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My employer has decided that 15 years at the same desk is enough. I've been told to pack my bags and take a vacation. Don't cry for me, they are taking pretty good care of me (I also have a sugar momma), but I am being bumped from my comfortable world, insulated from all the ills that plague society.

As much as I want to sit and do chores (or a bucket list) I am going to need a job. The local (legal) market for experienced organic chemists is next to nill,, and I'm ready to move on to new challenges. My 1-2 year plan is to learn some programming skills and get a job doing something software related. I'm pretty sure "computer stuff" is something that *many* in the club know a bit about. If anyone wants to let me know any shortcuts for jump starting my career, I'm all ears.

For now, I'm occupying my time with an online programming certificate through NC State (and supplementing with other programming practice). I've been eyeing masters degree programs (ECU has a decent online software engineering masters), but to be honest, I'd really love to get a job and have the new employer help pay for that masters. I know that building a programming/tech portfolio is a great resume builder, so I'm starting on that, but I really do need to learn more first. It's hard to build anything without tools.

Are there any companies that are willing to take a flyer on someone who has a track record of success in an unrelated (but technical) field, so long as they can demonstrate an ability to learn quickly?

Any big tips for writing a job-hop resume?

Does anyone feel like they should try and talk me out of this career path (I would do my darnedest to talk someone out of organic chemistry)?

Damn Scott, that sucks dude.... There's plenty of IT related schools that I hear of via the radio and I'm sure Wake Tech would offer some certificates. I did my cutover back in the late 90's from engineering to IT myself.

I hear there's a shortage of over the road truckers, so that might be an option...

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Rodney

'08 Bullitt mustang, CAM 7
Autox VP '09-'10, President '11-'12, interim President 2nd half of ‘14
proud recipient of the Bowie Grey service award '12
Now just a guy driving a mustang....

Random thoughts, considering I don't know exactly what your strengths are from your experience:

- You've been a professional for 15 years, find something to highlight and build off of, even if you're heading in a new direction. What basic job skills are you good at? Project management? Analysis? Leading teams?
- If you want to go the IT route, if it was me, I would not just go for coding / programming, as you'd be competing with offshore resources and frankly low pay (see #1)
- I dunno about other companies, but IBM is experiencing a major shortage in Designer skills -- Graphics, UI/UX, User Research. It's still potentially an entry level position, but one that needs leadership a lot more than hardcore IT skills (in my experience, a good Design lead who actually knows how to drive initiatives and work with teams can go a lot further than a good Dev lead)
- Take the strengthsfinders quiz and/or myers-briggs and/or others to help characterize yourself
- Hire a career coach. They are worth it. Let me know if you need a recommendation!

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Mike Whitney
whit32@gmail.com, 919-454-5445
V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1

The first thing that jumped into my mind was your mention of getting a masters degree. I am not knocking higher education at all, and I hate to paint topics like this with a wide brush but... I suspect getting your masters is not going to be a good investment. In some esoteric parts of IT a masters or second degree might help (A statistics degree for Data Science comes to mind), but overall as someone who has interviewed more people than I can even begin to remember, it just doesn't do much for you IMHO. I am sure someone who just spent a few years getting their masters in Computer Science is going to disagree with me.

Mike's concerns about straight up coding, etc. resonates with me. I view those who focus just on that part of IT as less of a career choice and more of a lifestyle choice (if that makes sense). Its sort of like being a teacher. You probably are not doing it for the money (even if being a programmer pays a lot more than being a teacher). I would think hard about what parts of your current job you enjoy (I assume it is more than just pure chemistry). It might help figure out what is next. There is a wide array of jobs in the general "IT" industry that go beyond programming.

Richard

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Richard Casto
1972 Porsche 914
2013 Honda Fit Sport
2015 Honda Fit EX
http://motorsport.zyyz.com
Money can't buy happiness, but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Porsche than a Kia.

Have you thought about infrastructure? My brother did SW for Adobe (he's subsequently been promoted to management, so he no longer does anything useful) and I went in to network infrastructure design and configuration. It's still mashing away at a keyboard programming stuff, but you get to build networks and feel more like an engineer instead of a dirty, filthy, diseased, code monkey (no offense intended to all of the dirty, filthy, diseased code monkeys out there).

I did my training at home with some books and some routers/switches/servers that I bought off of eBay, and it took about a year to get the enterprise industry certification that got me my current position making the big bucks, jet-setting around the world, and fraternizing with supermodels, but I got a mediocre job almost immediately after I started studying. Any more, with routers and servers virtualized, I could get most of my training done with my laptop.

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"Every ship is a minesweeper, once."

In my experience after working for two large industrial manuafacturers I wouldn't count on that. Educational benefits have been scaled back to near zero in my current and last job.

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2001 Honda S2000 - SOLD
2012 Boss 302
2003 BMW 330i

Well, I didn't know I was interviewing yet I'm really good at organic chemistry. I routinely manage complex problems and data sets. I'm decent with math (I can do most of it, I can understand most of it too, but no, I won't likely be the one inventing a search algorithm that works on log n time scale).

I do plenty of data analysis but not much leadership (in the management sense), and to be honest not much desire to manage others. Y'all had me as club president, all of you know I'm an asshole. Thus far, I have enjoyed doing coding (yeah, it was just intro to Java at NCSU). It's a lot like chemistry in a way. You move lots of electrons around and get to create new things, often seeing immediate results. Today's work is the foundation for tomorrow's work. I like that.

So, the first thing I'd have to ask is. "Have you sat down in front of a computer and tried to code something for an entire day?" Even if it is something simple like writing HTML (yes I know what I just did there). I'm highly technical and enjoy programming in fits and spurts, but being a full time 40hr/week developer is my personal vision of hell. I don't mind working on things that I can finish in a few days or a week, but long drawn out programming on the same project for an extended time fiercely drains me.

If you're serious about getting into software the #1 thing that I would recommend you doing is to start helping Carlton with the autocross timing project as soon as you can start writing useful code. Having real world identifiable experience is invaluable. With the open source nature of the project they'll be able to see what your work looks like as well. Even before then, write small little things to automate tasks you do, or just reimplement things that exist just to prove you can do it.

I'd also second Roger's comment on getting into infrastructure. Software is very trendy at the moment, everyone wants to write the next greatest app or website. We've had a hell of a time hiring competent sysadmins and network engineers.

With that said, now's the time to skew your education towards data science if it sounds interesting to you. Big data / SQL / NoSQL / Hadoop / Analytics / insert buzzword of the month. Experience and training in those areas means lots of opportunities.

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Mike Whitney
whit32@gmail.com, 919-454-5445
V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1

Software telephony switching is also doing very well. The people who can set up and configure big soft switches are doing great, especially given the new acceptance of non-TDM telephony infrastructure. You have all of the same programming parameters of a traditional digital switch, but it's all virtualized and run over a layer 3 infrastructure. I'm doing a bit of that at work, but I'm nowhere near enterprise-level at it.

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"Every ship is a minesweeper, once."

You're "military grade"(tm)

(which really just means, rather hard to damage when thrown out a plane)

1. I know it sounds cliche, but good people like you always land on their feet.

2. A friend of mine with chemistry background just left his job doing certification, QA, or something like that, with a consulting firm. There could be travel involved (why he quit for lower paying job with Patheon here in town) but currently we was working at Purdue (?) in Durham. I would be glad to get some contact info if you are interested.

3. Is there technology vocabulary for dummies web site so I can have some fricken idea what you guys are talking about?

4. I will give your referral for a BRZ test driver.

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2002 MCS, 2003 MCS Track Rat, 2003 Generic White Yukon, 2003 BMWk1200rs, 1973 CB350F, 02 996. 08 Cayenne Turbo
http://www.clinehallagency.com

That's all right, I still look up half of the words and acronyms too.

Some good ideas so far, thanks for the contributions.

Big data = interesting.

Coding all day in a cubical = interesting for a while (got to walk before I can run). If I'm at a big company, there is no doubt that the monotony of coding all day will be broken up by the monotony of meetings.

I'm old, I don't want to be a gaming developer (seems most of the TA's at State are in a gaming program).

I've done some database work in the past. Pretty simple things (Filemaker Pro), but I enjoyed that (both interface and backend stuff). I set up an inventory system for my group in grad school (my advisor hated that I did that rather than chemistry, I should have taken the hint back then). I dealt with a lot of the normal issues. Searching, entering new chemicals, deleting the old ones, etc. Filemaker would blow up if you did a search and returned the null set (people don't use software with errors) so I programmed around that (just create dummy records then delete them when you are done).

Later I used Filemaker to track autocross season points. I was very proud of my nested if/then statement that dropped the worst two events when calculating the final total (yeah, Filemaker couldn't do that). I have automated a few things on the Mac with AppleScript (usually modifying someone else's work).

So this is the direction I working on pushing myself into. It is a growth area for sure. It is also an area that if you wanted to invest in more formal education that it likely would be a good investment. NC State actually is one of the bigger places for this nationally...

http://analytics.ncsu.edu/

I considered their masters program recently, but it is a full time thing and can't be done in the evenings (last time I checked). However I think that program might be hard to get into? If you want to get a taste for it (see if it is something you would enjoy) without significant commitment I would suggest this...

https://www.coursera.org/specialization ... ascience/1

I don't know if you have any experience with MOOCs, but while this specialization course from Coursera shows a ~$500 fee, you can take those classes without paying (you just don't get a certificate once done). I am currently working my way through that course at the moment and have taken some related Coursera stuff in the past. Its a good way to learn at your own pace.

Also IMHO if you were to go down the data scientist route that your existing pharma industry knowledge would be where to focus. In short, use that existing domain knowledge to your advantage. You may end up right back within the same industry you have been in for the past 15 years, but just in a slightly different position.

Richard

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Richard Casto
1972 Porsche 914
2013 Honda Fit Sport
2015 Honda Fit EX
http://motorsport.zyyz.com
Money can't buy happiness, but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Porsche than a Kia.

My plan (before getting laid off) was to try and transition into a data role at Pfizer. I don't mind ending up where I started.

As an added bonus I've got a $5000 stipend for retraining. That will certainly help cover some courses. I am in a position where full time school would be inconvenient, but not a deal breaker. I prefer not to be unemployed for 2 years, but not impossible.