Qiime skills transferable? Suggestions for career employment, jobs

[Yevgeniy Marusenko]

Question is for expert data scientists/bioinformaticians with experience in various programming languages (SQL, MySQL, C#, C++, Java, etc.).

How can I leverage my Qiime knowledge to learn other coding skills that are relevant in the broader job market? Preferably without getting into advanced computer science and being a developer/engineer...

I'm sure many academics may be in a similar area: I am specifically searching non-academic jobs and non-science roles. For example, conventional marketing analyst or data scientist/analyst in startups or tech companies. I have business experience so I am interested in processing digital marketing data or big data. 

I'm excellent in statistics (SPSS, Excel; multi-variate regressions, clustering, etc.). I published several papers with data from Qiime and R. However, I only learned the basics with project-based and analysis-focused scripts that were not too advanced (send linux shell script to HPC cluster, create scripts with basic functions, run existing script to organize and analyze data, etc.). But it was coding nevertheless so I'm curious which other languages are the most similar that I can learn to better market myself.  

Thanks

[Embriette]

Hi Yevgeniy,

One thing I would suggest is taking a workshop offered by Software Carpentry. Other users of the forum may have some additional advice for you as well.

Thanks!

Embriette

[Yevgeniy Marusenko]

Thanks Embriette,

I've come across that site. Thanks for mentioning it too.

Yev

[Embriette]

Sure-I'm happy to help!

I'll add that it really does depend specifically on what kind of career you want to have. A really good thing to do is to identify the type of job(s) you'd like to have, and talk with people who have those jobs. Find out from those people what skills are absolutely necessary for that career, then aim to gain those skills yourself. Conferences are a great way to connect with people, so you can identify some that may be appropriate for your specific career interests, attend them, and make some connections.

I wish you all the best,

Embriette

[Colin Brislawn]

Hello Yevgeniy,

I think that qiime is pretty specific to microbiology, so any jobs that are directly related to qiime will not be in the general job market or in the non-science roles you mention. 

I'm excellent in statistics (SPSS, Excel; multi-variate regressions, clustering, etc.). I published several papers with data from Qiime and R. 

Now, THAT is marketable, especially because experience in statistics is not something most people can pick up on the job. The field of data visualization is large, diverse, and non-academic and could make great use of your skills in R. Now that you have 'learned the basics', I think you may feel more comfortable doing software development and a course like Software Carpentry could be very helpful.

Good luck. I'm also working to define my future scientific career given that some of my skills are applicable in other non-science fields. It's a good problem to have!

Colin Brislawn