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Comment by JR1427 | Hacker News Reader

I consider myself a generalist (not just professionally, but also in my other diverse interests).

I have a Life Science background (PhD and post-doc), and now work as a dev writing data vis toolkits in JS/TS.

I thought people would be clamouring for a scientist who is also a developer, but it turns out they really are not! They want one thing, or the other.

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I think people very often don't know what they want, and at least for data science there is this weird thinking that exists that you are either a data scientist or a developer. When in reality the good data scientists also have good dev skills.

yes, I also applied for a couple of data science jobs, but that field didn't seem promising so I gave up quickly.

I similarly got a whole data science MS (paid for my by employer) but still remain at my developer job. Sort of a combination of the data science field looking a lot less promising than 3-4 years ago when I started the degree & more upward mobility if I don't change fields now.

People do want scientists who are also devs, but mostly in healthcare related software businesses and data engineering for AI/ML. If you're applying to general "dev" jobs the background won't mean much.

I wasn't thinking of general dev jobs. In fact, when I moved from science to dev, a friendly manager I knew recommended that I take all my previous career stuff off my CV unless it was directly software-related.

In my experience applying for jobs a couple of years ago, pharma and health-tech companies around where I live were not interested in my background. I was rejected by a couple of places allegedly because I didn't have a CS degree, and in one case because I didn't have a bioinformatics degree.

(Obviously, the truth behind such feedback is questionable)

p.s. if you do want a life scientist who is also a dev, let me know! https://www.jake-reich.co.uk/cv

Some computing seems like a foundational skill nowadays, for any science or technology related field. How are you going to do data analysis if you can’t slap together some Python or R or something, right?

I wonder if it is really hard for recruiters and HR people to separate out people like you, from somebody who only has seen programming in a very limited fashion.

Lawyers don’t get extra points for not being illiterate, right?

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