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I'm going through a similar transition (academic neuroscience -> freelance developer). Can't offer any solid advice since I'm still in the midst of it myself,

I'm going through a similar transition (academic neuroscience -> freelance developer). Can't offer any solid advice since I'm still in the midst of it myself, but I did want to say congrats on getting out of academic science. I'm not sure how similar chemistry is to biology. But if it is similar, good job getting off the sinking ship. Acadamia is a good fit for about 10% of the people in it. The rest of us are kept in by guilt, stubbornness, and a misplaced sense of duty/honor.

kls 15y ago
I would look to how I can leverage the two, I know there is a lot of open source in these fields and that does not create a great opportunity for direct payment for your development efforts but their are ways to leverage your knowledge of the field and development skills. For example, if your industry relies on aggregating a lot of public data, you may be able to build a company that designed tools that collect that data, and then sell the refined data to researcher. Or you can always develop out a niche site that caters to that research, where individuals in the industry can get relevant news about the industry. You can contact researchers in the field and see if they need development services for custom applications and set up a freelancing shop that supports several researcher. To me there should be a way to combine to two, to compete in a market that you have already built value in. I am not disparaging web development, a lot of people will say web developers are a dime a dozen, but the reality is good developers are probably one of the rarest skill-sets on the planet and therein lies the problem, to become a skilled web developer takes years, I would say almost a decade of experience, because the web is always changing, until you have seen it change a few times, you have not mastered the skills of adaptation. Which are requisite for future-proofing applications. I am getting off on a tangent, but the point is make sure you are ready to start over, because switching oars now means beginning the assent up river again, for some industries their is no choice, just make sure you have looked at all the options in yours, before you decide it is one that there truly is no choice.
- polyfractal 15y ago
  Yep, I agree entirely. I have a few irons in the fire that merge my knowledge of academic research/biology with software development. As you mentioned though, academic research is a traditionally difficult place to make much money. The problem is three-fold: -Many academics are Luddites, that excel file works great damnit -Academics have extremely small budgets since it is all grant money, and grants are getting ever more difficult to get -Academics are used to free software, be it open source or something another academic has created. Or in-house expertise. For example have an engineering grad student doing work on our 2-photon microscope, including custom software. With that said, not many people write software for academics since there isn't much money. If you made something indispensable I imagine you could very easily corner the market. Regardless, I have no doubt that I need to get out of academic biology. It isn't a sane career choice, where you bank your success on improbable luck, randomness of biological systems and stupidly long hours. Plus the pay sucks until you are 40. :)
- jollyjerry 15y ago
  +1 on finding a way to leverage both fields. I've only heard of R and never used it, but I'm sure there are domains where it's the perfect tool for the job. You could potentially freelance to make some side income as well. I think it's still a good idea to learn web development in general. It's such an interoperable medium. It's dense on the first read, but I recommend skimming RFC2616 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt) the HTTP protocol. It won't teach you to program any specific language or framework, but it's a great way to get a feel for all the pieces involved for a web app. After that, I recommend taking baby steps and tackling each piece of the puzzle individually. Learn some html/css, build a portfolio page. Then take on some javascript and add some dynamic elements. Then add a backend for dynamic elements you compute server side. For learning coding, nothing beats practice. To improve, write something that solves you own problem, but also look for how other people implemented the same thing (github's a great place to see well maintained and well factored code) Best of luck!

kls 15y ago

I would look to how I can leverage the two, I know there is a lot of open source in these fields and that does not create a great opportunity for direct payment for your development efforts but their are ways to leverage your knowledge of the field and development skills. For example, if your industry relies on aggregating a lot of public data, you may be able to build a company that designed tools that collect that data, and then sell the refined data to researcher. Or you can always develop out a niche site that caters to that research, where individuals in the industry can get relevant news about the industry. You can contact researchers in the field and see if they need development services for custom applications and set up a freelancing shop that supports several researcher. To me there should be a way to combine to two, to compete in a market that you have already built value in. I am not disparaging web development, a lot of people will say web developers are a dime a dozen, but the reality is good developers are probably one of the rarest skill-sets on the planet and therein lies the problem, to become a skilled web developer takes years, I would say almost a decade of experience, because the web is always changing, until you have seen it change a few times, you have not mastered the skills of adaptation. Which are requisite for future-proofing applications. I am getting off on a tangent, but the point is make sure you are ready to start over, because switching oars now means beginning the assent up river again, for some industries their is no choice, just make sure you have looked at all the options in yours, before you decide it is one that there truly is no choice.

polyfractal 15y ago
Yep, I agree entirely. I have a few irons in the fire that merge my knowledge of academic research/biology with software development. As you mentioned though, academic research is a traditionally difficult place to make much money. The problem is three-fold: -Many academics are Luddites, that excel file works great damnit -Academics have extremely small budgets since it is all grant money, and grants are getting ever more difficult to get -Academics are used to free software, be it open source or something another academic has created. Or in-house expertise. For example have an engineering grad student doing work on our 2-photon microscope, including custom software. With that said, not many people write software for academics since there isn't much money. If you made something indispensable I imagine you could very easily corner the market. Regardless, I have no doubt that I need to get out of academic biology. It isn't a sane career choice, where you bank your success on improbable luck, randomness of biological systems and stupidly long hours. Plus the pay sucks until you are 40. :)
jollyjerry 15y ago
+1 on finding a way to leverage both fields. I've only heard of R and never used it, but I'm sure there are domains where it's the perfect tool for the job. You could potentially freelance to make some side income as well. I think it's still a good idea to learn web development in general. It's such an interoperable medium. It's dense on the first read, but I recommend skimming RFC2616 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt) the HTTP protocol. It won't teach you to program any specific language or framework, but it's a great way to get a feel for all the pieces involved for a web app. After that, I recommend taking baby steps and tackling each piece of the puzzle individually. Learn some html/css, build a portfolio page. Then take on some javascript and add some dynamic elements. Then add a backend for dynamic elements you compute server side. For learning coding, nothing beats practice. To improve, write something that solves you own problem, but also look for how other people implemented the same thing (github's a great place to see well maintained and well factored code) Best of luck!