I think there are quite a few of us looking for new roles on here and STW seems to give some good advice amongst all the abusive banter 🙂
So here's a very very short snapshot of my CV -
* BmedSci degree
* I have five years experience in the pharamaceutical industry, mostly in QA - batch review, quality management system experience, deviation investigations, helping to deliver change yaddayadda... some internal audit experience etc etc.
* I gained a graduate certificate in Staitistics this summer, with a decent grade that means I can pretty much go on to study where I would like - I have been offered an automatic place on the masters course at the middling university I did it at - this will be my backup.
* I have gained a little exposure to programming in R, I really really enjoyed this - and used it to start building a crap predicitive model for the pinkbike downhill fantasy league. I actually look forward to going home in the evening and messing around with it.
* I've been going along to the odd event at the Turing Academy, for example - this one
* The discussion from the above lecturer had a lot of tie ins with what I do in my own industry currently. We had a good chat after and agreed on a lot of points, the lecture made me laugh as I have a good friend who works for Babylon healthcare (mentioned) and I wind him up constantly by questioning how appropriate and fit for purpose the regulatory environment is in the healthtech sector. I came away reallyquite happy that someone else was asking similiar questions to me.
* I'm ****ing bored of being a drone, dealing with coprorate ****wits who aren't interested in quality or actually protecting the patient, but their metrics - which they will take credit for when things go right but throw the underlings under the bus if it doesn't. Not that it has happened to me yet, but on a long enough timescale I will eventually make a mistake and I will be the one getting thrown under. The same people then send out quarterly reports announcing that they haven't hit their recruitment targets for the team and ask for input - perhaps they should try checking glassdoor.
* In terms of career advancement in my field, I don't want the responsibility and risk of corporate manslaughter hanging over my head if I become a Qualified Person.
* My friends who are software engineers, work in really interesting varied fields, seemingly with bright and nice people - deepmind, babylon - the culture seems completely different and a lot more collegiate. They also earn substantially more without having to bother climbing the corporate ladder as much.
* I'm fairly overwhelmed as to where I go from here - I have a bunch of vague interests, healthcare, programming, rocking the boat a bit - and yet there are a huge range of directions I could take that in? So I'm just looking for suggestions, to see if there is something I haven't thought of in terms of masters courses and general career direction?
Write an app
Hah. I have thought about something similar, although it's something more complicated than a smartphone app and aimed at industry.
I also don't have faintest idea where to start with it as of yet.
You need to talk to your friends and see if they have any vacancys.
You sound interested in software but nervous to make a leap. Software can be an interesting job but there are also lots of crap software jobs. Also it is still full of management crap. Also I am one of the few people I know who are in a PAYE job at my age (38) and experience (and still programming not moved to magment). Contracting is pretty much required to keep progressing unless you are really happy in your company but for many contracting results in working away Monday to Friday. I should have done it whe. I was young and in attached and saved loads of money. With software I think you need an exit plan as you either end up coasting along in a rut or burned out.
Have you considered a career with the Diplomatic service?
are you more I interested in computing than medicine / healthcare then?
I did the opposite - 12 yrs working in IT for a global mega Corp and now back at uni..
Leftfield choice - you seem interested in stats/numbers and healthcare
Have you thought about HEOR? There always seems to be lots of health economics roles out there.
Most products are now sold on their impact on the healthcare system, rather than the amount they reduce a surrogate marker - this needs robust modelling
Good luck with whatever you choose!
Like stats? Masters in Medical Statistics - available part time at a few places. Then follow up with a position in Clincial Drug Development. Come and analyse patient data. It's the standard way in.
With a BMedSci, you could, however, look at a PhD in Clincial Pharmacology - that would lead you to a more clinical position but it's a high hurdle to enter. Fancy studying abroad? Leiden is the place. But... we have options for more mathematically minded students.
email in profile or find me on LinkedIn
A bit leftfield but I've got a Biomedical Chemistry degree and that led me to working offshore as a lab chemist. Varied work, see the world, earn a very decent wage. I know who to speak to if you're interested.
Being a programmer is easy.
Being a good programmer is really, really hard.
As said, you can get a lot of corporate metric 'you're just here to move the tickets from left to right' stuff as a developer too. It's totally down to the culture of the org.
It also doesn't help that some/a lot of developers don't actually care about the Product aspect to what they're building, just the deep technical stuff they're interested in. This results in developers sat with headphones in all day moving their tickets from left to right across your Jira board.
I work in a fairly healthy and modern org - some of our devs match the above but we've made it a point to hire people who don't fit that profile, even if that means they're not a technically competent as another applicant.
I guess my point is, just do your research and understand what you want before you step into an organisation!
Join Ben Goldacre using programming / stats / medicine to improve the world?
https://ebmdatalab.net/ben-goldacre/
Have you considered making inflammatory statements on topics you know nothing about on the internet? It's quite en vogue.
Register with a few relevant employment agencies, go for coffee with the headhunters and see what they align...
Apply when they find something your not expecting, take it if your knees aren't knocking too much.
Carry on making fantasy MTB apps in spare time. Flog it to fox/sram as a cool spec builder tool
Obvious solution is to become a window cleaner.
As mentioned already are you more I interested in computing than medicine / healthcare?
If the former and with your stats/R training that gets you on the track to becoming a Data Scientist outside of medicine, but I'm sure there are also DS roles in that field. Big bucks if that's interesting to you but it also means you will probably end up in a large corp.
Most biggish companies either have or are recruiting data scientists - I work with utilities companies and they're all building their teams in this area, or hiring small consultancies to help them.
One of the keys to successful ML and predictive models is understanding the context and what's driving the predictions. With your background and interest, data science in some medical/pharma field? Big corporate or smaller consultancy?
Understanding the industry/context and the data science would be pretty valuable I'd have thought. Lots of people with one side but few with both.
Don't worry about not fitting the brief given in job adverts exactly - if it's a company that you think you could help, apply to something close to what you could do. If you have friends in areas you'd like to work, get them to help you find something - a lot of recruitment is through personal recommendations, e.g. Babylon have active adverts on LinkedIn for Data Science people.
I only met about 20% of the role description for the job I'm doing (Microsoft Technology Strategist), but there were two people in the team who recommended me.
It’s great that you have a variety of options and areas that excite you. It seems as if there is an element to the intrinsic motivation that drives you too, along with the cultural aspect of the company along with decent money.
If you imagine yourself happy, inspired and engaged by your work in 5 years time:
- what sort environment are you in?
- what sort of people are you working with?
- what do the people around you say about you?
Can you afford what you want to do?
What impact does your choice have on other people?
If you're after cold hard cash after your years in the BioMed sector, then head into credit risk modelling with your stats quali.
Take any steps OP?
For hands-on modelling jobs I reckon you'd need to exploit your experience/domain expertise/contacts in pharma. With only "a little exposure to R" technical competition against younger PhDs in a new field will be tough.
Are you able to build a simple PoC for your idea in the winter evenings? or even share share any details of your idea here? Some STW'er might be willing to contribute dev time or cash for a killer idea! Possibly we should have an STW dragons' den 🙂
Pet projects are nice interview fodder and I do pay attention to them when hiring as they can be a good indication of what the person is actually interested in/motivated by.
head into credit risk modelling
and
* I’m * bored of being a drone, dealing with coprorate * who aren’t interested in quality
don't sound a good fit...
Data science, Data modelling, AI is where I'd be going if in your shoes, looking for cool tech companies that sell products utilising those skills; likely to be nice environments, flexible working, perks etc. Or go client side and help them deal with type of companies mentioned above.
At about your age I quit a scientific job, shitty rented accomodation, an obsessive hobby and girlfriend, and got a job on a campsite.
I’m * bored of being a drone, dealing with coprorate *
Bumbling around the campsite cleaning bogs and fixing water heaters I decided to learn a few things that would help with becoming my own boss. It took a few years but it all worked out pretty well.
What would you do if you forgot about things medical and went with your others skills ?
Come work in the instrumentation industry, supporting drug development with cutting edge measurement techniques, and plenty of opportunity to apply your experience while developing software? Drop me a PM if that sounds interesting
Funnily enough I sat next to a girl at a concert last week who was a data analyst with a tech company in Barcelona. The Spanish equivalent of gumtree, she said there's loads of work in that field, the office sounds completely different to any office I ever worked in.
Lots of really good information and advice but thens there’s always at least one twit who spoils it.
This forum is full of orsehales.
You’ve read some of raybanwombles posts then? 😉
Drug sales on the dark web?
Be careful about believing the hype about software development and creativity.
Some believe the hype about being in a free thinking, boundary pushing, creative state and believe they truly have the freedom to fail fast, iterate their way to success and being on constant journeys of discovery... but 99.9% of software engineering jobs are modifying bog stand, forms based platforms for any old corporate organisation.
Also very few organisations truly have flat structures, even start-ups are riddled with power and conflict. People taking credit for things they didn't do etc.
Some organisations may be closer to what you are looking for... but most wont be.
I'd just be careful before jumping... grass, greener etc.
If you want to be still active in your 70s, pick a job where your arse isn't glued to a seat.
jam bo^^^ saves me saying it.
Will ray do any racial profiling of potential new employer; see his posts on General Election 2019 thread for a flavour.
He/she may be keyboard warrior but attitude and content of posts would concern potential employer.