To dovetail on the complaints about bioinformatics; most of the government grants are given to PIs, or Principal Investigators, who are a notoriously clannish b

To dovetail on the complaints about bioinformatics; most of the government grants are given to PIs, or Principal Investigators, who are a notoriously clannish bunch and each one has free license to operate as they want. IT can be lower on the priority list for them than say, the bio-stats geeks who work exclusively in Excel, SAS, SPSS, etc. So, you're either working for the 'enterprise software vendor' (ie big pharma) or you obey the whim of the PI, which is like client work for people who, again, don't really want to listen to you anyway. 'Just get it to work' is the prevailing attitude. The only notable exception would be if you were to get into bioinformatics outside of the USA. Try to find some work with either EU orgs (entirely govt sponsored research), such as the World Health Organization in Geneva, or take a look at what orgs are doing with public health research in developing countries. If you find a better ways to assist with AIDS research in Africa, you would be doing the world a bigger favor than currying favor to the pointy-headed in the US. In short, look to the frontiers of modern society. They probably have needs that seem elementary to us, but are real and need solving, now.