4 ms·

Ask HN: Majored in Chemistry, should I go back and get a CS degree?

6 points by thelogos 14y ago

I'll be graduating soon with a bachelor in chemistry, and while the subject is deeply fascinating (I'm taking many graduate courses for fun), there is little future in this career. There isn't enough room to elaborate on this subject here (if anyone wish for it, I can), but to summarize, the job salaries are generally poor with low ceiling and the working conditions are hazardous. Graduate school is another can of worms that I won't go into. I'm posting this HN because I have no one that I can trust enough to ask IRL and I don't know of any other website with a higher signal:noise ratio. I've recently taken an interest in programming and prospect of freelance work is highly appealing. If I can make minimum wage while working anywhere there is an internet connection, I would take that without hesitation over the standard 9-5 job even if it pays 4x-5x the salary. The problem is, after 140 credit hours, class tuition is raised by 50%. Once I graduate (I have 1 credit hr left), going back to get a CS degree would be a problem because many universities restrict 2nd bachelor degree earner from coming in and there is no financial aid after the 1st degree. Either way, a CS degree will cause me to go deep into debt and more downtime in school. I have no doubt that I can pick up programming on my own (while moving back into my mother's basement or supporting myself through some part-time job) much faster than through formal classes. After all, most of what I learn from chemistry courses were self-taught, except for the advanced organic graduate courses. But breaking into the freelance arena seems incredibly daunting without any credentials and experience. So in short, I'm completely lost. Maybe with advice from HN I won't make the wrong decision a second time.

stewie2 14y ago
Maybe you can apply for a CS master's program. There are interdiscipline researches, so called computational chemistry. you use computer to simulate chemical reactions, protein structure... I guess a professor in this area is willing to accept students with chemistry background who can also program. But you need to make sure the program is in CS, not in Chem. There is also computational biology. simulating Cell division for example. i guess it's full of chemistry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_chemistry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_chemistry
- thelogos 14y ago
  The thing is, I want to get away from chemistry for now. What I learned after 3 years was, I hate being in the lab. I don't see any future with chemistry that doesn't involve working in a lab. My goggles and spectacles fog up constantly, I'm starving but too paranoid to eat around all these carcinogens/toxic chemicals. All the solvents are seemingly neurotoxic/carcinogenic/mutagenic/etc. and they smell awful. Imagine a lifetime of exposure. The only thing I really love, love, love about chemistry was the theoretical side of organic synthesis. I hate analytical chem and all the repetitive spectra, instrumentations work and lab reports. The salary for a typical bachelor degree holder is too low. I don't need a lot of money to live comfortably, but I have no hope of supporting a family if the typical salary is 40k before tax (ignoring the PhD pyramid scheme for now). At least with freelance programming work, there is an option of doing work offsite and living part of the year out of country (and with much much better life quality than in the US.) I'm trying to think ahead now because when I was younger, I was far too naive and thought that I would dedicate my whole life to science and disregard everything else.
  - retroafroman 14y ago
    Can you switch to chemical engineering? ChemE had the highest starting salaries of all the engineering majors where I went to school. Anecdotal evidence tells me most ChemE majors START somewhere in the $60k+ range.
    - thelogos 14y ago
      My school doesn't have a ChemE program. I tried to transfer to one of those hardcore engineering school without success. From what I've heard from my brother (he's a CivE), engineering is a very hard and stressful career (like most serious jobs really). There is a lot of backstabbing and work politics. He has nightmares about his boss. I don't know if anyone on here can relate but, the freedom to travel and relocate to another country allowed by freelance programming work is very attractive. I immigrated from another country to America when I was in elementary school. At some point during my college career when I was traveling during the summer, I realized that I'll always be miserable stuck in some backwater town even if I made 100k a year.
codeonfire 14y ago
It's not a good idea to ever do a second bachelors unless you're going from non-STEM to STEM. With a masters in CS it will be much easier to get a good software job. You could probably find work without it, but it may suck and you won't be able to leave.
manglav 14y ago
I feel your pain! Except I'm chemical engineering...long story short. Go do a bootcamp, and build a portfolio. That's the the only credentials that matters. If you want a formal CS education, MIT has all of their CS classes on OpenCourseWare. I am confident that you can earn equivalent to what you would be making normally within a year at the most. On a second note, I don't regret doing my technical degree for one second. You have an edge that most people don't, and you can combine it in a unique way. For example, I had the hardest time finding a catalyst I found in a paper. Why? Because they flipped the order Ti(n-Bu-O)4 vs Ti(O-n-Bu). Make a price search engine that searches Sigma-Aldrich/Dow. Design a better chemical species input. Make a javascript simulator for a virtual lab, and license it out to universities. Make your opportunities! Good luck.
- thelogos 14y ago
  I don't regret my degree either. It was paid by financial aid, chemistry knowledge comes in handy on a daily basis. Being able to read to research papers and actually understand some of it opens the door to limitless knowledge. I just wish that access to scientific journals weren't so expensive.
  - manglav 14y ago
    Agreed, I've never understood the system. Publicly fund the research, but not the access. The journal's should be non-profit, and the journal should charge a nominal fee. The rest, the government should cover.
brudgers 14y ago
Western Governor's University is completely online and fully accredited. It is also not for profit, quasi-public, and offers flat rate tuition that runs less than $6000 a year for undergraduate degrees. While their College of Information Technology doesn't offer degrees in computer science: http://www.wgu.edu/online_it_degrees/bachelor_degree_programs http://www.wgu.edu/online_it_degrees/bachelor_degree_program... they don't prohibit students from reading Knuth while chasing a degree they offer. I was wrangled onto the science track from an early age, and chemistry is one among the five majors I declared prior to landing in a philosophy department. I too hated labs but found the ideas fascinating. Of my close friends who graduated with undergraduate science degrees, one is a professor, another is in IT (he got out of asbestos abatement) and the third (the one with a chemistry phd) left the food industry seven years ago to be a stay at home dad. The real nexus between chemistry and computer science is math. And and a chemistry BS is going to give you a pretty damn good background there. A CS degree? Well mainly that will give you an excuse, or permission, to learn about computers. Know that you can give yourself that permission. Also recognize that you may be at a point in life where you need it to come externally.
dsowers 14y ago
Your story is me 9 years ago. I got a degree in biochemistry but my research experience was organic synthesis. I hated the toxic nature of the job and, like you, I only really liked the theoretical aspects of synthesis. Don't go back for another degree. You don't need it. I stumbled around for a while before I discovered web development. I even started grad school in chemistry because I didn't know how else to support myself. But after the first few months of grad school I made a radical decision to take out as much money as I could from my student loan and dropped out. I then spent the next year teaching myself webdev (using the student loan money and credit card debt). Some people would say it's really stupid to take on debt like that but it was the best decision of my life. I started out by making a web design business. That got my feet wet with front end work and provided just enough encouragement and money to keep me going. 6 months later a company saw my work and offered me a job for 55K. Two years later and I am now making 70K. Web development is soooo much better than chemistry. It's extremely fulfilling. Don't get a second degree. Just dive in and do it. Good luck!

pasbesoin 14y ago

I remember at the time I was taking chemistry classes that the average lifespan of chemists was 5 years less than that of the overall population -- or so one of the professors said. This was some time ago, and I gather things have improved, but our labs -- and this was a well-endowed school -- were... far less than optimal. Ventilation in organic chemistry lab consisted of turning all the vent hoods on in the vented compartments lining one side of the room and hoping that that would do some good. Acetone exposure was pretty much non-stop. Toluene also quite common and pervasive. Ethers. Benzene, in one lab I recall. All that said, I would hope -- I guess I shouldn't expect, though? -- that in the graduate environment one would have reliable access to / use of a vented compartment? (I wouldn't want to live directly downwind from that building, though.) Anyway... How do you feel about math? What about computational chemistry? I'm not arguing that you necessarily stay in chemistry. Just whether some of your concerns might be subject -- perhaps with some effort -- to reduction at the grad level. And whether combining programming and computation with chemistry would be an interest. Whether doing the chemistry itself, or making computational tools for chemists. My imagination is that such might be a niche where, if you are good, there is more opportunity. Lots of product engineering going on.

thelogos 14y ago
I certainly believe your professor. It's not really the lifespan but more about the degradation of your body and mind as some of these solvents are quite neurotoxic. I'm not worried much about acetone, but toluene, benzene, hexavalent chromium, polyacrylamide, etc. The argument from chemists have always been, I know X who works at Y job for 3 decades and is still fine. The whole point is these effects take place so slowly that most people won't notice or attribute it to their job. Occupational hazards aren't exclusive to chemistry to be sure, but our salary doesn't nearly justify it. In fact from the amount of education we must go through, our typical work is almost semi-blue collar (not dissing on blue collar work). Fumehoods are practically worthless when people routinely carry things back to their lab bench, leaving a trail of fume behind them. The analytical labs are not as bad as the organic labs. I feel the most sorry for the ta especially. This is much better than a few decades ago when mercury residues were not even a big deal. The graduate environment at our uni is not much better, but it might be at better funded lab. Most of our money goes to the engineering facilities and football stadium. Chemistry has really gone downhill. Organic jobs are getting outsourced. Most of the jobs left are repetitive qc analytical work and very specialized roles with extremely specific requirements.