A solid understanding of math or any technical field combined with practical experience in programming, and a willingness to learn will get you quite far. Also

A solid understanding of math or any technical field combined with practical experience in programming, and a willingness to learn will get you quite far. Also a multidisciplinary background can be quite a strength. For instance we're hiring developers at LiquidPlanner. We are doing some cool stuff with probabilistic scheduling/planning, which would really benefit from some more folks with solid math/stats backgrounds: http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/eng/3264718329.html http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/eng/3264718329.html So yeah, I'd say finish up your PhD, enjoy academia, and don't worry, there will be jobs out there for you.