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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I went a Electrical Engineering program to doing Computer Science full time and I agree with the other poster who says that you should definitely apply for a Masters in C.S. Try to make your application at least thematically related to Chemistry. Once you get into a program, you generally have more latitude in deciding what courses you want to take. I knew a few people who used to work in computational chemistry/aeronautics and I am fairly sure they spend all their time in computer labs (as research assistants). The nature of a good masters program is that you will have tons of courses that can count towards your credits and if you are ready to work your ass off (100 hours a week average), you can come out with as good a C.S. background as anyone.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A lot of jobs have a lot of backstabbing and work politics. It's really about the company you join and its culture, and to some extent the team.

ChemE is pretty desirable, either in production plants or R&D. You're not always out in a backwater town--I believe the term is "near population centers." Sure you might have a 30 minute commute, but you get paid pretty well. I have ChemE friends working in Texas (multiple cities), Greenville (SC), Michigan (forget which city), and Baton Rouge (LA).

You could also work on an oil rig and do a rotation. They pay pretty highly, then you get a bunch of time off.

Regarding the salaries -- Yes 60K for a bachelor's was my school's average B.S. starting salary.

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_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.

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!

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.