

Ask HN: How can I transition from lab tech to web developer? - chimayale

This is my first time posting on here, but I've been reading Hacker News for quite a while. I'm a bit lost in my career right now and would love some advice, ideally from others that have been in a similar situation.<p>I did my undergrad in chemistry and graduated 7 years ago. Even though I went to a really prestigious college, I unfortunately had a few bad semesters and my GPA was never able to recuperate. As a reaction to this, I think I sort of became quite disillusioned with work in general and have been stuck in an entry level job since my field weighs academic success pretty heavily.<p>Fortunately for me, I was exposed to R about a year or two ago and have become really interested in programming since then. I've spent the last year and a half obsessively programming and learning as much as I possibly can and am very confident with my programming skills at this point.<p>I've contributed a couple R packages, did some front-end programming for work, and have made a few web apps for friends. But I feel kinda stuck. How can I make that leap into a full-time web developer position?
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polyfractal
I'm going through a similar transition (academic neuroscience -> freelance
developer). Can't offer any solid advice since I'm still in the midst of it
myself, but I did want to say congrats on getting out of academic science.

I'm not sure how similar chemistry is to biology. But if it is similar, good
job getting off the sinking ship. Acadamia is a good fit for about 10% of the
people in it. The rest of us are kept in by guilt, stubbornness, and a
misplaced sense of duty/honor.

~~~
kls
I would look to how I can leverage the two, I know there is a lot of open
source in these fields and that does not create a great opportunity for direct
payment for your development efforts but their are ways to leverage your
knowledge of the field and development skills. For example, if your industry
relies on aggregating a lot of public data, you may be able to build a company
that designed tools that collect that data, and then sell the refined data to
researcher.

Or you can always develop out a niche site that caters to that research, where
individuals in the industry can get relevant news about the industry.

You can contact researchers in the field and see if they need development
services for custom applications and set up a freelancing shop that supports
several researcher.

To me there should be a way to combine to two, to compete in a market that you
have already built value in. I am not disparaging web development, a lot of
people will say web developers are a dime a dozen, but the reality is good
developers are probably one of the rarest skill-sets on the planet and therein
lies the problem, to become a skilled web developer takes years, I would say
almost a decade of experience, because the web is always changing, until you
have seen it change a few times, you have not mastered the skills of
adaptation. Which are requisite for future-proofing applications.

I am getting off on a tangent, but the point is make sure you are ready to
start over, because switching oars now means beginning the assent up river
again, for some industries their is no choice, just make sure you have looked
at all the options in yours, before you decide it is one that there truly is
no choice.

~~~
jollyjerry
+1 on finding a way to leverage both fields. I've only heard of R and never
used it, but I'm sure there are domains where it's the perfect tool for the
job. You could potentially freelance to make some side income as well.

I think it's still a good idea to learn web development in general. It's such
an interoperable medium. It's dense on the first read, but I recommend
skimming RFC2616 (<http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt>) the HTTP protocol. It
won't teach you to program any specific language or framework, but it's a
great way to get a feel for all the pieces involved for a web app.

After that, I recommend taking baby steps and tackling each piece of the
puzzle individually. Learn some html/css, build a portfolio page. Then take on
some javascript and add some dynamic elements. Then add a backend for dynamic
elements you compute server side. For learning coding, nothing beats practice.
To improve, write something that solves you own problem, but also look for how
other people implemented the same thing (github's a great place to see well
maintained and well factored code)

Best of luck!

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helen842000
Are you working on building a portfolio?

I'd seriously only consider adding your best work into it, even if that's only
a handful of things. I've seen people that moving into a new industry, feel
they lack experience & add everything they've ever done into their portfolio.

A solid portfolio will get you into a web dev role faster than any academic
results.

Build up a range of work, ideally from others requirements freelance work etc.
While it's great to build apps from your own ideas, in a role you'll have to
follow, interpret and understand the sometimes crazy requirements of others.

Perhaps do a few Elance jobs, offer local businesses or HN even.

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angdis
R is very much in demand these days. You definitely will want to leverage that
skillset/experience.

Focusing on being a "web developer" will merely put you in a ocean of millions
of qualified candidates, but being a web-dev who can do things like data-
analysis, perhaps info-visualization, and who is conversant in scientific
domains can give you a significant edge.

~~~
chimayale
I was thinking the same thing, but from what I can tell there seems to be
significantly more opportunities for a web-dev rather than someone that
specializes in R. Or I might just be looking in the wrong places...

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noahc
No, you're looking in the right places if you're finding R related jobs.

Here's the thing: Only you can do the the R jobs, all the web developers can
do the webdev stuff.

I'm sure you're awesome. Don't sell your self short and chase webdev jobs that
I can pay someone over seas 15k a year to do. Focus on the R stuff, but you're
going to have to push a little hard and find a better fit.

When every key fits a lock the key isn't worth much. When you're one of the
few keys that fit the lock, you're worth a lot to the right lock owner.

~~~
chimayale
Great advice. The R stuff is definitely an ideal route since I already have
some stats and data analysis experience. At this point it's just a matter of
getting a bit more familiar with the industry and figuring how to find these
types of jobs.

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c_t_montgomery
Drown yourself in code (writing and reading) and make things. Even if they are
simple, or insecure, or very, very inefficient. Just make them. That
experience alone will help you get better.

To more specifically answer your question - find something that's bothering
you, and make a web-app that tries to fix it.

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danso
Develop a nice, one pager app. On anything of interest.

It's hard to realize this until you start doing small projects, but as a
programmer, you have an ability to gather and analyze data in a way that 20
non-programmers won't be able to do...not just physically, but even conceive
of the same ideas.

So take an interesting set of data, write a script that converts it to an
interesting HTML chart, and you'll be surprised at how much it'll amaze
people. I hate to use this example because it's kind of ugly, but this simple
map I made of New York museums's free hours got a lot of attention for just
being simple aggregation (and a Ruby script to generate the sloppy HTML)

<http://iheartnymuseums.com/>

