

Ask HN: Any PhDs from non-CS fields switch into Development? - will_work4tears

My sister has her PhD in a Bio-health field, and is currently in the SF area looking for a job with little luck.  She wonders if a &quot;career change&quot; is in order and doesn&#x27;t know if having an unrelated PhD would complicate things when trying to break into the CS world.<p>So has any HNer successfully switched from a unrelated higher education degree and managed a good CS career?
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streptomycin
Depends how "unrelated". I have friends with non-CS PhDs who work as
programmers, but they were all doing largely computational science.

Ultimately if someone has the right skills, they can get a programming job. If
they don't have the right skills but are smart enough, they can acquire the
skills needed to get a job in a reasonable amount of time (months, not years).
But employers won't just assume that someone with a completely unrelated PhD
will be able to pick up programming on the fly.

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will_work4tears
It's pretty unrelated - Virology, but she's pretty sharp and was always
mathmatically inclined. More so than me, and I've been pretty successful in
the programming 'field' (though different versions of "success" are stressed).

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cafard
Of the older generation, I think Dijkstra had a Physics Ph.D., and I know that
the developer and writer P.J. Plauger did.

Years ago I heard of a philosophy instructor who didn't get tenure and so
switched to programming, making a good deal more money. All I remember of this
was that his specialty was Wittgenstein.

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SamReidHughes
Honestly even if she did little to no programming for her PhD, that just means
there is far less of a "PhD stink" than if she had. Plenty of people switch
from non-CS-related degrees, with B.A.'s in things like art history, to a
software development career. All that matters is if they can code.

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will_work4tears
Thanks for the reply. Yeah, she's got no experience, but I did suggest a code
camp, and there are a whole lot of them in the SF area, so she's got that
advantage. Not to mention unemployed, so I suggested just learning on her own
too, and building some portfolio level items to get her in the door.

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PaulHoule
I have a physics PhD; I think I was the only one in my class who did a postdoc
instead of going to Goldman Sachs.

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will_work4tears
Haha, I think she'd be happy with something in the more median range, but her
PhD is less math, more biology (Virology).

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vvijay03
I've know someone with a Physics PhD who is working at Microsoft in
development.

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will_work4tears
Nice. I actually sent her a couple job postings for 23andme (not Microsoft,
but somewhat related to Google). Her PhD was in Virology. Not quite as much as
a fit to CS as Physics though.

