As far as I'm aware, at least in my social circles, it is. I used to work with a grad student who really, really wanted to do biology research and basically wo

As far as I'm aware, at least in my social circles, it is. I used to work with a grad student who really, really wanted to do biology research and basically worked two jobs [student + lab tech] and 25hrs/week as a programmer to achieve it. He eventually ended up writing software for genetics research because they'd pay him double.