Ask Slashdot: Scientific Research Positions For Programmers? 237
An anonymous reader writes "I recently (within the past couple years) graduated from college with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and currently work as a programmer for a large software consulting firm. However, I've become gradually disillusioned with the financial-obsession of the business world and would like to work for the overall betterment of humanity instead. With that in mind, I'm looking to shift my career more toward the scientific research side of things. My interest in computer science always stemmed more from a desire to use it toward a fascinating end — such as modeling or analyzing scientific data — than from a love of business or programming itself. My background is mostly Java, with some experience in C++ and a little C. I have worked extensively with software analyzing big data for clients. My sole research experience comes from developing data analysis software for a geologic research project for a group of grad students; I was a volunteer but have co-authorship on their paper, which is pending publication. Is it realistic to be looking for a position as a programmer at a research institution with my current skills and experiences? Do such jobs even exist for non-graduate students? I'm willing to go to grad school (probably for geology) if necessary. Grad school aside, what specific technologies should I learn in order to gain an edge? Although if I went back to school I'd focus on geology, I'm otherwise open to working as a programmer for any researchers in the natural sciences who will take me."
yes, there are a reasonable number of positions (Score:5, Informative)
The term is usually "research programmer" or something similar. However they're often time-limited positions rather than indefinite. A common arrangement is that a university gets a big grant, and needs to bring in some extra programmers to help out on the project for the ~3 years of a typical grant. The best-funded labs do keep some programming staff on semi-permanent payroll, though, because they always get a new round of grants before the previous ones run out.
I'd just start looking at job listings in the area you care about and see what skills or experience they ask for. Familiarity with data-analysis tools is often a plus, e.g. be conversant in R, be able to make some nice visualizations of data, etc. But that's only one area; there are plenty of others.
Re:yes, there are a reasonable number of positions (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing that should be clarified here: with these sort of programming roles there is no direct access to academia. In this way it's not like finance where, for instance, people can go from back office to front office if they show enough promise and interest: one does not simply go from research programmer to reseacher.
From the sounds of it, OP would be best served by going into academia via a graduate program.
Re:yes, there are a reasonable number of positions (Score:5, Interesting)
How exactly do you mean direct access to academia?
You won't be able to bypass the traditional academic route, but from some of these positions you will be able to publish, and you might be involved in the interesting parts of planning. At the very least, this all will be very helpful if you do at some point want to enter a graduate program. (Or, conversely, it might be very helpful in giving you enough familiarity with the territory that you know you really don't want to enter a graduate program, ever.)
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Re:yes, there are a reasonable number of positions (Score:4, Informative)
By no direct access I meant that there is no path to reaching the upper or even middle echelons of academia - as a reasearch programmer he would always remain in a supporting role. Which is fine if that's what he wants. But it doesn't sound like that's what he wants.
I actually moved in the opposite direction from a pure research position in the hard sciences to a programming position in support of research. At the time, I received similar advice from a senior researcher. It was a little more strident though, something like: "What are you nuts? You won't ever be able to propose research again and no one will ever take you seriously."
Re:yes, there are a reasonable number of positions (Score:4, Insightful)
I actually moved in the opposite direction from a pure research position in the hard sciences to a programming position in support of research. At the time, I received similar advice from a senior researcher. It was a little more strident though, something like: "What are you nuts? You won't ever be able to propose research again and no one will ever take you seriously."
This is sometimes true, but it depends on what exactly you do and who you work with. I moved from doing molecular biology research (as a PhD student) to writing software in support of same. I have far more exposure now than I was ever likely to get by doing my own research, and I have lots of other researchers (both junior and senior) constantly asking me for help. As a result I've been able to rack up enough publications and visibility that I don't think I'd have a problem moving back to pure research. However, as long as I'm doing methods development, it would be very difficult to get a tenure-track faculty position; I'd basically have to demote myself back to postdoc and do more basic research for a while. Fortunately I have no such delusions.
The bigger problem for the submitter, as others have implied, is the lack of a PhD; this is always going to limit his (?) career advancement.
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And what, pray tell, are the "upper or even middle echelons of academia"? Tenured positions and assistant professorships?
Yes.
I believe that personal satisfaction comes from following one's interests.
As a staff programmer, you don't "follow your interests". Instead, you do what the actual researchers tell you to do.
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"Following your interests" is usually incompatible with "paying your bills". If someone knows you've got an interest in the material beyond just getting paid, they will pay you less (or at least try to.) "Liking your job" is just code for "Please screw me out of money at every chance you get."
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Re: yes, there are a reasonable number of position (Score:2)
Yes, your experience is universal and the vast majority of employers aren't evil money-grubbing bastards that will screw you at every opportunity, no matter what the industry.
Oh, wait..
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Re: yes, there are a reasonable number of position (Score:2)
No, if you like your job, and your boss knows it, he/she knows that he/she doesn't have to work as hard to keep you happy and productive. Ergo, they don't have to pay you as much to keep you.
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I suppose it must depend on the industry, but I've found that someone who **likes** what they do is far more productive than someone whose primary interest is drawing a paycheck and my bosses have been VERY interested in keeping me happy.
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No, if you like your job, and your boss knows it, he/she knows that he/she doesn't have to work as hard to keep you happy and productive.
This is only true if you won't be just as happy doing a similar job elsewhere. My experience is that, in the long run, passionate and enthusiastic employees do a lot better financially than 9-5ers.
Re: yes, there are a reasonable number of positio (Score:2)
You can do that as long as your boss knows your passion and enthusiasm would work just as well for someone else, and you remind them of it constantly. Otherwise, bend over.
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That really depends on the job and the institution. I am a research programmer and am being encouraged to be more independent. Write papers and come up with grant ideas in particular. I will most likely never be faculty with a B.S., but grad school is almost free while I'm in my current position and there are past and present faculty who only had/have a Masters.
Get in the door any way you can. If you find a project and supervisor you can work with, doors will open. Most of the paths will be through gra
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There are some programmer/IT people in my institution (a US National Lab) who want desperately to be real full-time scientists. They even have physics PhD's. They are from time to time given a bit of more direct participation, but it is clear that they will never be promoted into a regular scientist position, not while there are loads of PhD's coming off of 1 or 2 post-docs such that they have done nothing but hands-on research for the last 6-10 years.
These guys live in a kind of scientific purgatory, a
Not true. (Score:2)
PhD in physical chemistry, theory. All my research experience was computation. A full time coder is a huge asset in a computation research group. They quickly become versed in the sorts of things they need to know - science wise - and contribute in that way. Really, how can you write code to solve a problem you don't understand? They are part of the group, actively participate in research, and are acknowledged with authorship. And since their tenure isn't limited by graduation, the next postdoc, or a
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Another option you may want to look into is working at a supercomputer centre. These are usually (semi-)independent organisations that maintain supercomputers and fast networks, and help scientists use them. Jobs there include technical sysadmin type work maintaining compute clusters, storage arrays, and networking equipment, programming with an emphasis on parallellisation, optimisation and visualisation, as well as more consulting-type work where you advise researchers on how to best use the available fac
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Try SAS (www.sas.com). My wife programs that for Kaiser. So it's all medical research. But there are plenty of non-academic jobs in medical science.
Outside of that... hmmm, Engineering? Not really science so much as applying science to solve problems.
Geology will end you up with a big oil company searching for more oil, or other natural resources.
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Re:yes, there are a reasonable number of positions (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, if you define 'humanity' as 'the leeches at the top of the org chart who don't do any actual work'.
An oversimplification. You're not wrong, but the problem isn't that cut and dried. It depends on how they turn a profit. If they sacrifice long-term viability to make the quarterly statement look better, yes, they're turning a profit, but eventually the bad choices will catch up with the company - but by then the people who made the bad choices have long since pulled the ripcord on their golden parachutes and left the rank and file out of a job. I would argue that a better business model is not only to turn a profit, but give the employees a stake in the company's success beyond "you get to keep your job."
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"The business world IS engaged in an overall betterment of humanity."
That is such bullshit.
Business' main concern is profit. Any "betterment of humanity" is usually forced by market concerns (profit), or regulation reining business in from full-on exploitation and physical damage (of human & natural resources). Philanthropy is typically mis-direction to counteract bad reputation.
For every business that strives to "do no evil", there are tens of thousands that couldn't care less about the "betterment of
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The OPs remarks resonated at about +110dB with me at the moment. I really wanted to be a radio astronomer when I was in high-school, but got a job with the local University as a programmer helping biology/zoology students automate their experiments, etc. I quickly got seduced by the "software side of the force", and have been in commercial software/tech-development for nearly 35 years.
I've maintained my interest in science and scientific programming, and have made some small "splashes" in small-scale radi
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I used to work in Geophysics programming geology models. It's really fascinating work, very enjoyable. Lots of maths of course.
There is also good money in it, if you work for a mining company. I don't know if that satisfies your social conscience issues.
In the end I got out of programming, partially due to the reasons you stated. I'm now a doctor.
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And Fortran. Lots and lots of Fortran, in my experience. Matlab will let you link in Fortran libraries btw.
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I can't believe you didn't mention the wall-to-wall dumb young chicks who aren't used to drinking, but are giving it their best effort.
Dichotomy (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a solution a lot of people find is to split their day: they pay their bills with a job they can (just about) tolerate, and then use their free time to focus on their passion, perhaps in a small community (cf. FOSS development).
Also, academia is no paradise either: it's not so much about focusing on what you are interested in, but rather focusing on where there is funding, and where you can find your own niche. It's surprising and depressing how many niches are already filled: it's like trying to find an empty shell on the ocean floor.
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The job I can tolerate to pay the bills takes most of my day and leaves me mentally too tired to focus on anything related to it.
I would cut my salary in half to work half hours if I could. However, even smaller differences, like cutting 1/8th for one more free hour, as recent parents do, would cut my progression in the corporation by turning me into "those people who aren't compromised with the enterprise".
Dichotomy is already a compromise, and having to sacrifice one's career for it is too expensive.
I pre
Re:Dichotomy (Score:5, Funny)
Whereas I am old and mostly full of vi.
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> echo "If you are capable to do your job, you should be able to perform agreed upon tasks in 40 hours." | PHB
If you are finishing your work in 40 hours we need to give you more to do.
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well I think the question was "how can I get paid for betterment of society"...
anyhow, if he wants to work in academia then going to academia is kind of a must. if he has means to make a living then just donating time could be better.
Don't know how is it in the USA, but ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I can talk from my experience in Europe. Although you may have the experience and knowledge to do the research successfully; going to grad school will open many doors. You will have access to information about ongoing projects, publications, etc ... And by the way you will fill some possible weak points in your knowledge about the subject.
About technologies; you must be flexible; just know how to program, not on a specific language. Anyway, I recommend you to get to know (and learn to love) Matlab.
Computational Research is a thing now, yes. (Score:2)
You might be happy somewhere like http://crd.lbl.gov/ [lbl.gov]
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Unusual supernova is actually perfectly normal
Best headline ever.
Grass is always greener, I guess (Score:2)
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Re: Grass is always greener, I guess (Score:4, Informative)
R language (R is too short for a Slashdot Subject) (Score:5, Insightful)
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My advisor in grad school's biggest contribution to scientific computing was designing and implementing(with some outside help) a distributed, POSIX-compatible file system specifically optimized for the sor
R for "Red Flag" (Score:3, Informative)
Join the NSA today! (Score:5, Funny)
Try again in ten years time. (Score:5, Informative)
I reckon academia is heading towards hiring more programmers. We often have research grants where one of the employed researchers could be a statsy person with publications in the learned journals, or a computery person with lots of stuff shared in github and contributions to open-source projects and so on. The prof as PI on the grant is impressed by the former, I'm (as CI) impressed by the latter. Currently we tend to favour the statsy people, and they are often very poor programmers with little knowledge of version control, testing, Makefiles, awk, all that nerdy stuff that could make their life simpler. So I teach them...
I can only really talk confidently about statistics here (sample size = 1) but I know a bit about other places. University College London has a Research Software Development Team, for example: http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/research-software-development/ and the whole development of programming skills for researchers is being pushed by the SSI (software.ac.uk) of which I am a fellow.
You might also want to look at Software Carpentry, a programme for training researchers in programming skills - there may be opportunities there.
So currently there's a few opportunities, but its getting better. A final thought though - you want to leave "the financial-obsession of the business world and would like to work for the overall betterment of humanity instead". Hahahaahha rofl. Academia is just as financially-obsessed as any trading house. I'm spending today doing paperwork for expenses claims, travel, grant proposals... Its all about the money... Oh do I sound disillusioned? Okay, I have probably stopped some people catching malaria, but not today...
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My impression is that it's been going the opposite direction in the U.S., but could change again. It used to be quite common for CS research groups to have substantial programming staff. That's what Richard Stallman's job was in the MIT AI Lab, for example, and he was one of a number of hackers from non-academic backgrounds on the AI-Lab staff (Richard Greenblatt and Russell Noftsker were two of the others). But in those days there was generous and fairly unrestricted funding, so folks like Marvin Minsky ha
Universities or @home projects (Score:2)
How about looking at universities, and specifically fields where there is a lot of good to be done but aren't 'natural' homes for programmers? e.g. Life Sciences, agriculture, biology etc.
Separately, there are all the @home projects, which can always use programmers (and do occasionally recruit from amongst their contributors).
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I agree. I would start out looking at university job postings first. My own field is genomics and bioinformatics, and there really is a huge need for programmers and data analysts. Actually, my first research assistant position was as a programmer in a lab in which I did MATLAB programming. MPI and GPGP programming is very useful too.
As someone else mentioned, you can also work for the large national labs or supercomputing centers as well. A lot of the supercomputers are publicly owned, and there's a fairly
A lot of/most(?) research is financially-driven (Score:2)
First comment from me, is that this is a laudable goal, and OP has my respect for wanting to help the world.
Second comment is that, from my limited (Electronics, Integrated Circuit Engineering, Machine Vision/AI) experience in academia, most of the research there is commercially driven, either because a large corp has come along with a wad of money and asked the institution to research something specific, or because the institution has an eye toward commercially applicable research, via patents on something
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This varies an awful lot by field. In my research career so far I've been supported mostly by NIH and some NSF grants, with computer time and hardware supplied at time by the DOE and Microsoft.* The more pure research grants are more competitive... but the coporate stuff is a lot skeevier, especially wrt ownership of intellectual property.
* Kind of a funny situation. I had just left MS, was and thrilled to kick that windows dust off my boots... and then they were funding my research right out of the gate. W
No such thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously though, I think, with the exception of the "Alex P. Keatons" among us, virtually all programmers would rather work doing some sort of pure research for the betterment of humanity, than helping some sycophantic management team please the board/stockholders for yet another quarter.
Reality of the situation, though, you (and I, and all of us) have chosen the very same thing you claim has disillusioned you. You have chosen to want a paycheck. Make no mistake, for every one software engineering job position you see posted, you can find a hundred good causes that need volunteer coders. Except, good luck getting a steady paycheck if you go that route - Short of actually becoming a professor, you very much need to treat it as an act of charity.
Which leaves you to ask yourself: Can you really afford to live without a paycheck? If you can't answer "yes" without hesitation, hey, they don't call it "work" because we go there to have eight hours of fun every day.
As a compromise solution many of us have taken, do your good deeds on the side. Get that paycheck, and put 10-20 hours a week into a FOSS project, or helping the local foodbank set up a useable LAN from their pile of 15 year old mostly-DOA donated junk, or if you still have a few "in"s at your university, ask a few of your favorite non-CS professors if they have any projects that could use your skills (almost all of them do). But make a living first and foremost.
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That should read, "a large paycheck". There are certainly plenty of labs that have money available for coding, but you'll be earning about 25-35K in most cases. As someone who was on the opposite side of this conundrum (I was trying to hire a programmer), I was frustrated to find that noone with significant coding skills was willing to work for that amount of money.
I'm not sure where you are in the world, but assuming the United States, $25,000 to $35,000 is roughly half of the average entry level programmer salary of about $55,000. So you are looking for a skilled worker for less than someone fresh out of college could make? I suspect you have some unrealistic expectations, or you might need to get a bit more creative about things. I know quite a few programmers that would be willing to pick up a side job for those rates but don't expect them to work the same hours a
From my experience (Score:2, Insightful)
I work at a large research organization. I'll tell you how it is here, it will be similar at other places:
* We have research staff and non research staff (lawyers, personal assistants, software engineers, ...)
* All research staff must have a PhD in the field of their research position. I.e. if you want to do research, do a PhD first.
* Software engineers don't need a PhD, but we require a bachelors in IT or equivalent experience.
* Software engineers assist in research, but do not lead it. I.e. you don't get
Re:From my experience (Score:5, Interesting)
I work for a national research organization ( small country, higher-income part of Europe ). It is different here:
* Research staff and non-research staff, here, too ( non-research = secretaries, lawyers... )
* All software engineers are research staff
* You must not have a PhD, although it helps
* Software engineers can lead in research, especially in our dept., which focuses on networks, security and some types and aspects of software / programming
* Direct connections to the good of mankind are not so rare. One of the specializations of this institute is environment; another one is crisis and disaster management
* Most projects are, indeed, rather small. 2 - max. 5 people for about 1 - 2 years is the standard
* You will mostly produce demonstrators / alphas. You will never produce software above TRL 6, for sure.
* I second the part about financial obsession
* It is NOT the same as working with Google, IBM, et al.: it is more laid-back here, you can actually take time to think, and although mgmt. is generally as stupid and incompetent as elsewhere, there is not as high a pressure upon programmers as elsewhere.
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The parent post is much closer to my own experiences than the grandparent post. Programmers definitely count as research staff, and a Ph.D. is not required to get those positions, although it certainly does help. And although you will probably never be a PI, you can still have a lot of freedom and influence in terms of what you work on and how you pursue it.
Academia is very different from the corporate world. For one thing, the management structure is very flat. Research staff report to professors, and
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Having worked at NASA for such folks (Score:5, Insightful)
I can tell you that with out a PhD, your are viewed as little more than a trained chimp. Masters in both CS and Applied Math seemed to mean nothing, the fact that these so called doctors were incapable of writing more than 4 lines of intelligible code was beside the point.
It was fairly annoying, and none of my work is cited in their papers.
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I can tell you that with out a PhD, your are viewed as little more than a trained chimp. Masters in both CS and Applied Math seemed to mean nothing, the fact that these so called doctors were incapable of writing more than 4 lines of intelligible code was beside the point.
It was fairly annoying, and none of my work is cited in their papers.
This is like a walk down memory lane. Along the way in my journey from the research world to the programming world, I embarked upon getting a master's in CS. A colleague of mine said at the time, "Why would you want to do that? It's a totally worthless degree!"
I'm not claiming all researchers are like this, but it is a de ja vu for sure.
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PhD in Computer Science
Thinking about it again, I'm not sure if said person was reacting to the level of the degree or the fact that it was not coming from a "top tier" research institution. I may be getting my academic prejudices crossed.
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I can tell you that with out a PhD, your are viewed as little more than a trained chimp. Masters in both CS and Applied Math seemed to mean nothing, the fact that these so called doctors were incapable of writing more than 4 lines of intelligible code was beside the point.
It was fairly annoying, and none of my work is cited in their papers.
I had the same experience at a major national lab. Because I didn't have a PhD, i.e. Post Doc, I felt like a dog's chew toy. They had a yearly "peer" review system, where the PhD's reviewed each other, and also the rest of the staff. Needless to say they were always at the top of the review, and we lesser folks were always at the bottom.
Computational Chemist (Score:2)
A friend of mine is a computational chemist. He comes from a chemistry background, but has for some years now been writing software for simulating cell receptors to help find matching proteins for them. He's even part authored 3(?) books on KNIME which is written in Java. In his experience skilled programmers with maths knowledge are hard to find in the field because most come from a chemistry background rather than a computer science background.
That seems to be good match for you.
Scientific Programming (Score:5, Insightful)
Three words: Math, math, and math.
If you don't have the advanced math skills, your use to a scientific research effort will be limited.
climate science (Score:2)
most definitely yes (Score:3, Informative)
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Hi,
I work in pharmaceuticals. My experience is of the working in the UK private sector in computational biology and synthetic biology.
I don't think ODE modelling is on the way out. It's the standard mathematical tool for modelling in science and engineering. I meant that within my field, roles involving building ODE models of biological systems are not readily appearing on jobs boards. Pharma is interested in probabilistic modelling for clinical trial design as well as pharmacokinetics / pharmacodynamic
Scientific Programmer (Score:3)
There are definitely positions at the Bachelor and Master level (In Comp.Sci or equivalent) at universities and research institutes.
Also don't forget large oil firms and the like.
There are two types:
- Scientific Programmers: Those that work on implementing, scaling and optimizing algorithms for number crunching purposes. Knowledge of the specific field is certainly an advantage here.
- Generic Programmers: From lab automation to webpages, database backends, archives and various other things that organisations need to do their work.
It's hard to get a permanent contract though, as a lot of the funding is on projects for 2-5 years.
Job adverts might be on the sites of the organisations themselves and sometimes the employers have a combined website. In the Netherlands there is AcademicTransfer for example, where all publicly funded research organisations pool their job adds.
Are you prepared to travel? (Score:2)
The so-called "interdisciplinary" research projects can benefit greatly from your programing skills, if you take them to a new field. I guess that you have already proven, through your co-operation with geologists, that you are able to grasp a new topic and reach a high level of competency in that field (as in being co-author in a paper in that discipline), so you should definitely play that card while applying, in my opinion.
Traveling, as well as learning/using a new language should be considered. I tried
There's opportunities (Score:2)
My PhD work required that I learn programming, I learned R. Now I'm starting to learn Python in addition to R.
There's plenty of opportunities for someone who is a programmer that is interested in science, where I'm sitting. I just hired an MS level employee who had experience modeling but not with programming. I'm looking to hire one programmer to do some R package work for me shortly and another to do some "big data" sort of work. However, it's not always easy to find someone to fill these positions who ha
Be a self-starter (Score:2)
I worked as a research assistant for a professor for six years. It was a great job. The most rewarding part is that I worked on lots of different projects and most of them were cool and intellectually stimulating and fun. It was also fantastic going to conferences and presenting work. You can really push and challenge yourself. It feels a bit like working in a startup. Each professor has their own team and budget and grants and publications, so its like being part of a small company, except that there is a
All Science is Computer Science (Score:2)
All Science is computer science nowadays, and I'm not even a computer scientist. So yes, there are many fields that are in great need of computer scientists and/or programmers. For example this guy, who popularized the term "connectome":
http://hebb.mit.edu/people/seung/ [mit.edu]
And BTW, his excellent TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_seung.html [ted.com]
Seek centers of research (Score:2)
Research is not just academic: there is a lot of research going on in biotech, pharmaeceuticals, defense, aerospace, and government. There are also think tanks and the like, which probably crunch a lot of numbers. In most cases, research laboratories and institutes are anchored near major universities.
I would suggest you relocate to a geographic area where a lot of research gets done. Boston [wikipedia.org], DC, and the Research Triangle [wikipedia.org] spring to mind, but that's because I live on the East Coast. Los Angeles County has Ca
Yes, such jobs *do* exist (Score:2)
You sound a great deal like me, and -- speaking from personal experience -- what you want is possible. :-) I'd look within NASA, definitely.
And ignore the bitter folks here who are whining about how they're looked down upon by the PhDs. That's certainly not a universal experience -- I have coded for PhDs at a couple of research institutions and always got along well with them. Just remember that you have to give respect to get respect, especially if you're the new kid in the lab.
You'd probably want/need
Scientific Research Positions For Programmers? (Score:2)
Scientific Research Positions For Programmers?
Those are few in existence. Unfortunately (and I speak from former experience) a B.S. degree in CS with experience exclusively in the "enterprise" does not lead itself to any research/R&D position of the sort. Plus, research and R&D positions typically go to positions titled as "engineers" or "architects", not programmers. Every good software engineer or architect is a programmer, and any good programmer is an engineer or architect. But sadly, labels rule the world, pigeonholing people in stupid, mu
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You need domain knowledge (Score:3)
So get an MS in Geology. You will find:
1) you will be supported. I.e. people in the department or even unrelated departments will hire you as a student. They do it partly because they need your skills, partly because they truly want to see you succeed, people in academia like to see people succeed, and partly as a of self interest; if they hire you then if one of their students needs a job your adviser might hire them. Sort of a mutual support mechanism as well as professional courtesy. But what you will get is a well rounded education, references, and something for the CV.
This is based on my experiences. I never went without a job while pursuing my MS, and had a job when I graduated.
Also, I distrust anyone programming in a technical field like Geology without background knowledge. Sure the person might right great code, but is it the *right* code? Without domain knowledge they may go down the wrong road.
The sciences need great programmers. I had a great experience doing it. So go for it.
Python (Score:3)
You see some programming jobs related to seismics (which is a branch of geology) pop up here from time to time http://www.iris.edu/hq/employment [iris.edu]
You'll find some oceaongraphy related programming jobs pop up here from time to time. Note some of them require going to sea. You'll find marine geophysicists do a lot of seismics and geology: http://unols.org/jobs/jobs/index.html [unols.org]
Time to upgrade your creds. (Score:2)
Bioinformatics Might be an Option (Score:2)
If you don't have a family (Score:2)
Look into getting a PhD or at least an MS in the science you're interested in. In my (pretty limited, admittedly) experience, the developers who do the heavy lifting on scientific codes are PhDs. At the same time, very few (almost 0) freshly minted science or engineering PhDs have any experience developing software in a production environment, so as long as you aren't terrible at interviewing, I think you'd be a shoe-in at a national lab or a company that does this kind of work after you finish.
FYI, becau
Contribute to Open-Source (Score:2)
FORTRAN, dammit (Score:2)
Go back to school, you will not regret it. (Score:2)
I was in academic IT research (And So Can You) (Score:2)
For 8 years I worked as a "Compuational Scientist" at 3 university supercomputing centers, helping students and faculty to use/program parallel computers. I don't have a PhD.
I saw several kinds of computing staff in academia. Some assist in research; most don't. They are:
- graduate students (CS, engineering, physical sciences, psychology, medical research, etc)
- post docs (w/ same areas of research)
- IT support staff (cluster or workstation or network admins, univ administrative app programmers, etc)
- re
Pay cut (Score:2)
Unfortunately for my wallet, I *do* enjoy the research quite a bit and have co-authored more publications than most junior faculty PhDs, so it can be very rewarding in a non-monetary way.
Though as others have said, if you're goal is to be conceiving of and performing your own research, you need to go through the
A serious response (Score:2)
There are, indeed, scientific programmers. Consider environmental companies - they do a lot of engineering, in terms of finding and catagorizing and cataloging pollution. Or there are some engineering firms - think of aerospace. Or there's the biosciences, which are big these days. We have a lot of such programmers here (I work for a US federal contractor in the health and human services area[1]). In my division, we've got folks working on things like protein folding[2], which takes *days* on a good-sized c
Look for Big Data ... (Score:2)
Yes, it is realistic with your qualifications.
Look for Big Data projects. Particularly in Physics (e.g. CERN), Astronomy (the new generation of instruments which will be coming onliny in the next few years are going to be churning out Terabytes of data per night, which cannot be analyzed in any way other than automatically - look at projects like LSST, organisations like ESO, or the Virtual Observatory projects around the world - look at the IVOA for an overview). Or Biology/Biochemistry/Medicine - Medical
Beware what you asked for (Score:2)
Hell yes! (Score:2)
I am currently working in a US university as a post doc and will join another one as assistant professor. And I can tell you that one thing we definitely lack are programmers. We need programmer and we hire them. My current department (biomedical informatics at OSU) already employ at least 2 full time programmers. And they are useful. I am currently "in charge" of a piece of middleware that is quite useful for parallel programming, but it is not production ready. And provided the time I have to spare to wor
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I decided to go for the PhD myself, but that was in large part because I didn't want to only do programming. (Having a background in programming, finding positions was not difficult, however.)
There are also a number of variants, including getting a staff position and then taking a couple of classes on the side (many universities offer a certain number of credits as a perq of employment.
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Because systems of fractional partial differential equations are fluff.
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Think of how you could change the world by creating iPhone apps that make cat sounds.
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You're right, but not for the reason you think.
And what's really amusing is that you'll never know why.
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You presume my perspective is stupid when it was pretty clearly not.
Let me clarify the situation for you.
The goat herd tending his flock 2000 years ago was a businessmen. He was out there every day busting his ass protecting that herd from predators, thieves, the elements, and the stupidity of the live stock itself.
Why did he do it? To feed his family. To provide for his community. To make a profit.
That is business.
You can hate on it all you like but its life. Without business we're dead.
Now you want to say
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The goat herd [sic] tending his flock 2000 years ago was a businessmen. He was out there every day busting his ass protecting that herd from predators, thieves, the elements, and the stupidity of the live stock itself.
No, he was a tradesman and there might not have been any profit motive involved depending upon the size of the herd and how remote the individual was from a center of trade.
Now you want to say you're only against modern business and not some idealized and naive conception of older business models?
I never said that and you should go back and re-read my comments if you don't believe me. I said that business in and of itself is not necessary for human survival which is a true statement. Trade and businesses might help to ensure human survival is easier, but they aren't necessary from that standpoint.
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All trade is business and all business is trade, idiot.
All businesses may engage in some form of trade, but not all trade is business. The difference is that business is conducted between organized groups of individuals (i.e. chartered companies) where as trade can be conducted as the group or individual level.
Maybe you should study some Roman history - corporations, interest rates - these things have been around far longer than a couple of hundred years.
Alright, you get a half point since Roman collegia do share some properties with the modern chartered companies that I was thinking of. The chartered companies date to 17th century though, so my point still stands. One of the key features of modern corpor
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So chartered companies are bad but individuals running businesses is good?
There is no ethical difference. The only difference is that psychologically some people have a hard time relating to impersonal organizations.
But the same thing can be said of cities or national governments.
Why don't we have a chieftain that knows each and every one of us by name? Why do we accept leaders that might not have ever come within 100 miles of us in our entire lives?
Grasp that corporations are not evil. They're just imperso
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So chartered companies are bad but individuals running businesses is good?
Again, I never said that chartered companies were bad. You keep trying to read a percived bias into very short comments.
Although since you bring up the question of ethics, I would argue that there is an ethical difference since an individual can be held responsible for their actions but a large organization cannot. Although that is a very long discussion in and of itself and it's one that people have been arguing back and forth for a long time now.
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Whoops - wasn't logged in.... this was me...