IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

Aldarion

Aldarion

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I have a question for the professional IT folks.

I'm a biologist who does (relative to biologists) quite a bit of programming. Compared to real IT professionals I have no doubt that both my choice of languages (Perl, bash, R, PHP, HTML) and my proficiency in each is weaker. But in the biology world I am often called on to handle all the data analysis & coding tasks on a project. I'm currently assistant professor at a reasonably well respected research university. I'm starting to lose my taste for academia (this is comedic understatement -- nearing a nervous breakdown may be a more accurate description). My amateur friends who know nothing about IT or academia often say "with all my computer skills" I should consider a job in IT. I roll my eyes when I hear this but maybe I'm wrong.

My question for you all in IT -- is there any place in the professional IT world for a person like me -- no CS background, proficiency in an odd selection of languages, and a CV / resume that is not typical for IT?

If there is such a place, what kind of positions do you recommend? What kind of companies are realistic targets, and what kind of salaries are realistic expectations?

Thanks for any advice.
 
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Tenks

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I think a common misconception of being a software developer is just straight writing code. Yeah you need to write code. However I consider that the most entry-level associate tier of requirements for being an engineer. I'm guessing based on your languages and problem set you don't have to worry about any design and architecture and probably very little requirement gathering and implementation to requirements. You probably don't work with a large team of people and understand how to integrate with existing code bases written by different people. You probably don't need to worry about asynchronous idempotency of your APIs. You probably don't even write APIs. That isn't to say you can't learn it if you enjoy it but people think that software engineers are the same as computer programmers back in the 90s. It really isn't that case anymore. So if you want to get into the field because you think it is more pay for similar work ... it really is not.
 
Khane

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Tenks said:
I think a common misconception of being a software developer is just straight writing code. Yeah you need to write code. However I consider that the most entry-level associate tier of requirements for being an engineer. I'm guessing based on your languages and problem set you don't have to worry about any design and architecture and probably very little requirement gathering and implementation to requirements. You probably don't work with a large team of people and understand how to integrate with existing code bases written by different people. You probably don't need to worry about asynchronous idempotency of your APIs. You probably don't even write APIs. That isn't to say you can't learn it if you enjoy it but people think that software engineers are the same as computer programmers back in the 90s. It really isn't that case anymore. So if you want to get into the field because you think it is more pay for similar work ... it really is not.
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Tenks, we like you for who you are. You don't need to try to impress us.

The answer is yes you could probably find work with your skillset. Though you may not want to work for the kind of company that would hire you with your current experience/skillset.

A good question to ask yourself is "what else would I do?". If you can't think of anything better or more suited to your immediate skillset and you enjoy programming you should look into it. If you want to do it you may want to look at more widely used technologies and start learning those.
 
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Tenks

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I wasn't trying to boast I was just trying to convey the message that there is more to SW engineering than just writing code in scripting languages
 
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Aldarion

Aldarion

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Thanks guys this is useful. Tenks, I think you are right about differences between my coding experience to this point and the kind of challenges faced in a real IT environment.
Tenks said:
So if you want to get into the field because you think it is more pay for similar work ... it really is not.
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To be clear, I am not looking for more money, theres no way thatd happen switching careers. I'd consider a ~1/3 reduction in pay a fair tradeoff for the privilege of leaving academia.

I appreciate any additional perspectives or details anyone can share.
 
T

Tenks

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If that is the case just apply and interview. We can't tell you if a company will hire you or not the companies are in charge of that.
 
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Aldarion

Aldarion

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Oh I get that. I guess I'm asking more generally (and you guys have already answered to some extent) about the feasibility of entering IT with coding experience from another field but zero IT experience. For example if someone came into my field applying for faculty jobs without a PhD and at least a few years postdoc experience their application literally wouldnt even be looked at, whether that person was a naturally gifted teacher and researcher or not.
 
Khane

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You would likely be able to find and get interviews and probably even find a company who would hire you. But it probably wouldn't be a job you wanted. You do not need a degree to get a job in software though a degree certainly helps to get your foot in the door.

You already have real world work experience with development though so that would help you.
 
wormie

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Go work for a pharma company. Or rebrand yourself as a data scientist and get on that hype wagon.
 
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alavaz

alavaz

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What do you actually want to do within the IT space though? Everyone sort of spoke on software dev, but your skills would probably better qualify you for system admin jobs where scripting is big and shared code is not. Of course the ceiling is much lower so while you can make OK money, it's really hard to make great money.
 
Aldarion

Aldarion

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This is a part of the question. I have spent my whole life preparing for (and doing) a career in research, so I've spent no time looking into what the options are in IT/software.

What would I enjoy doing? I enjoy writing code, developing and maintaining databases, and to some limited extent, developing web pages. I am good at and have lots of experience in training new people to work with high performance computing clusters. After teaching in a University setting for so long, this part of my skill set may actually be more relevant than my coding skills themselves.

Any advice what kind of IT/software related jobs might be best to look into with this kind of skill set?

Alavaz, when you say "OK money" what kind of money are you talking about? Keep in mind I'm coming from academia where pay is not impressive (e.g. I make about 82 currently and would expect a pay cut when moving into a new field).

You guys rock.
 
wormie

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You have a PHD in bio and know R which means you know a chunk of statistical methods and possibly the more common machine learning methods. You also know PHP so you most likely do some gene sequencing? You then know and are comfortable with string manipulation . You have a fairly specialized and currently valuable skill set. You can probably get a job in biotech or big pharma programming bio algorithms or you can possibly do some NLP work. Or you can learn to program in another language or two and go write every day software or websites (Personal opinion: barf).
 
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alavaz

alavaz

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Yeah wormie's advice is good for your background. I'd honestly recommend the same thing.

To answer your question though and provide more detail, the system admin field is real bloated in the middle so most people probably make 60-80k. I'm currently a "system integration engineer," which is in the same field, but a bit more focused on design and implementation of infrastructure. I do a lot of scripting and programming (yes I do compile things occasionally) in order to get applications talking to each other that normally wouldn't. In this line of work we mostly make somewhere between 90-120k, but it's still a pretty hard ceiling right there around 120-130 (in the southeast, adjust for cost of living in your area) where as software engineering sees much much higher salary ceilings.
 
TJT

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I agree with wormie here. Highlight your experience in statistical modeling via R and any other tool you may have used. I used Stata a lot when I was at university. Big Data or some job in Business Intelligence (essentially report design and the calculations to feed them) is probably quite close to what you do in your current field.

If you want to go the usual route into a dev role... a lot of times people start in QA. My first job was as an Software Developer in Test. Where I mainly used python then selenium/C# to automate the functional tester QAs (retards) shit. Managed to pull off some sorcery in databases and reporting and do a bunch of other shit.

For QA I'd expect low $60s at start but for BI/Big Data its probably around $65k-$80k or more if you land the right job.
 
wormie

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Also the high performance computing stuff can be leveraged for a job at a large lab somewhere doing scientific computing. Would have to learn matlab and c++ for that most likely. And probably CUDA.
 
sadris

sadris

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Aldarion said:
I have a question for the professional IT folks.

I'm a biologist who does (relative to biologists) quite a bit of programming. Compared to real IT professionals I have no doubt that both my choice of languages (Perl, bash, R, PHP, HTML) and my proficiency in each is weaker. But in the biology world I am often called on to handle all the data analysis & coding tasks on a project. I'm currently assistant professor at a reasonably well respected research university. I'm starting to lose my taste for academia (this is comedic understatement -- nearing a nervous breakdown may be a more accurate description). My amateur friends who know nothing about IT or academia often say "with all my computer skills" I should consider a job in IT. I roll my eyes when I hear this but maybe I'm wrong.

My question for you all in IT -- is there any place in the professional IT world for a person like me -- no CS background, proficiency in an odd selection of languages, and a CV / resume that is not typical for IT?

If there is such a place, what kind of positions do you recommend? What kind of companies are realistic targets, and what kind of salaries are realistic expectations?

Thanks for any advice.
Click to expand...
Could also go into system admin. Same salary, easier job! We hire non-degreed people.
 
Noodleface

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Question for guys with website domain knowledge.

Brother in law owns his own company. Other brother in law registered the domain in his own name and it expirss in 15 days. The brother in law that registered it is banished from the family.

What do I do here.. let it expire and purchase it again?
 
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