going to outsource it's IT to India. ;-)
Parent
Re:Sure shot... (Score:5, Interesting)
> com boom, but I've had a steady job for 6 years now since I got out of college, good raises every
> year, flexible hours, relaxed work environment, etc.
I dunno about you, but civil service (Federal, State, County, etc..) jobs appear sexy as hell to me. I'd have a major orgasm of some sort or another if I could get one.
In my three man clique, I do -- by far -- the most technical, most advanced, most time consuming work, and I have to spend much of my personal time learning more about job related stuff (for example, I'm always lurking on the Yahoo Groups Qt programmers list, and I spend tons of my own time working out how to get ezmlm (just got it perfect this week!) and jabber (damned jabberd2 keeps crapping out with an "sm died" message; I'll have to recompile everything with debugging enabled)), but I also recieve -- by far -- the lowest salary, with Peter the File Clerk showing off as runner up for lowest salary at a pay rate 16% above mine, and that's before you count that my commute is a thousand dollars per year more expensive than his (or anyone else's that I know).
Anthony the network admin, whose job is similar to mine minus the programming, remote administration of out-of-state machine, server maintenance, manual EDI translation and heavy data entry, happens to work for the Federal government. Specifically, he lives it large for the FAA, earning well over twice my own salary. I can't complain, because he's one of the nicest guys in the universe. But I am a bit envious, especially since I have no talent whatsoever in the "job getting" department, and he had a conveniently placed family member who could help him out a bit with the position.
Er. Anyway, government labour is the great equalizer. In financially great times, the pay is substandard but reliable. In financially average times, the pay is standard and reliable. In times like today, the pay is amaing and reliable. After a year of work, the job of LAN Technician in my local county would pay two and a half the salary that I'm getting now, and that's with work that seems extremely low key to me.
Private sector work sucks. I want out!
Sorry for the rant. I had meant to actually say something insightful. Oh well....
--
-JC
coder
http://www.jc-news.com/parse.cgi?coding/main
Parent
Re:Sure shot... (Score:5, Insightful)
He isn't some college sophmore with nothing to his name. If he goes into a CS program, he doesn't get his MD revoked and he will probably start in a Master's program at least. Being a physician and in a tech will put him far above almost everybody else here on slashdot. This biocomputing or whatever with the supercomputers to solve biology problems, is one of the best fields to be in.
Parent
Re:Sure shot... (Score:5, Funny)
Cha-ching!
Parent
Medicine + Electrical Engineering = Prosthetics (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Medicine + Electrical Engineering = Prosthetics (Score:4, Funny)
More wars = More lost limbs = more demand for prosthetics = Profit!
Parent
Exactly, find a Niche. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure there are plenty of companies out there that would love to have a CS person that has a strong background in medicine. You would probably have valuable insight that a normal CS person wouldn't have because of your experiences.
I have a Doctor friend and one thing i've noticed is that they have alot of contacts in the pharmaceutical industry. I would think that some of these companies are developing software for your industry and would be looking for someone with your experience.
Parent
Move to India (Score:4, Funny)
2) Move to India
3) ??
4) Profit!
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, stick with your current occupation. You're saving lives there, and I doubt you could say the same in an IT field.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Don't do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
This business is harsh. I don't know what medicine is like but the IT industry is not pleasent anymore. It was at one time when the field was filled with brilliant innovators but now it's just shit.
Finally any doctor I know drives a nicer car, has a better house and a better looking wife then any computer professional I know.
Don't do it, you'll regret it later.
Parent
Re:Don't do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Don't do it. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think that having a CS degree will vault you to the top of an unrelated career field, you are kidding yourself. If you want to use it as a way to enhance another career that you are trained for, then perhaps (bio-informatics, patent law with a specialization in software), but those require a significant investment in education in another field...
Parent
The easiest way (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget about making money in the industry, you're much better off getting a degree in plumbing, the pay is better and the hours are better.
Don't (Score:5, Insightful)
It was once a good field to be in, but has now become so devalued that I cannot recommend it.
Re:Don't (Score:4, Interesting)
I know a couple of people who were one their way to careers in medicine (got accepted to med school etc.) who thought better of it. One became an engineer and the other a techie. Both are probably a lot happier than they would have been as doctors, even if they are also a lot poorer. Remember, some people do this because they like it.
And by the time he switches careers he might be at the point where taking a cut in salary won't be the end of the world. One day when the kids are gone and my 401k is in better shape I would like to spend some time exploring new fields as well.
Parent
Re:Don't (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't know what you're talking about. The existance of free software has expanded the industry. I'm in the consulting field, and I am freqently setting up small linux machines to do small, miscellaneous and other complicated, highly customized projects for my clients. These projects wouldn't have been possible without free software. It would have either been too expensive or simply impossible because of the closed nature of the software.
Parent
Graduate Program (Score:5, Insightful)
Go ahead and do it!! Instead of doing something like certification courses (CCNA, MSCE, etc.) that might or might not be accepted, try and get into a MS degree program somewhere. And to do something like this is definitely possible... from where I worked at a couple of years ago, I had one person in my group who went from being a heart surgeon to a software engineer and someone else who went from a city cop to a chip designer. Sure, its not easy but at the end of the day, you will have what counts.
Save yourself! (Score:5, Insightful)
my $.02
ummm... wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
A software sales critter essentially sells ideas and unmeasurable claims. A product which not only does not exist, but also has not been designed!
They promise the V8, 4 wheel drive, A/C, automatic transmission etc. for $20000 and deliver a POS (such as a Yugo as an example of a small cheaply built car) for $40000, and defective to boot. In real estate you can go out and look at the lot, the nieghborhood and the building plan and decide if that is what you want.
The ephemeral nature of software means that any charlatan or con artist can have a field day. And then charge outragous sums for bug fixes called upgrades. Which is one reason I am getting out, I no longer want to be associated with such practices, which are accepted as the norm.
Not all capitalism is immoral and/or unethical, just as not all socialists are lazy. It is just that IT is the worst I have found to date, and I see no good way to improve the situation.
Parent
anything offsite can be offshored (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no business difference between someone who telecommutes from India or Indiana.
-1 Troll (Score:5, Funny)
Re:-1 Troll (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Insulting question (Score:5, Funny)
How would you feel if you got the following question from a patient?
I am a computer scientist, but contemplating a career change perhaps 5 to 10 years down the road. In addition to computers, what I've always loved is anatomy and biology, and I think I have a pretty good appreciation for both. What tips could medical industry insiders offer to one who is willing to pursue an independent educational path towards a career in a Medical field? I'd like to start operating on people right away; Gray's Anatomy seems like a good guide, though I apparently can't get a license by reading it. How can an old newcomer break into the industry?
Re:Insulting question (Score:5, Insightful)
How would you feel if you got the following question from a patient?
[pretentious diatribe deleted]
Unfortunately, the analogy is false. IT doesn't kill or save enough people, so there's no rigorous screening process for people entering the field. There is no 7-8 years of proving ground and education before being released upon the masses.
The fact is that kids out of HS and smart people all around the world are picking up IT like loose change.
Here's some real advice for the original poster: Some of the hottest IT jobs right now are probably...tada, health-related industries. Look around what you do RIGHT NOW and look at what things could be done better and more efficiently using computers. Develop some software to do so and you can make a mint. Hundreds of successful startups do just that--recognize an inefficiency in the medical system and fill a specific niche. If you want to break into the industry, no need to learn all the coding yourself--just find some smart coders, show them the inefficiency and give them some ideas how to fix it, spread around a little seed money and voila, you're a mogul.
Parent
Re:Insulting question (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that licensing is not currently required is another story... for some jobs, I think it should be. But regardless of what the licensing situation is, it is unrealistic, and frankly insulting, to expect a shortcut into become serious and good at something.
"Kids out of HS", as you say, pick up IT like loose change. What does that mean, that they can write a VB app and put together a network? Would you trust such a kid out of HS to write software that runs the autopilot on a 747, or the heart monitor in your hospital, or for that matter the firmware of your cell phone?
Parent
Re:Insulting question (Score:5, Insightful)
'IT' has as much to do with Computer Science/Engineering as the guy who changes the oil in your car has to do with Automotive Engineering.
It finally 'got to me' this far down in reading the comments. Sorry about that.
Parent
Re:Insulting question (Score:5, Insightful)
I would feel honored, not insulted. Same as I feel about someone asking about entering the computer industry. Curiousity is nothing to be offended by. Just because they have little or no experience doesn't mean they have little or no appreciation and respect for what you do.
As for the question, my recommendations are: 1) Have plenty of reserve cash. I hope the industry is better in 5 or 10 years, but even if it is you'll need money while you train and take those entry level jobs. 2) Experience is better than certifications. You often need the latter before anyone will let you get the former, but if anyone offers you ANY job remotely related to the field you're interested in, take it. On the job experience builds your skills and your contacts. 3) Combine your interests. The things that stand out most on your resume are not your certifications or even your IT experience (though both are often required), but the other interesting things about you. For instance, I entered IT from a background as a high school teacher. Know what? Most employers find that background tremendously valuable and look to me as a trainer.
Best of luck to you!
-madgeorge
Parent
I can't say it's the wisest move (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course the flip side is that if all medicine gets under govermental control you may be in a much less lucrative job than you are right now. I think that if you're serious you should look at the programming/CS degree while you're practicing medicine and then apply both specialties by developing applications for the medical field. It's specialty work like that, where it takes somebody with inside knowledge to really know what is going on with the end result and not just the programming, that will be more difficult to outsource. Also the potential for true innovation from somebody within the medical field attacking programming is enough that you might secure yourself a position with a large company.
It would be a gamble any way you look at it. If you're really into it then find an online part-time CS program and enroll. Take a few classes over the course of many years. It will take you much longer to get the degree due to the changing nature of CS degree requirements, BUT... you'll know better by the end if you really want to leave medicine AND you'll still have the knowledge to grow from later.
CharlesP
If you're really serious about this... (Score:5, Insightful)
The one advantage that you do have is in-depth knowledge about a potentially lucrative customer niche: medicine. Consider leveraging that to specify, maybe even design software and systems to help medical people.
You might be able to code up some demos and do some usability testing, but (IMHO) you ought to resist the tempation to try to implement production systems. Quality is important, and experienced developers automatically deal with issues that you wouldn't even think of for years to come. Hire quality people and let them make you rich!
No sweat for you. (Score:5, Informative)
There are tons and tons of existing resources available both in print and online that you can use to learn the stuff you need. An MD is already a terminal degree; unless you are looking for academic/faculty computer science positions, it is not entirely necessary to have to go to school for IT at this time.
As far as the market is concerned, there is always interest in people who possess both a human-oriented and computer-oriented skillset; especially for places that are full of one-kind-but-not-the-other. (Like in a setting where everyone is a physician but they don't know IT, or a group of IT people who want someone who understands the biomed field).
Six Step program (Score:5, Funny)
The dissenting opinion (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, as a physician, you've got some specialized knowledge that will come in handy from time to time. I'm sure you've heard plenty about biotech. I've seen some of these DNA "computers" and chips, and it seems very wasteful. Grow specimen, extract and treat dna, splash on a grid with transverse dna's and call it a computation. Then record the data and throw it away. This is just one example of the biotech oddities that seperate the field from your average HTTP server. There's all sorts of places to work. Merck, Eli Lilly, etc. Having a MD with some working knowledge of computer programming will get you further than having a degree in computer programming and a working knowledge of human physiology.
Your best bet is to start writing programs for yourself, and maybe design a few gui tools to put on top of them. Basically build a working portfolio that demonstrates you can write in perl, SQL or whatever, then apply. Or maybe you will find that a few of your own programs are marketable to your friends. I hear many doctors enjoy PDAs and related software. If your a general practicioner, you might try thinking about what sort of software would make your practice faster, more reliable or more cost effective. By all means, read up on HIPAA and the sorts of laws regulating how software should treat patient data. Maybe buy a pda and a wireless reciever and learn how to interface software from the pda to a database over the wireless in a safe, secure manner.
Learning to program is not that difficult. Some languages make it more obscure than others, and some languages are built for more specific domains than others, but here at KSU we only really have three "how to program" type classes of varying difficulty before you begin to learn how to specify WHAT you should program, be it a database, an operating system or a 3d renderer.
skip IT. (Score:4, Funny)
Have a look. [snowtavle.com]
Combine your talents (Score:4, Insightful)
2. ?? (*see below)
3. Profit!
*In your profession, you probably can find a need that because you've worked in the trenches you can fill better then any programmer could. Programming is not something you can learn overnight, but is more like a talent, like playing the piano. Figure out the niche that you can fill, and make a program to handle it. Make it open source (GPL) and start using it. Talk it up among your doctor friends and see if they are interested. Others may join in, and start asking for changes that you haven't anticipated. At this point you can start charging for enhancements. Since you are the expert in this program you are the one contacted. Get some rightups in medical journels and you are on your programming way.
Offshoring is overrated (Score:4, Insightful)
I know I'm going to make some enemies with this post, but I seriously urge you all, who think that it's bad that jobs are going to India, to consider the benefits of offshoring IT jobs.
By having cheaper labor do the same work and produce equally good or better products and services is a good thing. Remember your college economics class? Comparative Advantange? It's important for a nation's economy to do what it does best. Just as the poster asked whether or not she should get into the computer science field, I would say, if you like it and you think you will be better at it than medicine, then by all means, go for it.
By having people do what they do best, it allows for specializiation and the way corporations work the way they do today. Specialization allows more output from the same input by increasing the productivity of workers. Similarly, specialization applies to the global level and when nations specialize in one service or good, that is better for the entire global economy. Just think back to the 70s and 80s when the auto industry was screaming bloody murder over the import of cheaper and better made Japanese cars. Americans learned to respond to that. Similarly, the currently shrinking job market in the IT field is not something to be afraid of. There are plenty of problems that require solving in the technological sciences involving computers that currently displaced employees can help solve and this is an overall benefit to global society. Yes, there will be a short-run hard hit to people at home, but allowing free trade is a good thing. And in this case, it's the free trade of jobs in the computer industry. But remember, in the long run, it's in the best interest of everyone.
Become a craftsman... (Score:5, Informative)
The market is currently quite rough, especially to break into. After being laid off when a product tanked on the market, I've gone a few months without having a single resume responded to - and I have almost a decade of professional programming experience that was applicable to the jobs I've applied for (and my resume used to keep the phones ringing daily for months when I posted it - the market has changed a bit).
I've been spending the extra time continuing development on my personal code library and projects [codevis.com], writing open source code [codevis.com], and working on a few products [evenlouder.com] that I expect there to be a market for when they're done. That's how I'd suggest breaking into the field as well.
You have a very special situation though - you know, or can find out if you think about it and ask your colleagues, exactly what one fairly wealthy niche market needs. What software would help you - as a doctor - work more efficiently? What software have you and your colleagues found lacking? There's your first project :)
It won't be easy, and you won't make money fast. My recommendation would be to start learning about computers and computer programming now while thinking about products. As soon as you feel like you can design a useful program and have one in mind - take a shot at it.
Use CVS [cvshome.org] ( or for Windows, WinCVS [wincvs.org] ) or some other revision control so you can keep track of all the code you write (I wish I had when I started!). Estimate for yourself how long tasks should take - track those estimates, and figure out why they were right or wrong. Document everything, especially the code.
Once you have a product you think is worthy for your target audience - use it yourself in your work. Then let some colleagues try it out. Fix anything you find wrong with it, and ask your colleagues for suggestions.
Then, set up a website, advertise it, and try to sell it - or set up a project on SourceForge [sourceforge.net] and make it open source [osi.org] - whichever you feel more comfortable with. On SourceForge, you'll be able to enlist the help of other more experienced programmers and together tailor the product towards excellence. If you sell it and it's successful, you'll be able to afford to switch careers to full-time programmer/entreprenuer and just work on your business.
That brings me to another point - if you aren't currently running your own doctor's office, start learning business skills too. They're just as hard to pick up as programming skills - possibly harder for some. Figure out what you'll need to do to start running your own software company. Even if you decide to write your own software as open source and become an employee for someone else professionally, this will help you at the negotiating table.
What I would NOT recommend is dropping out of medicine, getting a BS in computer science, and expect doors to be immediately open when you g
some advice from an auto-didactic programmer (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually I saw a program at Dartmouth for a dual MD and PhD in CS (odd combination, but definitely useful). You may also be interested in the field of computational biophysics. It's all of the same ilk.
The article poster said he was interested in CS. Are you interested in research or business? There are a lot of different routes you could take. Do you want to deal with biomedical engineers, biochemists, or lawyers? Frankly, you were way too broad.
Incidentally, for what ever it's worth. You may get a kick out of http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/People/kauffman/">Stuar t Kauffman's work. He's regarded as one of the best in the field of complexity research. He also has an MD and no PhD. He taught himself quite a bit.
Some good Math and CS books:
"The (New) Turing Omnibus: 66 Excursions in Computer Science" by A. K. Dewdney
This book is a great advanced introduction to all of the major topics of CS (except neural networks). This book has sections on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, Relational Algebra (database theory), viruses, operating systems, data structures, and more. This is a great book for you.
http://aduni.org/ [aduni.org]
This site has lectures from an entire CS curriculum online. It was an experimental program designed for people like you.
You'll need a good introductory book on programming. Since you're probably not worrying about polishing up your resume, and you seem to be more interested in learning, you should take a look at:
"The Little Schemer" or "The Little LISPer" by Daniel Friedman.
If you really want the traditional route, take a look at "Thinking in Java" [mindview.net] by Bruce Eckel. It's free and most people recommend Java or C++ as a good first language.
If you're really daring, try the "Perl" book by Larry Wall or "Learning Perl" by Randall Schwartz. Although, I think Perl is a horrible first language to learn. It's way too exotic.
Take a look at "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment" by W. Richard Stevens. It's a great book on the internals in Unix.
Learn assembly language, it's a poor man's computer architecture course. Try to make a small graphics program (draw some primitives [lines and circles]) with assembly. Of course, you can't do that in Windows (unless you call some Win32 libraries or are VERY good.
"First Order Logic" by Raymond Smullyan
This book essentially covers the mathematics of automated theorem proving. Armed only with this, I was able to read papers in the field. Some knowledge of basic logic (prepositional logic, maybe some slight familiarity with predicate logic) is required. I'd also recommend a whole lot of "mathematical maturity". I recommend any of Raymond Smullyan's books (technical and popular science) sight unseen. Even his thesis (Theory of Formal Systems) was pretty good.
Any book by Howard Whitley Eves or Robert R. Stoll
Both men wrote books on matrix theory (linear algebra and more) and set theory. Actually, both are top-notch textbook writers and many of their books are available from Dover Publications [doverpublications.com].
Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus P. Thompson (or by FRS [Fellow of the Royal Society] if it's really old) and Calculus by Michael Spivak
The first book is the closest thing to a competent Calculus for dummies. It's almost 100 years old and it's a classic. Incidentally Mr. Thompson was an engineer, not a mathematician. The second book is notoriously rigourous and is almost an introduction to analysis. I don't know if you really care about Calculus. You probably won't
Advice (Score:5, Funny)
Are any of these posters actually CS people? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Programming! Programming!" - Any quality CS program is only about 1/3rd programming related. 1/3rd is theory, and the other 1/3rd is hardware architecture. Usually you'll have a few advanced classes which bring it all together (like operating systems design). A well educated computer scientist can switch languages with ease depending on the needs of the work and learn new ones quickly. In the CS world, programming is just a means to an end. I'm 1 semester shy of graduating with a degree in it and doing the programming is perhaps the least interesting part that I thankfully, spend little time in. I'm more interested in solving problems with *design* than typing away lines of code.
"There's no jobs!" - Yeah. Maybe if you don't have a CS degree which focuses on the *SCIENCE* part of it. There is a quite a demand for people in the engineering and scientific world who can design (as opposed to simply "program") advanced algorithms and computation software. Even if your speciality isn't scientific computing there is still a large number of jobs waiting for people with CS degrees out of well known schools in a variety of areas. IBM's making a big push for CS grads.
"*somethingsomething* IT! " - CS is *not* IT. Its like comparing the doctor's receptionist to the doctor. I'm not belittling the receptionist or the IT people - both the doctors and the CS folks need their records/networks organized and maintained with skill - but they do fundamentally different things.
interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that that's out of the way: if you're considering a schooling method other than self-instruction, you're not going to be fit for the industry anyway, so don't even bother. Seriously - people go to school for things like IT and CS, sure, but just that won't do a thing for a person. CS requires one be always updating their skills; if you're just getting into the field at 40+ (I figure this number from the idea that you graduated college at 23ish, the spen 8 more years in school after that, plus whatever time you needed to become an established physician who is already considering a career change) and doing so by going back to school, chances are you've not got the right mindset to be successful in the field, especially considering the atmsophere of the industry for the last 3ish years.
Have you been under a rock for the last 3 years, I wonder? Seriously. I can't but almost consider this some sort of mockery of slashdot, and possibly simply a joke. You're a physician. You rob people of immense amounts of money (usually paid for by insurance). Your job is dependable - people will always get ill. You could live a comfortable live and spend your money on expensive gadgets and new server racks for your toys - and do it on your leasure, for enjoyment. But instead you'd rather make a pittance in your old age, at risk of being fired or dismissed for any number of reasons, so as to get to work long hours under unkind managers? It seems to me that the doctor tends to be at, or near, the top, in many situations. Seems a bit more preferable.
Dr, I must say this idea is daft (Score:5, Insightful)
The situation in the computer industry is like medicine would be as if every kid who had dissected some fetal pigs decided to hang out a shingle and become an obstetrician.
You're looking at replacing a secure, varied and financially extremely rewarding field with a field which is insecure, hypersaturated, and arguably can be done by someone with very little education.
Not only that but IS work lends itself to ruts. Wherever you work, you're going to be learning an API or a network system, and then you're going to be writing for or supporting that API or network, until you get another job, where you could very well be doing exactly the same thing.
If you're interested in spending your time in overcrowded cubicle farms full of stressed, angry, reclusive programmers who live in constant fear that their jobs are going to be given to retrained bricklayers from bloody Pakistan, you're headed in the right direction!
Oddly enough, I'm in a position now where I can run screaming from the bloated tech industry, and I'm back in college getting ready for med school.
The only way your idea is not utterly BONKERS is if you want to somehow use your medical skill to get into something like bioinformatics where the money is potentially gigantic for doctors who have technical ability.
Here's what the computer industry is like right now. You have a lot of people who are very experienced and good at what they do. Then you have numerous carpetbagging amateurs who have installed kiddie Linux a few times, are good at bullshit, and have wormed themselves into positions of responsibility. It's almost like a kind of Ponzi scheme.
That's much of the reason why the industry lost a lot of its credibility. That's much of the reason why the industry started asking "Why are we paying this yoyo $120 an hour when Patel in Calcutta says that he can get the job done for rupees on the dollar?"
Look very very carefully at this before you do it. You've got numerous people here-- who should know-- telling you things like "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." This is no joke.
Sorry to rant but I'm sure most of ya all know what I'm talking about
Biomedical Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget programming, millions of people can do that -- but not many people can mix your two areas of expertise.
Re:Jeepers... (Score:5, Funny)
I thought the same about my fellow geeks. To wit:
Unless you got stuck being an anusologist, stay with medicine.
Anusologist? I believe proctologist [vienna-doctor.com] is the correct term - google is your friend.
Actually, I think SCO could realy, really use a computer person who is also a skilled proctologist - that way someone would be there to remove Darl's head from his ass.
Soko
Parent
Re:Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here (Score:4, Informative)
er, wtf is nuclear chemistry?
The study of nuclear reactions, where you take an atom and smash it to pieces. Nuclear chemistry gave us the ability harness nuclear fission and fusion, both for power plants and weapons (although fusion power plants are a bit tricky and only used over short time periods for research, and even then only rarely).
Parent