Entering edit mode
6.2 years ago
scottschu97
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20
Hi!
I am currently an undergraduate student in the U.S. and I am considering a career working in bioinformatics. I am a Biology major but I love to program and have taught myself R and a little bit of a few other languages. I am pretty proficient in R as my research is conducted in R.
For people who currently work in the field, what do you like about the job and what do you dislike?
Also, If a person has pretty reputable programming knowledge, is there need to get a graduate degree?
Thank you!
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To find an industry job, no. Keep in mind that your long term job prospects may be limited in that case. A graduate degree would get you climbing the corporate ladder quickly or you could move sideways into marketing etc over time. In academia without a graduate degree you would definitely run into some wall sooner than later.
To address the last question first: Programming skills are not worth much without some domain-specific knowledge. The latter is what is documented by getting a degree so unless you manage to get an outstanding reputation as a knowledgeable person in some area, it would be best to get a degree.
There is quite a variety of bioinformatics jobs out there so maybe you could precise what kind of job you have in mind.
If you get into bioinformatics, you may end up like me, i.e., where there is so much interesting and diverse data to analyse such that you don't even want (or need) a permanent job.
The field needs more bioinformaticians with PhD-level skills.