Smart Money Picks 10 Rising Careers

jonathanjo writes "Smart Money announces the ten hot jobs they see rising in the next decade. Among them, many familiar to slashdotters (wireless engineer) and several of those are of dubious ethical value (data miner, IP lawyer). "Forensic Accountant" even made accounting sound cool! But why oh why did I give up on being an Adventure Travel Guide to be a web designer? D'ohh!"

Comments

"Dubious Ethical Value"

[CommunistTroll]

IP Lawyer...

Sheesh, enough with the lawyer bashing already.

Lawyers are just people like the rest of us with a job to do - sometimes their clients are wrong, sometimes right.

Next time you're up against the RIAA in court, I'd like to see you decline a lawyer on the grounds that the job is of "dubious ethical value".

I know it's oh so trendy to constantly attack the legal profession, but really. Grow up.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I'd represent myself in a non-criminal case. And I'd certainly try to avoid having to do even that.

Lawyers that represent clients in the wrong, are in the wrong themselves. No excuses.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Xerithane]

Same thing with data mining. Data mining does not always have to do with someone finding your data. Writing data mining software is a lot of fun, at least from my experience and my opinion. Granted, I've only done it with DNA sequences and server farm metrics. But it really is fun to see what type of equations you can come up with to calculate various metrics.

I know it's oh so trendy to constantly attack the legal profession, but really. Grow up.
Do you remember where you are at? This is slashdot.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[CommunistTroll]

Lawyers that represent clients in the wrong, are in the wrong themselves. No excuses.

Who decides that the client is in the wrong? I would prefer to have a lawyer defend me in court to the best of his or her ability and have the judge decide whether I am guilty then be convicted by default because no lawyer will touch my case.

Look up the Cab Rank Rule at your nearest Bar Association, then read through history of lawyers defending people who everyone knew were guilty; until the trial, that is.

Until a judge and a jury of peers convicts me, I am entitled to a presumption of innocence and legal representation.

Don't forget the legal representation bit.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Anonymous Coward]

Writing data mining software is a lot of fun, at least from my experience and my opinion. Granted, I've only done it with DNA sequences and server farm metrics...

...so my idea of "fun" may be different from yours? ;)

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Chump1422]

Lawyers that represent clients in the wrong, are in the wrong themselves. No excuses.

Yeah, nobody deserves to have someone looking out for their rights. While almost all litigators take their adversarial role too far and play to win rather than find justice, everyone needs to have an advocate. Even the guilty and evil. Without that, the system is corrupt.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[ObviousGuy]

When you say, "Lawyers that represent clients in the wrong, are in the wrong themselves," do you really mean, "The guilty have no right to a fair trial"?

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it's oh so trendy to constantly attack the legal profession, but really. Grow up.

Do you remember where you are at? This is slashdot. Hehe, so true. So true.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Soko]

IP Lawyer...
Sheesh, enough with the lawyer bashing already.

What? He's dead already? Okey dokie... *Puts down sledge*

(Sorry - that one was just hanging there. I had to. ;^])

Lawyers are just people like the rest of us with a job to do - sometimes their clients are wrong, sometimes right.

I'm sensitive to a lawyers plight - at times they have to defend the undefensable, and do a good job of it. That being said, I'd rather they try to get the minimum penalty for thier clients when they know they're guilty, rather than allow criminal behaviour to go un-punished. Justice and all that.

Next time you're up against the RIAA in court, I'd like to see you decline a lawyer on the grounds that the job is of "dubious ethical value".

As long as my attourney is in it to prove my point, not just take my money, he's not of "dubious ethical value" at all. That goes for the one on the other side of the argument. Anyone who believes in thier cause and is willing to argue with reason it's merits, is not of questionalble character. The ones that just prolong trials in order to get thier new yacht are.

I know it's oh so trendy to constantly attack the legal profession, but really. Grow up.

When I see that the legal profession is only interested in justice, and not money and power, I'll put down the sledge, mmmmkay?

Soko

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

In a criminal case, you do deserve a fair trial, and a fair defense.

But if you think even 10% of civil cases have any merit whatsoever, I don't even know what to say.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Funny, why is it that so many judgments end up wrong, if they're only looking out for people's rights?

Worse, why does it cost so much money when the judgment does end up "right", and it was painfully obvious that it was so, all along?

And by far, the worst, if lawyers are just trying to protect people from injustice, why are the vast majority of them apathetic, weaselly, or just plain evil?

Bonus Question: Of everyone in elected state or federal office in the US, how many hold license to practice law? (In percentage).

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Chump1422]

To points 1 and 2: The system isn't perfect. Still, how else do you protect the rights of both parties without giving htem both advocates?

As for 3, you're just plain wrong.

And 4 is irrelevant.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I'm generally speaking about civil court. I'm willing to waste more of my tax money to make sure we aren't executing innocents, or allowing the guilty to go free.

The litigious don't have a right to million dollar trials, just so they can ream someone else for the sake of malice.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I'm not sure how to best protect the rights of both.

I also believe that with every right, there is, or at least should be, a duty. People who ignore that duty, but ask for the "right" should be be considered very suspect, if not dismissed outright.

Concerning point 3, I'm not wrong. Though I'd love to be proven so.

Don't ignore point #4, it is by far the most relevant of all, not to mention the easiest to get statistics for. Think about it, if lawyers have a grave responsibility to be ethical, then those who become politicians should have an even greater burden. And yet, I don't think many would disagree, they are often the very lawyers who generate the most (quite justified too) contempt. Coincidence? Or do I have the causal relationship backwards?

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[BrookHarty]

Ever had to datamine just to understand someones database?
Nothing like that nice 100gig DB turning into a few TBs over a few years, lots work to be done.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Xerithane]

I take fun jobs, I'd rather work at some manual laborist position instead of taking a job like that. Personal choices though.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[GlassHeart]

I'd rather [lawyers] try to get the minimum penalty for thier clients when they know they're guilty, rather than allow criminal behaviour to go un-punished. Justice and all that.

In many judicial systems, the jury has the main responsibility of determining guilt, based on their evaluation of permissible evidence. Your idea is flawed at least in the following ways:

First, you are replacing the judgement of a dozen jurors with the judgement of one or two lawyers. This creates more room for prejudice of all sorts, and essentially makes it impossible to prosecute a lawyer who pleads his client to a more severe punishment than necessary. The lawyer just has to say: "I honestly thought he was guilty."

Second, these lawyers are permitted to see a range of evidence - including illegally obtained evidence - that will color their judgement. Jurors are simply not told about these illegal evidence, and so it will taint them less.

Third, it will greatly reduce the things that a client tells the lawyer, because they will fear what the lawyer might think. This is detrimental to justice because some of these facts might actually exonerate the client.

For this and other reasons, lawyers must be required to act entirely on their client's best interests, not on their personal judgement of the client's guilt or innocense.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Omerna]

I doubt it's possible to be a GOOD litigator and not play to win. It's a mindset that you need to have in order to be successful. For instance, almost all surgeons are extremely confident, almost arrogant, in their abilities- not just medical abilities, but in everything they do. (I've seen studies showing that, it's not saying you have to be arrogant to be a good surgeon, just that surgeons are, for the most part, very confident people).

Anyway, you could argue that it's the same thing with litigators, that if the "play to win" mindset isn't there than they're in the wrong line of work. (And probably don't get a whole ton of business, especially not mine if I'm guilty or innocent).

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Goldsmith]

My parents are both lawyers.
My brother is studying to be a lawyer.
My roomate is going to law school next year (wants to do IP).
I have innumerable other friends and aquantainces who want to be lawyers.

The common thread between them all?
The main reason they want to practice law is to make money.

I have yet to meet someone who wants to practice law simply to help people. So, when the legal profession gets a soul, I'll be there to back them up. Until then, I reserve the right to lawyer bash (I like my friends so I keep it to a respectable minimum... about the same abount of flak they give me for studying physics).

My lawyer bashing tends to be along the lines that in an ideal society we wouldn't need lawyers (but with a fat chance of us ever developing an ideal society), and that historically speaking, law is an exclusive field, developed in England to maintain the monopoly of the government by the upper class.

They usually point out then that with my extra two years of graduate school, I will be making all of negative $30,000 compared to them by that time.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[_ph1ux_]

"Next time you're up against the RIAA in court, I'd like to see you decline a lawyer on the grounds that the job is of "dubious ethical value"

Thats precisely the reason why we bash them. They have made the laws and the system so convoluted and BS - that we MUST have them in court to defend against what in common speak would be a BS frivolous suit. Lawyers suck ass period - regardless of how much you need them when you get to court. Courts should be for real people to put up a real case - and win if they are correct. Not a place to have each side see who has the most money to hire the better weasel. (O.J. Simpson - Ramsey ad infintum)

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if my lawyer insisted on doing 'slimy' things, he or she would get fired on the spot.

Sure, there's good lawyers. There's also good MSCE's. The problem is, both of you work in fields that are overflowing with garbage.

(Maybe we should bring in some sanitation engineers.)

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[the eric conspiracy]

Lawyers that represent clients in the wrong, are in the wrong themselves. No excuses.

There is an unfortunate level of ignorance present on slashdot regarding the role of a lawyer in society. The fact of the matter is that it is the job of a lawyer to be an advocate, that is to put forward the interests of his client. His opponent likewise has the same job. It is up to the judiciary and legal system to establish the guidelines for deciding the right and wrong in a case, NOT the lawyer. It is by this system that an individual gets his voice heard.

Perhaps many lawyers defend causes that you don't like, however the fact of the matter is that without this tension in the advesarial process we have for our legal system both sides of the case would not get fairly heard.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Darkforge]

> > IP Lawyer...
> Sheesh, enough with the lawyer bashing already.

Speaking as somebody who's decided not to become an IP lawyer precisely *because* this profession is of dubious ethical value, I'd like to point out that you've missed the point entirely.

Being a lawyer isn't, in itself, morally dubious. But defending copyrights and patents under current US law IS of questionable moral value. (Never call it "intellectual property", as that term confuses the issues.)

I double majored in Biomedical Engineering and Philosophy in college, but no matter how "hot" the job might be, you couldn't give me enough money to do what I'd have to do as a patent lawyer in my field. I'd have to try to prevent companies from offering cheap alternatives that the poor could afford. I'd have to prevent research on the grounds that licensing fees weren't paid. I'd have to attack companies as part of a business model in which extortionary patents are the main sources of income.

If I worked as a "copyright" lawyer, just to get paid as much as I get paid as an engineer right now, I'd have to argue that my rich clients deserve money from anyone who challenges the powers they bought from Congress; I'd have to try to move more money into their hands because Republicans can't understand the difference between Communism and the public domain and because Democrats are watching out for their good friends and patrons in Hollywood.

As this kind of lawyer, I would never *make* money; I would only move money from one person to another.

I'm open-minded enough to see that there are clear arguments against my views, mostly grounded in the semantics of "incentives." Some of those arguments may be right. But I think it'd take a closed-minded and exceptionally blinkered point of view to fail to see that being an "IP lawyer" is, indeed, of dubious ethical value.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[notaspy]

A couple points.

1) The vast majority of IP attorneys do NOT get involved in litigation. They advise their clients/employers on the patentability of their r & d efforts, try to get them useful (valid and enforceable) patents on their inventions, and help guide their r & d in lucrative directions.

2) Most of these IP attorneys are just as frustrated and disgusted with the problems with the USPTO. If the PTO is going to grant idiotic patents, and our clients want them, many of us either won't or can't refuse out of principle. I can and do, but I'm also pretty damn poor for an IP attorney. On the other hand, I sleep very well at night.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[cybermage]

I have yet to meet someone who wants to practice law simply to help people.

Hi. Now you have. After seeing the DMCA, I decided to return to school and become a lawyer. When I graduate, I intend to work as a public defender and donate time to OSS causes. Simple reason: While ignorance of the law continues to be no excuse, understanding the law is becoming impossible.

Someone needs to protect people from government/business abuse of the law. I figure I can do more from within the system than from outside.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[leviramsey]

Not a place to have each side see who has the most money to hire the better weasel. (O.J. Simpson - Ramsey ad infintum)

How dare you tar me with the OJ brush?!

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The problem is not when a lawyer represents a client in the wrong - it is when a lawyer advises a client to make a choice that is not clearly the best possible choice, but has the side-effect of benefiting the lawyer. You see this kind of behaviour in situations like the Sony vs the Aibo-fan website. You can imagine that when asked for advice on how to "deal" with that problem, he was all, "threaten litigation and if it that doesn't work, litigate" when some sort of non-confrontational, work-to-a-mutual-solution approach would serve everyone, except the lawyer, better in the long run.

In case it isn't obvious (and I guess it really isn't) there is more than one way that a lawyer in a situation like the above benefits by urging a course of litigation vs negotiation - litigation is more expensive than negotiation and requires more lawyers on all three sides (the court itself is the third side). By urging litigation, the in-house lawyer justifies the budget for the legal counsel division and helps out his "brother" lawyers that may end working as the defense. He also benefits in the long-term by establishing a precedent for such cases being determined through litigation rather than cooperation. So, not only does he gain short-term by getting more billable hours, but the "world" comes to accept that lawyers need to be involved in similar disputes for the rest of time and thus he gets job-security for him and his brethren.

Now, I don't know if that Aibo case specifically was the result of an overly litigious lawyer, but we hear about these things happening all the time - Adobe vs the Russian guy, etc, etc. And you can just tell by the feel of stories that there are lawyers in the background raking it in at the cost to our society in general.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Issue9mm]

Agreed... further, it is not a lawyer's job or duty to "get his client off", rather, to provide that client the best possible defense.

The best possible defense in some cases may get the client off, guilty or not, and in other cases, it might reduce their sentence, guilty or not. In other cases it may get them convicted, guilty or not, but that's another matter altogether.

In my best estimation, lawyers _want_ to win, and so, tend to do a good job in defending their clients, which is what they're paid to do. Again though, they're not paid to win, just to put up the best possible defense.

-9mm-

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Issue9mm]

Here here. Congrats to you.

Honestly, I'm considering it myself. With a highly technical background, I'm a shoe-in for tech IP law, except that I haven't any law background or schooling behind me yet.

That said, I have two friends who are in law because they wanted to change the world, and make it a better place. I'm sure the money doesn't hurt, but at least one of the friends in question is barely making a living. He pays the bills and feeds his kids, but he's driving around in an 86 Buick Century, and his wife in an 88 Toyota 4-door. He's not raking it in hand-over-fist, and while his wife hates him for it sometimes (that he can't just sell out every now and again), he can truly say that he hasn't ever done anything that he doesn't agree with (in law, he used to be military).

-9mm-

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[vagn]

While almost all litigators take their adversarial
role too far and play to win rather than find justice...

Doood, that's retarded.

If your lawyer doesn't play to win you get a new lawyer.
That, in a nutshell, is the legal system.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[ragazzi99]

From someone who is currently studying for a legal education, 1) Very few countries use juries. England has limited juries, while the rest of Europe does NOT use juries. Juries developed from England, so only a few countries, most at one point affiliated with England, have ever used juries. 2) Most attorneys do try to get their client the best deal possible, rather than letting crime go unpunished. It's called the plea bargaining system. 90 to 95% of all cases in this country 'plea' out. That means the 'criminal' plead guilty and accepts a sentence the court gives. Think about the Warez group DrinkOrDie - the top guy was just sentenced to 46 months in prison. He 'plead guilty', and accepted the 46 months in Federal Penitentary. I'm sure that 26 year old guy will have a lot of fun in there! 3) Once again. 90 to 95% of ALL cases settle out of court. The parties to the suit CHOOSE to settle. The lawyers wished 95% did not, because the lawyers don't get as many billable hours that way (if you're not in court charging 200 dollars an hour because the case settled.....you're not making that 200 dollars). You bash lawyers and say they're all about money. You just wait until the next time you have a legal problem....car accident, divorce, injury on the job, marijuana possession....You're going to want the best damn lawyer money can buy. If you argue in court like you did above, you'd definitely be screwed... Chris

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Goldsmith]

Good!

I hope you do well. I know there are lawyers out there doing the right thing, and I agree that the best way to fix things is from the inside. I also agree it's too difficult to understand.

Most of the legally minded people I know are good people, they just fail to see what they could do with what they have. They don't understand what anything really means - they grasp the law, but not it's ramifications for regular people.

And I'll go easy on lawyers now that I know a "good" one.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Soko]

In many judicial systems, the jury has the main responsibility of determining guilt, based on their evaluation of permissible evidence. Your idea is flawed at least in the following ways:

Agreed - trail by a jury of the accuseds peers is the best way known. Note however I never said anything about a lawyer determining the outcome of such a trial.

First, you are replacing the judgement of a dozen jurors with the judgement of one or two lawyers. This creates more room for prejudice of all sorts, and essentially makes it impossible to prosecute a lawyer who pleads his client to a more severe punishment than necessary. The lawyer just has to say: "I honestly thought he was guilty."

No, I am not. If the accused says to his attourney "Ya, I butchered the ol' lady. Get me off.", the attourney's opinion (IMHO) is now tainted anyways. If it isn't, that attourney is not interested in justice, only collecting his fees. If it is tainted, he should be looking to make sure his clients rights are still thouroughly protected, murdering scum that he is.

Second, these lawyers are permitted to see a range of evidence - including illegally obtained evidence - that will color their judgement. Jurors are simply not told about these illegal evidence, and so it will taint them less.

Again, a given. An attourney should still not allow illegal evidence against his client, since that means it would be open season on everyone. This goes back to protecting the rights of the accused, not whether or not the accused is guilty. Some one needs to be there when the cops don't play fair, too. It's a shame that it sometimes means a murderer walks away scot free.

Third, it will greatly reduce the things that a client tells the lawyer, because they will fear what the lawyer might think. This is detrimental to justice because some of these facts might actually exonerate the client.

Hunh? Your logic is flawed in that you make the erroneous assumption that I believe lawyers should determine guilt or innocence. I don't - only that they shouldn't lie or mis-direct the truth in order to facilitate a miscarriage of justice.

For this and other reasons, lawyers must be required to act entirely on their client's best interests, not on their personal judgement of the client's guilt or innocense.

...and to hell with the best interests of society at large, it seems. That is why lawyers aren't held in terribly high esteem anymore - most seem more interested in what's best for their clients, and by extension themselves, than in what's best for society at large. They need to win - lady justice be damned. IMHO this "Winning at all costs" attitude is the root cause of Mr. William Gates IIIs "popularity" around these parts, BTW - if he played fair, we would likely get along better. The justice system should not be a game, where one "wins" - it should be about divining the truth and dispensing justice.

Soko

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[MarkusQ]

...so my idea of "fun" may be different from yours? ;)

No, data mining is great fun. Especially if you're working with auditors trying to figure out "where all the money went" or trying to put together the details of an catastrophic failure which shouldn't have ever happened (and consequently no one thought to check or log data for). It's very much like working in a mystery novel, or sometimes a farce.

-- MarkusQ

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[_ph1ux_]

Overratted?!

anyway the point I wanted to make with this post:

I was at 50 karma for the past several weeks... posted many o' comment in that time... and recently posted several (recently=today) in which I was modded up... but being at the cap 50 - I remained there. then this overrated mod comes in - and deducts me -1 to 49....

but on a previous post (within the same hour) I get +2 or something.... but since I was already at 50 - it doesnt count?!

I dont give a rats ass about /. karma - only real karma applies to me and what i do - but this is obviously a broken system, and if its to remain broken like this fine - but stop calling it karma - as karma is universal law, and by no means broken (or capped).....

c'mon pater - you think you're so smart. make a better alternative to karma!! and OS it!!!

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[DrSkwid]

it's very simple, when you're at 50 then any new points are discarded (not secretly added on and only 50 displayed)

it's not like you're suddenly going to drop under 25 and lose your +1

btw. if you're not concerned then shut up

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[TekPolitik]

I have yet to meet someone who wants to practice law simply to help people.

to which cybermage replied:

Hi. Now you have...I decided to return to school and become a lawyer...I figure I can do more from within the system than from outside.

Me too.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Happy go Lucky]

That being said, I'd rather they try to get the minimum penalty for thier clients when they know they're guilty, rather than allow criminal behaviour to go un-punished. Justice and all that.

There are ethical reasons for them to do otherwise.

The attorney's duty is to represent his client's interests by all means allowed by law. Pure and simple. Defense counsel does not work for you or me (especially not me!). He works for the defendant.

I'm a cop, and have been one for almost my entire adult life. Believe me, I have little reason to love the defense bar. However, we have to be fair. They're doing a job which is needed in our system of justice, and even mandated by our Constitution. And despite the ethical issues of an Alan Dershowitz or the circus theatrics of a Johnny Cochran, the profession of law has enough honorable practitioners that I think it can be called an honorable profession.

Yes, I think some of them are ignorant as hell and try to encourage ignorance. That's how they work in the cases that go to trial: their job is to create doubt in the mind of one juror. I had a vehicular assault case (a felony in my state) in which the central issue became whether or not the defendant was driving 70MPH on a wet 35MPH street, and was that speed the reason for his clobbering a pedestrian.

Northwestern University publishes some standard equations which are pretty much universal for determining speed. One of them takes in the percentage of braking (100% if all four wheels braked, as they did in this case), the drag factor of the road surface (wet new asphalt, empirically it was found to be about .48), and the lengths of the skidmarks. Plug those in and you know exactly how much speed was scrubbed off in the skid.

It's pretty straightforward, if you have a high school education. One juror did not, and the defense counsel's strategy was to try and twist my testimony to confuse the crap out of that juror.

He was representing his client's interests, just like the law and his canon require. It didn't work (his client was sentenced to three years, all but eight months suspended and restitution for ALL of the victim's medical bills. Probably reasonable, IMHO, for a case of felony stupid resulting in serious bodily injury to someone who didn't deserve it.) They have their duty. I can hardly fault them for doing it as well as they know how. In the end, there are aspects of my job that bother me too. Real life is like that sometimes.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Xerithane]

Yes, and thanks for bringing those points up. The few IP attorneys I know are actually very cool, hard working and ethically sound people. IP litigation is bullshit, but I forget what those guys are called, iirc, they have some special name for the attorneys who represent clients in IP related lawsuits, don't they?

I knew a patent attorney a while back, and he was probably one of the biggest critics of the USPTO. After talking with him for 30 minutes, I would trust me running the USPTO just off of his critiques and ideas for improvement... too bad he works for a DNA sequencing company :)

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[sql*kitten]

Same thing with data mining. Data mining does not always have to do with someone finding your data.

Exactly. I don't think the editor knows what a data miner is - probably imagines it to be the digital equivalent of paparazzi sifting through a celebrity's trash, or a sleazy private detective spying on cheating spouses or something.

Data mining is about finding patterns in vast quantities of data, looking for trends, extrapolating to support decisions. It's what data warehouses and OLAP tools are built for. Doing data mining means abstract thinking in n-dimensional cubes, graduate statistics, plus hardcore familiarity with the SQL parser of your chosen database, plus enough business savvy to not just fit curves but understand what the implications are. Data mining will always be a hot job, because it makes a big difference to corporate/governmental strategy, and very few people have the broad and deep skills to do it well.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[armb]

> > Lawyers that represent clients in the wrong, are in the wrong themselves.

> Who decides that the client is in the wrong? I would prefer to have a lawyer defend me in court to the best of his or her ability and have the judge decide

(Or the jury). And even people who are guilty _and pleading guilty_ deserve a lawyer to argue their side where the severity of the sentence could be affected.

Even where people are getting off "on a technicality", there are good reasons for technicalities like the rules of evidence, and if you want them to protect the innocent, you have to put up with the guilty getting away with stuff because of them sometime too.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[BreakWindows]

Funny, why is it that so many judgments end up wrong, if they're only looking out for people's rights?

Worse, why does it cost so much money when the judgment does end up "right", and it was painfully obvious that it was so, all along?

And by far, the worst, if lawyers are just trying to protect people from injustice, why are the vast majority of them apathetic, weaselly, or just plain evil?

Lawyers use words like "speculation" and "hearsay". If you're going to throw around phrases like "vast majority ... are evil", provide some facts.

Do you have the statistics for how many cases end up "wrong"? Are you well-enough versed, legally, to understand what "wrong" is? Sometimes the judgement sucks, but that's how it had to turn out and sometimes we don't like the ruling, though it is in accordance with the way the law was written. There are definitely times when the ruling was just plain screwed, but if you're suggesting they're in the majority provide some evidence.

One reason it may seem "so many cases turn out wrong" is that you never turn on the nightly news and hear "and a man caught with the smoking gun was convicted of murder today. We all totally saw this coming". The only ones we here about are the sensational and racy ones our media thinks are worth reporting.

How ironic, I'm defending the lawyer.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, you de man. Big pimpin'.
But uhm, why are you posting on Slashdot?

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Sorry I didn't make this clear. I was referring to civil lawsuits primarily. I'm much more tolerant of criminal courts... can't be too careful, and willing to spend alot extra just to be sure.

And suppose I'm a good little boy, and come up with rock solid statistics... what good does that do? At best I convince you, and there are 2 assholes on slashdot complaining where once there was one. I kinda like it how it is now, don't want to share the complaining.

Or maybe you mean that if the statistics were real, and my reasoning was without flaw, someone in congress would sit up and take notice? Haha *LOL*.

Ethics are the basis of law, which are only crude imitations. But, oh well... it was worth the karmic butchery to get to say what I did, even if I'm just another voice screaming in the mob.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[MadAhab]

You have contempt for lawyers because you live in a society of laws. Try living in a lawless society for a while: arrests without charges, arbitrary seizures of property, police/security forces taking whatever they want, every public official demanding a bribe... You'll be begging to go back to the lawyer-run world you live in. It's not that we've eliminated corruption or abuse of power, but we've limited what it can do and provided a means for talking about it that may be just as ruthless underneath - and it's some lawyers I'm talking about here - but it's done with paper and not the butt-end of a rifle. Take your pick.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[phossie]

and then there's the lawyerly way to look at this: your job is to do the best you can in supporting your clients aims. if you are working for someone you consider evil, it is still your job to give them the best representation. the way the legal system is supposed to work: when bad results happen, the laws get changed because people don't like it. the only way you'll ever notice the bad laws, considering the sheer volume of law, is if some (asshole?) lawyer tries to take advantage of them.

yes, it's a dirty job. yes, somebody has to do it. or else we need to change the entire system.

Re:"Dubious Ethical Value"

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I sympathize with you, for not being able to imagine a world without either.

They forgot...

[blowhole]

Judging from the Flash advert on the page, CHIROPRACTOR might be a promising career! Ouch!

Re:They forgot...

[interiot]

Here's a link to aforementioned flash advert, so you don't have to reload many times. Best if viewed at 336x280.

The group is Cirque du Soleil. More photos can be found here and here.

Rising in the next decade

[pyrrho]

Rising to the top of the tank and floating on their side, I'm guessing.

Honestly, what could more ensure stagnation of a job title more than appearing on a top ten list!? I'm sure three of those jobs really will be rising in demand, but I'm not telling which three.

Re:Rising in the next decade

[Anonymous Coward]

I know a job that's rising, I don't know if it's in demand... it's called "weasel who post in forums, from work" :P

Re:Rising in the next decade

[pyrrho]

interesting. anonymous, coward, gee, I wonder who you could be.

anyway, what's the matter with weasel's posting in forums from work? How is it different than a cigarette break? getting up to get coffee? stretching? how is it different from any kind of break?

furthermore, I don't know about you but many people often continue work extra hours from home (oh, yeah, sallaried employees don't have "hours"), have to have cell phones and pagers to keep in touch with work 24 hours a day. So what's your point again?

I think weasels that never accomplish anything and are years late on their promises is a much bigger problem!

IP Attorney - dubious?

[ObviousGuy]

When you eschew a profession because you don't like what is going on in that part of the industry, you throw away a chance to make a difference from within.

You aren't going to change things sitting on your ass posting on /. or sending a few pennies to the EFF. If you really want to make a difference, study the law, pass the bar, put yourself in the position to affect change.

Re:IP Attorney - dubious?

[Anonymous Coward]

And apparently the EFF (a white hat, happy, good organization well loved here at Slashdot) must not be allowed to have lawyers either, especially IP ones!

As someone who studied political science and law in college, I recognize that there is a need for people with real computer/internet knowledge in those fields. Telling people those professions are bad and evil won't fix them. Getting good people who know their stuff into them, however, has a chance of working.

If you want good tech related laws, you need people with knowledge of tech making them.

Re:IP Attorney - dubious?

[Chump1422]

Exactly. Much of my decision to go to law school (I'm starting next year) was based on what I learned here on Slashdot about the infringement on our rights by the wealthy and powerful. And I picked my school because it runs The Berkman Center, which is partially responsible for both creative commons and chilling effects. I'll be able to start working on what I care about as soon as September rolls around. Few other professions afford you that opportunity.

Re:IP Attorney - dubious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone is in a position to affect change. It's delusional to see it otherwise.

Re:IP Attorney - dubious?

[ragazzi99]

Law school. I'm there now. too much work, too much time, too much studying. have fun

My advice.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Don't go anywhere near the "top 10". 5 million high school and college guidance counselors will be herding the sheep into those fields in a few months. You could be a savant in one of those fields, and it won't make a damn bit of difference if the resume is lost in the flood.

Re:My advice.

[FlowerPotAdmin]

You could be a savant in one of those fields, and it won't make a damn bit of difference if the resume is lost in the flood.

And that's exactly where I hope a PhD will come into play. I wanna be coming up with the theory that all those AI programmers use to write their code.

Re:My advice.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Last I heard, PhD's in CompSci are all but unemployable. Corps like cheap knownothing Bachelors degrees...

Re:My advice.

[Tazzy531]

To some extent that's true. But it's like that in a lot of industries. PhD in math, econ, etc. But a lot of major companies that have been around and know what they are doing (unlike .coms that were in it for the quickest bang for the buck), they have a group of PhDs that have the experience and are able to get things done right (not necessarily fast). For example, Google is the company that has the most PhD employees to total employee ratio. Intel, Sun, IBM, and many others have a huge supply of PhDs.

Let's put it this way, your time and effort put into getting your PhD will be rewarded. Given a choice between a PhD and a fresh college grad, many employers will choose the PhD.

Re:My advice.

[ObviousGuy]

They've seem to have lowered their standards, but when I was fresh out of undergrad these guys demanded a PhD in CS and a PhD in either Physics or Math.

2! At that point I realized that I would never work on the bleeding edge of software. :-(

Re:My advice.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

It's kinda moot for me. I'm a high school flunky myself. I'm fairly certain the only demographic that has fewer job opportunities is "Vegetative Coma Patient".

Re:My advice.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Nah, just means you'll never work at PARC. Write your own bleeding edge software...

Re:My advice.

[FlowerPotAdmin]

Corps like cheap knownothing Bachelors degrees...

And you somehow infer that I would like to work for a corporation? I'm sorry, that's not what gets me out of bed in the morning.

Re:My advice.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Well, there are fewer non-corp places to work for every day. I can say that without implying that you would *like* to work for one, I would think.

Re:My advice.

[FlowerPotAdmin]

Well, there are fewer non-corp places to work for every day. I can say that without implying that you would *like* to work for one, I would think.

Fair enough, but I don't see university computer science departments closing their doors just yet.

Re:My advice.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

They won't close their doors. They'll just incorporate. Haha...

IP Lawyer is bound to rise to the top...

[edrugtrader]

our IP Lawyer's (2) account for 20% of my company's yearly revenue.

Re:IP Lawyer is bound to rise to the top...

[doooras]

you work for amazon.com?

Re:IP Lawyer is bound to rise to the top...

[baywulf]

Where do you think the IP the lawyer sells comes from? You have to give the engineers who created the IP as much credit. Without both parts of the equation, nothing would happen.

Re:IP Lawyer is bound to rise to the top...

[edrugtrader]

nope, a chip manufacturer with about 500 employees... we have a patent library and just going around suing people and licensing is VERY profitable.

Re:IP Lawyer is bound to rise to the top...

[Anonymous Coward]

Rambus? Bastard! ;-)

Re:IP Lawyer is bound to rise to the top...

[sacremon]

He said 2 lawyers and 20% of revenue, not 50 lawyers and 80% of revenue.

Re:IP Lawyer is bound to rise to the top...

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess one day wen I'm a big pro-corruption adult like all the people sayin slashdot is four chidwen, I won't find this disgusting.

Jesus, how do you sleep at night knowing you're recieving money from an organisation that relies so heavily on legal games instead of actually doing something nice for humanity?

No politician can save humanity from this type of crap, only YOU and every person like you who is given the opportunity to take part, can say "up yours" to places like this until THEY grow up and join humanity in peace and cooperation. They're really f**king the system.

Re:IP Lawyer is bound to rise to the top...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell us how the commune works out!

Re:IP Lawyer is bound to rise to the top...

[ahfoo]

But how about something that is a cross between an engineer, a data miner and an IP lawyer and a programmer. That's what I'm starting to get into right now. One person taking on the USPTO database is like a chihuahua trying to screw a labrador though.
The basic premise of my new enterprise is to faciliate what was supposed to be the good side of patents --distributing valuable data about commercially viable products and processes to future generations. It seems like this is one area that is totally overlooked. Everybody is concerned, and for excellent historical reasons, about the growing power of patents since the Reagan revolution (turns head and spits on the floor) when the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) was formed and reversed the US policy that had protected American's from the monopolies that helped create the previous depression and could easily lead us into another.
We Americans of free and liberal thought should be concerned and pissed off about this, but simply reacting and being critical is where the old left always gets strung up by these devious winner-take-all mentality losers who are just looking for a chink in the armor that they can whittle away at. The only way to win that name calling game as a liberal is to be like Jesus or Ghandi and walk away from it no matter how bad you want to fight back. It's the hard road, but it's the only way. Talking shit about lawyers is pissing in the wind. It gives them a hard on. The scariest thing to a lawyer is being ignored.
So rather than fighting the power, just forget about those bozos. I think the productive thing is to do is to turn this patent lemons into a great big glass of lemonade. The promise of patents was that for the pain of a short term monopolies they would make abundant intellectual property freely available to all people over time. Well it's been a few hundred years now and nobody uses all this data except major corporations. The only use anybody has for patents is to control market positions, but they were supposed to be about sharing ideas way back once upon a time and lawyers and politicians still love to smirk and throw that shit in your face about how it's for the long term good of the citizenry at large, so if you really want to screw with them, make their rhetoric true.
To this end, I'm spending some time going through the USPTO database and trying to come up with some lesson plans for teachers based on the material. So far, it's pretty tough. The USPTO database is an enormous source of data that must be fascinating in many ways, but it's got to be contextualized and organized in order to make it interesting for students. I was really bummed to find the SGML tools project was ended because a lot of the patent database is in SGML, but none of the older stuff is which makes it even harder to deal with. But who knows, perhaps patents really can be a good thing when coupled with the free flow of information made possible by open source technologies like the Internet.
Honestly, I doubt it's true. I think it's gonna end in another depression unless the courts are reformed but the cat's out of the bag and it will take a major crisis to put it back. Last time it required a World War.
But in the mean time I'll see if I can't come up with something relatively entertaining and informative to pass the time. If you've got any experience working with the USPTO's SGML, feel free to chip in on your experiences as I'm just getting started on this.

Re:IP Lawyer is bound to rise to the top...

[Tackhead]

> Where do you think the IP the lawyer sells comes from?

Read between the lines. The guy says he works for a chip manufacturer with 500 employees, and the company earns all its revenue by suing people.

In that case, about half the IP comes from the ANSI standards group, not the company's own engineers. ;-)

Politician

[Far�]

Have a hot career! Be a politician! You can be in control of 60% of your country's gross income. You only have to be without scruple, a liar, or better, a man incapable of forming an opinion (thus you can't lie about it). You'll have to be a whore to public popularity - no demagogy is too small. You'll have to stand by the corporate interests of the political class: promote legislation as the magical solution to any and every problem in society. You'll have to be discreet about the way you privatize the money you extort from tax-payers.

Politician - here's the career of the past, present and future!

Re:Politician

[Anonymous Coward]

I had no idea Bill Clinton has such a low-uid! Way to go, Bill!

Or are you Al Gore, pretending to be your old boss again?

Re:Politician

[Goldsmith]

You forgot the fundraising.

The endless, endless fundraising...

unless you come pre-packaged with gobs of money.

Re:Politician

[Anonymous Coward]

Lemme guess - you don't vote do you?

Re:Politician

[56ker]

Skills also required to be a politician: being able to not answer questions in an entertaining way while managing to make people think you have, giving speeches that people like whilst not actually stating an opinion or making any promises and ability to get corporate sponsors.

Don't Pick a Career Because It's "Hot"

[pnatural]

If you're going to work for the Man for 30+ years, you'd be better off finding out what you really love to do, and work towards being the best that you can be at that. Anything else says you're just in it for the money. That's certainly not a crime, but it will probably show in your work when compared to someone who really does love what they do.

Just my US $0.02.

Re:Don't Pick a Career Because It's "Hot"

[datastew]

My sentiments exactly. To succeed in a competitive job market, you need the extra edge that comes from having true passion for what you do.

Back when I was in high school, the "hot jobs" of the next ten years always included "systems analyst." Being the contrarian that I am, I predicted a glut of "systems analysts" and tried my hand at Mechanical Engineering. Only after "surviving" as a Mechanical Engineer for four years in college and three years working did I finally admit that I was hard-wired to be a systems analyst.

The moral: find what you love to do and ignore the Hot Careers lists.

Re:Don't Pick a Career Because It's "Hot"

[Anonymous Coward]

He does make an interesting albeit an unpopular comment. If you are lucky enough to get a position you love dont ever complain. There are thousands of people doing things that they hate everyday just to survive. Count your blessings and be the best you can be becuase you are the fortunate few.

Re:Don't Pick a Career Because It's "Hot"

[The Cat]

To succeed in a competitive job market, you need the extra edge that comes from having true passion for what you do.

Yep. Smart. Able. Ambitious. First ones to disagree with office politics and the first to be fired.

Jobs are not a market. It is a popularity contest. Only those who agree stay employed.

find what you love to do and ignore the Hot Careers lists.

Then, start your own company to do it.

Re:Don't Pick a Career Because It's "Hot"

[SocialWorm]

I'm curious to know how career predictions from 1992 held up. 1982? 1972?

Re:Don't Pick a Career Because It's "Hot"

[Caez]

Actually, what I've found out from being a computer tech, is that you should get a job doing something you're damn good at, and keep whatever you love as a hobby.

Re:Don't Pick a Career Because It's "Hot"

[Jonboy X]

Oh, please. Most people don't love their jobs. They perform them because the money they're paid is worth the effort they invest to get it. Picking a job in a promising field is a "good idea". It's supply and demand, and people who fight against it frequently get the short end of the stick.

Besides, these type of "hot jobs" lists can serve as inspiration to someone looking for a new path. You can't really know if you'd like it until you try.

Re:Don't Pick a Career Because It's "Hot"

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to work for the Man for 30+ years, you'd be better off finding out what you really love to do, and work towards being the best that you can be at that. Anything else says you're just in it for the money. That's certainly not a crime, but it will probably show in your work when compared to someone who really does love what they do.

True, doing a job that you love is great, but there is also a virtue in doing a job that is high-paying, and that also interests you. After all, not many young people only find just one job to be of their interest. In most cases, there is high pay because there is high demand, which means the economy will function better if more people went to that job. Consider this: what if a disproportionately many amount of people wanted to go into the construction business. Many will go there, but they will be slightly less full in their stomachs because there aren't enough farmers to produce food that feeds them. They want to go to places, but dang, those cars are expensive. Not enough being supplied to meet the demand. You see how capitalism isn't always that bad?

Re:Don't Pick a Career Because It's "Hot"

[waldeaux]

If you're going to work for the Man for 30+ years, you'd be better off finding out what you really love to do, and work towards being the best that you can be at that. Anything else says you're just in it for the money. Thatï½s certainly not a crime, but it will probably show in your work when compared to someone who really does love what they do.

Heh - I've done that - twice. Both times the career I loved went nowhere because the $$$ dried up, and I had to start over. Now I'm pushing 40, and have almost nothing saved for retirement (I retire about when SS dries up - thanks Mom and Dad!), and none of my previous employers had anything like pension plans, etc.

If you're under 30, go for the $$$, and BANK IT.
Putting away $100 a week will take care of you 25 years down the line. Having a job you like is great, but not at the cost of everything else in your life.

If you're over 30 - DEFINITELY go for the $$$ because chances are, it won't be there in 5-10 years.

If you REALLY LOVE YOUR JOB, don't let them know - they'll just pay you less because they know you'll be reluctant to walk from it. Do a kick-ass job, but never let them forget that you expect to be compensated for that work, and compensated well.

(Yeah, I know this sounds pessimistic. It is. When >1/3 of your well-educated, highly-talented and experienced friends are out of work for months on end, there's something wrong.)

Re:Don't Pick a Career Because It's "Hot"

[irritating environme]

30+ years? EXCUSE ME? People that work 30+ years can't say no to credit cards. Do you really need a fucking SUV? Or an 8-bedroom house? Does your chick really need breast implants? Do you really need that extra 10% of MHz? Its called saving and rational investment. If you really want to cut this short, don't have kids, and don't get divorced, or married. Want to be prostate to the man for 30 years? have fun. I'll be retired by age 35 in a modest and peaceful life.

Amen...

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially biologist... don't do that.

dubious ethical value ?

[sandwichmaker]

Exactly what is ethically dubious about being a dataminer ? Isn't it like saying that guns are ethically dubious ? Datamining as a profession has nothing to do with what use the mined information is put to.. or how the information was collected. A data miner is a specialized professional like any other engineer. I would hope that you would be a tad bit more careful before you make such irresponsible statements.

Re:dubious ethical value ?

[distributed.karma]

Agreed. In fact I'm thinking of the main character of William Gibson's Idoru, whose job was to extract the essence from a huge pile of information. The information was related to some person, and the 'essence' would be their thought patterns or the like. I thought that was totally cool; only a few people in the world could do that. Even though today's data mining isn't quite as cool, it's a lot more than simply using grep(1).

Re:dubious ethical value ?

[iggypup]

(datamining != spam) spamming seeks the lowest possible response rate since the cost of the message is ridiculously low. datamining seeks the highest possible response rate, and is incredibly intricate and creative. nothing dubious here.

My pick would be

[tcd004]

My pick would have to be inmate.

tcd004

Bioinformatician...

[_PimpDaddy7_]

Bioinformatician, that is one COOL name.

Imagine going to shin-digs
"Hello, what line of work are you in?"
"Why, I'm a Bioinformatician?"
Blond: "oh you work with dead people?"
Brunette: "Have you seen the latest in cardio
replication induced with a neuron processor?"

;) that aside...
How benficial are these results? Who's to say it won't change in 5 years? What makes these hot, amount of money you can make?

The hottest job is the one that make you the most happiest...

Re:Bioinformatician...

[Jonathan]

Bioinformatician, that is one COOL name.

Well, we are indeed extremely cool. That can't be argued :-)


;) that aside...
How benficial are these results? Who's to say it won't change in 5 years? What makes these hot, amount of money you can make?


As people have already said, I do expect that eventually the field will be flooded now that there are actual degree programs in it. Today most of the people in bioinformatics are either biologists that have always been computer geeks (such as myself, programming Apple ]['s starting in sixth grade, but getting a doctorate in microbiology) or computer scientists who have managed to read enough biology papers to understand the subject (such as my boss).

Basically, bioinformaticians are needed because molecular biology has entered the era of large scale experiments generating gigabytes of information. The traditional way of analyzing results by hand just doesn't work anymore -- it's a similar problem to what other fields of study such as radio astronomy have been facing for some years now. The difference is that biological information is more applicable to both the human quality of life and commercial gain than astronomy and so there going to be much more data to be analyzed.

Re:Bioinformatician...

[mofolotopo]

I'm a bio student at a university that's just starting to push bioinformatics pretty strongly, and we have some really good and pretty well-known people here. Oddly enough, not a one of them calls themselves a "bioinformatician", preferring the more vague "computational biologist". Just odd, that's all.

Re:Bioinformatician...

[Jonathan]

Oddly enough, not a one of them calls themselves a "bioinformatician", preferring the more vague "computational biologist".

Well, "computational biologist" has the advantage of being analogous to "computational chemist", a career with a good 30 year history to date. Additionally, some think that "bioinformatics" sounds too applied seeing how "informatics" is often used to describe the practical aspects of computing, such as networks and databases.

Re:Bioinformatician...

[mofolotopo]

True...and I think some of them just want to still have "biologist" in their title, to tell the truth. Biologists get chicks more often than CS guys do, being rugged and sunburned and all.

(That was a joke)

Re:Bioinformatician...

[Phragmen-Lindelof]

The National Science Foundation is very interested in the combination of MATHEMATICS and the sciences, especially biology. The sciences are coming up with problems which are so complex that the primary difficulty is mathematical. NSF increased funding for math by 24.7% for fiscal year 2002 and requested a 20% increase for fiscal year 2003. I believe Jonathan is partially correct, but I think he/she ignores the need for better models/analysis which will come from math rather than microbiology or computer science.

Re:Bioinformatician...

[lukesl]

You make it sound like what the NSF does reflects what science as a whole thinks is important, but the NSF funds physical sciences. Biological sciences are funded through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). I'm not disagreeing with your main point, though I think you're confusing computational biology with bioinformatics. In any case, the hard part theoretically is dealing with the sheer complexity of biological systems (dealing with a gigantic number of coupled equations which are individually fairly simple), which is different than most problems in theoretical physics, for example. This requires a different way of looking at problems than the way most people usually learn math. However, in my opinion, the main bottleneck in biology right now is still an experimental one, not a theoretical one, despite all the data people have been generating with various high-throughput experimental methods.

Re:Bioinformatician...

[Phragmen-Lindelof]

The fiscal year 2002 budget of the NSF Directorate for Biological Sciences is slightly over $500,000,000 and additional money is spent on biology elsewhere in NSF. Other federal agencies (e.g. NIH, DoD) certainly spend "serious" money on biology; my guess is that NIH spends by far the most. However, since the NSF covers all of science, its positions are worthy of serious consideration. I believe the line between bioinformatics and (biological) data mining is hard to determine; the chair of our biology department has discussed the importance of these and the contributions which math/stat can make to these areas. The article "Mathematical Challenges from Genomics and Molecular Biology" (http://www.ams.org/notices/200205/200205-toc.html ) might be of interest.

Re:Bioinformatician...

[lukesl]

I'm not trying to argue that the NSF's positions aren't important, only that there is a certain amount of jurisdiction in terms of what the NSF and NIH will fund. The NSF spends very little money on breast cancer research. Not because it's not science, and not because they think it's not important, but because the NIH funds that. I agree with pretty much everything you're saying, I just don't believe that the NSF increasing funding to mathematics applied to biology indicates in any way that the lack of advanced mathematical techniques outside the grasp of people in CS is the underlying bottleneck in bioinformatics. Math is obviously important, but I think that improved mathematical analyses will be much more important in other branches of biology. I say this as a computational neuroscientist, but I'm referring more to systems biology. Like you said, there are a lot of blurry lines.

Re:Bioinformatician...

[Phragmen-Lindelof]

I do not see much disagreement between us. However, at many universities it seems that discussion across departments (e.g. biology and math) about serious research issues is too limited. I know NSF wants to change this; do you know how NIH feels about this?

Re:Bioinformatician...

[lukesl]

I think it's becoming widely acknowledged that these kinds of things are very important, but I have no idea what the NIH has done specifically. It's usually not mathematicians from the math department that end up collaborating with biologists in my experience, but physicists and applied mathematicians who are often in engineering departments.

My list of 10 hot jobs

[gewalker]

In no particular order:

1) Roofing contractor
2) Fireman
3) Chimney sweep
4) Blast furnance technician
5) Nuclear plant core cleaner.
6) Boiler stoker
7) Oven inspector.
8) Exhaust system specialist
9) Bomb squad technicial
10) Supervisor in Hell

Re:My list of 10 hot jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

so you like hot places?

what about 11. Heather Locklear's cooter inspector

Re:My list of 10 hot jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

3) Chimney sweep & baby sitting

Re:My list of 10 hot jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Breaker one, breaker one, I may be Heather Locklear's cooter inspector, but I ain't dumb. Crazy Cooter comin' atcha!

Forensic Accountant

[ImaLamer]

Is this the guys who show up to the Enron crime scene.

Next week on CSI:Accountantcy the team will look at A.Anderson and then the Bush budget

Re:Forensic Accountant

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, yes.

Re:Forensic Accountant

[Happy go Lucky]

Is this the guys who show up to the Enron crime scene

You laugh, but almost.

They're the ones who look through umpteen million documents to reconstruct what happened. Then they get to spend another month testifying at trial while a jury's eyes glaze over.

It's very detailed (anal?) work. They're basically a private-sector financial-crimes investigator. (Hell, that's why the FBI required applicants to be either lawyers or accountants for many years-investigating white-collar crime often does require that kind of talent)

Re:Forensic Accountant

[ImaLamer]

So if you were in a Monty Python sketch a regular accountant job would be a step up... at least you are dealing with live numbers.

Thank you... I was kinda of joking but not really sure. Actually you should have gotten my +1 since you've informed me; at least I didn't have to look it up.

Re:Forensic Accountant

[Happy go Lucky]

So if you were in a Monty Python sketch a regular accountant job would be a step up... at least you are dealing with live numbers.

Yep. Forensic accountants step p to regular accountant, who step up to successful insurance salesmen, who can continue to climb until they're unsuccessful insurance salesmen. I'm sure there's a reason for having the latter up on the roof.

Fuel-Cells being overhyped

[lkaos]

I seem to remember reading a Scientic America article a while back (I'd link but the charge for old article IIRC) about fuel cells and the problems with mass producing them.

They work great and all for the space station and other speciality circumstances but they rely on a platinum core and therefore are quite expensive. Moreover, they had some statistics regardding how there simply wasn't enough platinum in the world (since it is so rare) for even the small amount needed for fuel cells if they were to go in every car.

I remember reading too that it was quite unlikely that any other element possessed similiar enough properties to build a fuel cell with too.

So I think it is a tad premature to say Fuel-Cell Engineering is going to be the next "hot job."

Re:Fuel-Cells being overhyped

[ObviousGuy]

You're missing the big picture. There's tons of VC money waiting to be thrown at the Next Big Thing. When a technology is premature, you have a much better chance of getting in on the ground floor and gathering up all this loose cash.

Re:Fuel-Cells being overhyped

[Macho MadDog]

To paraphrase Thomas Watson:

I predict there will only be a world market for 5 fuel cells in the future....

Re:Fuel-Cells being overhyped

[dhovis]

This would be true if the only fuel cell design in existance was the one used on the space shuttle. However, there is a lot of work going into other fuel cell designs.

Platinum gets used a lot when cost is no object (like the space shuttle), but other designs can be used which are much more cost effective. The design used on the Space Shuttle is radically different than the stuff that companies like Ballard, Plugpower, and Siemens are working on.

Anyway, if there is enough platinum for all the catlytic converters in cars, there is probably enough for fuel cells.

OT: Mike Tyson and 9/11?

[ImaLamer]

Did Mikey plan those bombings?

He was convicted on 9/11/91...

Check it out here

I'm not suprised that Bush (or the Fox News Facists) hasn't sent him to Cuba since he is a follower of the Nation of Islam.

Re:OT: Mike Tyson and 9/11?

[ImaLamer]

No members of the Nation of Islam has been fingered because Bush hasn't had a reason yet. (like how there isn't oil under their homes).

Brought to you by: Fox News - We Report And Help You Decide!

Re:the biggest job

[ObviousGuy]

"Professional" usually implies some sort of income is derived from your profession. I am a college graduate, but I'd like to be gainfully unemployed. How do you make money?

Re:What about Internet Escort?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey man dont try to round up business for your mom round here

Re:the biggest job

[Anonymous Coward]

Professional does not always include monitary income. As I quote from dictionary.com #4 "Having or showing great skill." I can only assume having been so long out of work that I have a great skill at remaining unemployed. What else am I going to put in that empty 7-9 months in my resume?

Asbestos time.

[saintlupus]

why oh why did I give up on being an Adventure Travel Guide to be a web designer?

Because you had no native talent for actual programming?

[dodging thrown objects]

Eh, what do I know. I got an English degree.

--saint

Re:Asbestos time.

[sharkey]

I got an English degree.

Shouldn't that be, "I gots an English degree"?

Re:Asbestos time.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's "I have gots an English degree." (HE's from the ewe-kay.

Re:Asbestos time.

[SEWilco]

"...give up on being an Adventure Travel Guide..."

Because you found that Zork was better than Adventure?
[ducks to avoid a rusty axe]

Re:Asbestos time.

[saintlupus]

Shouldn't that be, "I gots an English degree"?

No, "gots" would be a dangling funkulator in that sentence. For that context, it would be "I done gots me an English degree."

Note the encasement of the "gots" by your standard funk brackets.

[/sarcasm]

--saint

Enjoyment and skills=$$

[BerserkDog]

It seems to me, that if you truly enjoy what you do and are ,indeed, proficient in your field->you're already on the right path. I'm a case-in-point to that very statement. I didn't even graduate H.S.(Overexaggerrated rebelliousness)-But, because I enjoy what I do, and am damn good at it, I bring in more than most college grads. The "Hot Job" is what you make it.

Re:Enjoyment and skills=$$

[Anonymous Coward]

you enjoy welding?

Dubious Ethical Value?

[an_mo]

How exactly is Data Mining of "dubious ethical value"?

As for every job there may be ethical or unethical tasks to perform or method to pursue the job's goals. But Data Mining seems a potentially valuable activity. I do research in social sciences and finding the right data for our projects is always a challenging and time consuming task.

I don't know if there is room for such specialized activity, but if such a profession emerges I don't see why it should be unethical on principle.

Re:Dubious Ethical Value?

[Anonymous Coward]

"i buy other people's personal information without their permission to be used in any way i see fit"

nope, not dubious at all

Re:Dubious Ethical Value?

[Ichoran]

Data mining has nothing to do with buying other people's personal information without their permission, except that this is one way to get data. Personal information is already mined to death anyway; that's not where the hot new work is going to be.

Data mining is, at its heart, the use of mathematical techniques (self-organizing maps, independent component analysis, etc.) to extract patterns or key features from an overwhelming mass of largely irrelevant data. You can use it to predict customer buying patterns (old hat), to look for patterns in gene expression indicative of cancer (new hat), and to find relevant changes in fMRI-measured brain activity in substance abusers (hat-still-being-made).

So I view data mining in the same light as, say, encryption technology. Just because some big corporations want to encrypt their content to make you experience it in exactly the method they desire at exactly the time and place and with exactly the equipment that they specify, doesn't mean that encryption is of dubious ethical value. It means that big corporations act in ways that are ethically dubious.

Likewise with data mining.

Pharmacist

[ajakk]

The one job that they didn't mention, which is EXTREMELY hot right now, is pharmacy. The booming number of elderly and the decreasing number of pharmacists has made the field extremely hot. I have even heard advertisements on the radio for pharmacists to switch to a different drug store. New pharmacists make can make aroun 90K a year.

Re:Pharmacist

[ObviousGuy]

Amount of education required?

Re:Pharmacist

[Anonymous Coward]

just enough to read perscriptions written in heiroglyphics.

Re:Pharmacist

[Tazzy531]

College + 2 years of pharmacy school. Don't need residence period neither that doctors have to go through after Med school...

Re:Pharmacist

[Monkelectric]

you hit the nail on the head dude. The longs drugs/payless's around here start pharmacists at 80/yr.

Re:Pharmacist

[ealar dlanvuli]

4 yr. premed (at a decent school, if you want a chance in hell of making pharm school). 2 yr. pharm school (memorize every drug ever made, ect).

You will need a 3.7+ from premed to even get a shot at pharm school.

You will work 60-90 hour weeks, and make 40-90k a year (avg starting is around 65k). If you want a 40-50 hr. work week, you will need to work at a hospital, and your pay will be just over 55k.

It's awfully glamorized, but all the phamacists I know don't seem to be making a killing or enjoying thier jobs alot. Not to mention it's just about as hard as becoming a doctor, with exactly the same amount of competition for pharm school.

You would have better luck earning the same becoming a PHB, unless you really think it's your thing (some people really like it, I've met 2 pharmacists who seriously enjoyed thier job), you should choose a better major because you will not enjoy it as much as you think, and the money isn't *that* great.

Re:Pharmacist

[Anonymous Coward]

What prevents a computer/machine with good software from distrubuting the correct drugs? If you want a good job, ask yourself "what job can a robot or software not replace?"

There are a few, but if you really think about it, around 90% of people's jobs "could" be eliminated.

Re:Pharmacist

[mrmag00]

not to be mean/insulting, but you go to school for years and gain the intelligence of that of a doctor to do what? Count pills.

Thats right, folks, you could be making 90K a year counting pills. yikes.

The Job Chooses You

[Anonymous Coward]

Deciding what to do isn't a decision, its a matter of effort. Foolish people decide,intelligent find the right answer.

1. Take the Strong Interest Inventory Exam

2. Take the Myers Briggs

3. Read What Color is Your Parachute

4. Use your power for good and not for evil.

Re:The Job Chooses You

[Anonymous Coward]

To add to this, I'd recommend going to www.assessment.com. They have a free personality evaluation that is fairly insightful.

Re:The Job Chooses You

[ObviousGuy]

I took a personality test once. The results were negative.

Hehe

[jaavaaguru]

I see the theme to the next ten Budweiser commercials here ;-)

This song is dedicated to you, Mr Intellectual-Property Attorney

Re:Hehe

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL or
"this ones dedicated to you patent officer"

Bioinformatics not all milk and honey

[oingoboingo]

Bioinformatics sounds hot and it's certainly getting the hell hyped out of it at the moment, but from first hand experience, it can get pretty frustrating at times. What they don't mention in any of the glowing reports on the industry is the frequent brain explosions than can be caused by putting biologists and computer scientists in the same room for prolonged periods of time. Maybe it's just where I work and everyone's an asshole (or I'm an asshole), but trying to get the researchers and the computer guys to agree on anything is a fucking nightmare.

I guess this is the same in any branch of IT (instead of biologists and programmers each trying to clobber each other into submission, it's your banker or manufacturing customer)...and I guess I'm especially sensitive to it at the moment. Oh well...something for newbies into the field to think about.

Re:Bioinformatics not all milk and honey

[evilquaker]

Maybe it's just where I work and everyone's an asshole (or I'm an asshole), but trying to get the researchers and the computer guys to agree on anything is a fucking nightmare.

Maybe your company is the norm, but in the bioinformatics company I work for, the biologists learn computer skills and the computational researchers learn biology. In order to be successful in the field now (and in the future), you need a mix of computationally-minded biologists and biologically-minded computationalists.

Re:Bioinformatics not all milk and honey

[oingoboingo]

the biologists learn computer skills and the computational researchers learn biology

I'm probably biased, since I'm a biologist who learned computers (or really a geek who's been playing with computers since the Apple II and the C64 and just happened to get a degree in biochemistry along the way), but I would say that it's the IT guys who have the hardest time adopting the biological point of view, rather than the other way around. We seem to end up with a lot of software that solves a non-existent biological problem, but does a great job of demonstrating some great algorithm that gets the computer scientists all boned up. I live in hope...

Re:Bioinformatics not all milk and honey

[mofolotopo]

Eeeeeexxxxactly the problem I've run into. We had a two hour lecture from a visualization expert on how to refine an extremely diffcult problem into a graph that totally removed any sort of biologically reasonable ordering of the data. Essentially it seemed to boil down to "well, if you cease looking for the solution, you can make this really cool graph that finds spurious connections between extremely distant data points". He meant well, but sheeesh.

Re:Bioinformatics not all milk and honey

[evilquaker]

I'm probably biased, since I'm a biologist who learned computers (or really a geek who's been playing with computers since the Apple II and the C64 and just happened to get a degree in biochemistry along the way), but I would say that it's the IT guys who have the hardest time adopting the biological point of view, rather than the other way around. We seem to end up with a lot of software that solves a non-existent biological problem, but does a great job of demonstrating some great algorithm that gets the computer scientists all boned up. I live in hope...

I think you're biased, but probably right. :) In some sense, it's easier for the biologists because of tools like BLAST and Genscan. They can cobble together a solution based upon already reasonably good tools. And using test runs on small data sets, they can even come up with a good idea of whether their ideas are computationally feasible. (Even so, I've seen one of our biologists propose a computation that would take 6 months on 32 CPUs...)

Re:Bioinformatics not all milk and honey

[oingoboingo]

(Even so, I've seen one of our biologists propose a computation that would take 6 months on 32 CPUs...)

Which is why all the high-end computer hardware manufacturers are talking about bioinformatics being the industry that drives their revenues for the next few years ;-)

Re:Bioinformatics not all milk and honey

[mofolotopo]

And why I'm going to be working on our brand new bioinformatics cluster with 128 CPU's this fall. It's a good time to be a techie/bio nerd indeed. ;-)

Re:Bioinformatics not all milk and honey

[oingoboingo]

It's a good time to be a techie/bio nerd indeed. ;-)

Indeed. There's an IBM p690 Regatta turning up here in a few weeks, but unfortunately we're only setting it up for a customer and then it'll be on it's way again. Hopefully there will be some time to take some photos of the biologists loading cases of beer in and out of the system unit...it's too much of a fridge-like opportunity to pass up.

Re:Bioinformatics not all milk and honey

[Rinikusu]

Might you give me some advice regarding this field? I'm a biology freak (evolutionary, behavioral, any, actually), but am also a computer geek (since C64 days). I've never taken any biology in College (well, I dread the inevitable "begging for a grant" that I seem to see a lot of), but am trying to go back. I'm graduating with a degree in IT:UNIX programming from the local community college, but now that there seems to be a nice private sector demand for biologists, what can I do to "steer" my UNIX programming knowledge towards a career in Bioinformatics (which seems right up my alley)?
Thanks in advance... :)

Re:Bioinformatics not all milk and honey

[mofolotopo]

I'd say the most important thing is to find a good program with well-respected people and try to learn from them. I know that's so painfully obvious that it's hardly worth saying, but it's also extremely important. My own interests are in phylogenetics and how it applies to population-level biology, so all of my advice will be pretty heavily skewed in that direction. However, phylogenetics is becoming very popular with big pharma right now, and as such there's a lot of money to be had by those who are good with computers and have a nice solid grounding in the field. I'd say my first four pick in the field would be:

-Joe Felsenstein, University of Washington
-Wayne and Dave Maddison, University of Arizona
-Dave Swofford, Florida State
-Pete Waddell, University of South Carolina

As far as skills you would need, you probably have all of the computer skills required. You'll probably need some C++, Perl, and Python, and you'll definitely have to be familiar with Macs. Unix is also extremely important, but that's not going to be a problem for you. Biological and mathematical skills I would reccommend:

Organic Chem
Biochem
Molecular biology
A quantitative evolution course
Population genetics (being used more and more in models of sequence evolution)
Systematics/Phylogenetics
Genetics
D iscrete math (which you might already have)
A lot of stats

That being said, I haven't even taken all of those yet. :)

It truly is a great field. The problems are computationally very intense, and there's a lot of money out there to work on them, which means that you will almost certainly get a chance to work with some really heavy machines. You will probably also find the people a lot easier to deal with than you think; most scientists open up very very quickly if you show a genuine interest in their field.

Re:Bioinformatics not all milk and honey

[Rinikusu]

Great! I appreciate the advice. I indeed have already had Discrete and am planning to take a few more math courses (Linear Algebra, Intro Probability/QUeueing). I'd already assumed more statistics. :) The rest looks rather fun.

With Phylogenetics, is that intra-populational roles in population dynamics or inter-populational roles between species (or neither)? I covered some of the latter in an ecological anthropology course (9 more for a BA in ANthro and Hist, just need to take.. spanish and literature...). SOunds like fun fun work, something I'd dig.

Re:Bioinformatics not all milk and honey

[mofolotopo]

I'm actually coming at it from exactly the opposite direction. I started as a "maybe I'll take biology" student, and really fell in love with evolutionary biology and theoretical biology in general. The deeper in I get, the more I realize I need CS skills and math. That's pretty much in line with my own preferences, though, as I've been a computer nerd since way back.

Molecular phylogenetics is in general the use of molecular data to try to reconstruct the evolutionary history of a species or group of species. It can be used for reconstructing the tree of life and parts thereof, or to find the source of an epidemic, or to study how genes disperse within and between groups (which is called phylogeography). A lot of pharmaceutical companies are using it now in a predictive sense in order to try to figure out what ways they can attack a virus that it's unlikely to evolve defenses against. So in answer to your question, it's both and more. My own personal interest is in speciation, but the lab I work in right now is all about the actual theory and algorithmic methods by which phylogeny is done. We do a lot of simulation experiments to try to find out what the best algorithms are in different situations, and our PI has written the world's most widely used phylogenetic software (PAUP). I'm just the lowly peon undergrad, though. Still, I got to build this:

http://www.geocities.com/dan_and_teresa/index.ht ml

Which was a lot of fun.

Platinum?no...Borax...

[BerserkDog]

If you truly read "Scientific American"->you'd have read the article in the May 2002 issue in the "Innovations" section about a company called "Millenium Cell". They've come up with a clever fuel cell system utilizing Borax which reacts with a catalyst to produce the hydrogen needed. This combo makes it much safer to fuel up your vehicle or whatever else you're powering.

Re:Platinum?no...Borax...

[lkaos]

If you truly read "Scientific American"->you'd have read the article in the May 2002 issue in the "Innovations" section about a company called "Millenium Cell".

You know, I got Scientific American for a few years but cancelled it about a year ago. I know the whole Scientific America vs. Scientic American gets people all antsy but to be honest, I never cared enough ;-)

Humor - "Adventure" Travel Guide?

[Seth Finkelstein]

When I saw "Adventure Travel Guide", I thought of the classic

"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike"

Yes, I could see there being a job as a guide, but it would seem to be a rather "cold" career now :-)

Maybe the "hot" version is being an "Everquest Travel Guide" :-)

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

Re:Humor - "Adventure" Travel Guide?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been an "adventure travel guide" for about 30 years now - the last 24 rowing two week long whitewater trips in Grand Canyon - and my only regret is that I didn't start sooner. But to tell the truth, the industry is a heck of a lot less interesting today than it was way back when we drank beer for breakfast, seduced the young ladies (who can't afford these trips today), smoked when and whatever we liked, and charged up for hikes with vitamine L. But the wallpaper is as great as it ever was....

I don't know how this measures up as a career, but is sure as hell has beat working for a living.

Re:Humor - "Adventure" Travel Guide?

[PaxTech]

With all the newly minted adventure guides the schools will be turning out, perhaps the real growth profession will be grue.

How many years of school to become a grue anyway?

Miraculous prediction of the future?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't these the same general group of people who predicted that the NASDAQ would climb to 10,000 and decided that LNUX was a $700/share stock?

I wouldn't place all my bets on what economists have to say. I say do whatever interests you. There's no telling what the future holds.

Re:Miraculous prediction of the future?

[ObviousGuy]

ESR is not an economist.

Hot jobs not necessarily a good idea

[Sivar]

Any one of these markets could collapse at any time and many look like those who hold the jobs command such high salaries becasue they are fairly obscure.
Make a note of what happened to those who started their CS education when programming was the "hot job" in '98 and '99.

Soesn't seem quite so hot?

Re:Hot jobs not necessarily a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Now what are those people going to do. They got into
the profession for the money. Now there's little to
no money.
They don't like programming.
They don't like computers.
They hate talking to computer geeks.
And now there are no jobs.
And therefore no money.

Forensic Accountant??

[teslatug]

What do they do, count body parts? *ewww*

Re:Forensic Accountant??

[EverDense]

What do they do, count body parts? *ewww*

Well, you know "every sperm is sacred".
All must be accounted for.

Next Week, Permafrost Jobs

[guttentag]

SOME THINGS never change: death, taxes, Cowboy Neal's hairline. But one that certainly does: the cold profession of the moment. Here are the top ten jobs you definitely don't want tomorrow:

• ______ at a Promising Dot Com
• Web ______
• Venture Capitalist
• Energy Trader
• Artificial Intelligence Botany
• Elvis Impersonator
• ______ at Napster
• ______ at Rambus
• ______ at Be
• Slashdot Troll

Re:Next Week, Permafrost Jobs

[johnathan]

Here are the top ten jobs you definitely don't want tomorrow
...

You forgot the worst of all:

• assistant crack whore

top 10 things that didn't make the list

[Cheeze]

10. Paper shredder
9. presidential intern
8. respiratory infection nurse
7. experimental microbiologist
6. teacher (never makes any list, except for lowest paid/hardest working)
5. suicide bomber
4. Real World participant
3. political leader
2. President of Accounting
and the number 1 thing that didn't make the list...

1. bank manager for offshore accounts (not FDIC insurred)

Re:top 10 things that didn't make the list

[ObviousGuy]

#5 offers lifetime employment. Not to mention the awesome perks.

Re:top 10 things that didn't make the list

[Anonymous Coward]

They also seem to be in demand in the middle east. Or not, depending who's side you're on.

Re:top 10 things that didn't make the list

[Anonymous Coward]

lowest paid, hardest working... teacher!?

i don't know where you hail from, but in my wee burg the teachers were making 50k+. Not bad for 9 months of working 6 hours a day, methinks. i guess it can be hard work for some of the newbie teachers, but those who have been there for 20 years teaching the same crap really have it made in the shade.

wireless engineer here

[r00tarded]

little under three years experience. unemployed almost four months now. where are those jobs they were talking about?

Re:wireless engineer here

[Anonymous Coward]

Hint: if you can help it, don't change jobs so often. Employers generally don't like employees that quit after a year.

Re:wireless engineer here

[seanadams.com]

wireless engineer here - little under three years experience

Wireless engineer? I looked at your resume, and it appears that you've done some web page design and sysadmin work. I don't mean to belittle your accomplishments, but according your your resume, an RF engineer you are not.

Resume tip: web design buzzwords are OUT. They're actually big minuses on a resume. Start over and try to elaborate problems you've solved, money you've saved the company, and products you've developed. Remove the "co-" shit, and take credit for your work. Don't be bashful. Remove the stuff you did 5+ years ago, or at least exaggerate the hell of it to match your current experience. This isn't entirely disingenuous if you've got the goods to back it up.

Also, make a few different resumes. HR folks spend about 2 minutes per resume trying to find something that catches their eye. So make a half-dozen resumes, each for a very specific position that you can fill. Don't mess around with the job boards - do your research and contact specific companies. Broad resumes that cover every possible position will NOT catch their attention. Research as many companies as possible - find out what they're currently developing, how well they're doing, and where they're hurting. Address their needs directly, and you will get the job.

Re:wireless engineer here

[f00zbll]

Ditto!

If the author bothered to do research, they would discover that other than imode, no other wireless market is making money off third parties services. The infrastructure is still 2 years from being suitable for consumers. Until all the carriers deploy 3G and improves the coverage significantly, so that atleast all the major freeways and highways are covered in the US, you can forget about wide acceptance. Having worked on it, wireless data isn't reliable enough to support a small third party market.

I don't count paging services for stocks and sport scores as real wireless, atleast not two way client/server type wireless apps.

Re:wireless engineer here

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sorry you are unemployed. But your resume
is in .doc. Maybe that is why we are all unemployed.

Re:wireless engineer here

[r00tarded]

also available in .txt :)

Totally agree

[Codex The Sloth]

Not only does "fad" career selection almost guarantee an unhappy life, it's not necessarily going to lead to financial "success" either -- just ask all the people who got into Technology 'cos it was "hot" a few years ago and can now not find a job...

Money is only a small fraction of the equasion

[Infonaut]

Amen!

Just remember that you'll be spending at least 1/3 of your hours for those next 30+ years plugging away at work. If you pick something based on it's *supposed* high demand, that's fine, but don't expect to enjoy going to work. You might wind up becoming another whiner who is always bitching about their job.

Another thing to keep in mind is that these predictions are made by quite fallible human beings. They're akin to the sub-.200 hitters of the technology forecasting crowd.

Go with your passion, and your life will be a lot richer and more fulfilling. I'm sure such a sentiment isn't cynical enough for many people out there, but in my experience, it's true.

Go home

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not very nice. Shame.

I Know of a Cache of Platinum

[Anonymous Coward]

I admit I do not read Scientific America, but I do watch MTV and I happen to know of a rich deposit of Platinum. Just check around Rapper's necks. They have tons of platinum.

Okay, this was a stupid post. Stupid post! Thus I post anonymously!

Re:I Know of a Cache of Platinum

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. I bet you're pissed you missed out on the +1 funny. Loser.

don't count on hot jobs

[bm_luethke]

Hot jobs tend to be only hot in the short term. It's like deciding, right now, what clothes you are going to wear the rest of your life based on what is currently hot. Look at the web deseigners that only learned web deseign. They had a good run but unless they picked up more mainstream computing skills along the way they are probably looking for a job. Now they are lokking at someone in thier late twnties/ early thirties with a skill that has a glut of qualified individuals - all because it was the "hot job" of the moment. Now take a database person. It's not a hot job and probably never will be a hot job (i'm not talking data mining but deseigning/implementing/maintaining SQL databases). On the other hand demand is pretty high and will continue to be pretty high.

It is important to remember when making these lists they look at NOW, not the long term viability of the job.

PHB?

[reschly]

I can't believe that being a Pointy Haired Boss didn't make the list. Whodathunkit?...

Hot Jobs?

[The_dev0]

Any old job really, just tack EXTREME on the front of it...

Re:Hot Jobs?

[sharkey]

just tack EXTREME on the front of it...

• EXTREME Wall-propping

• EXTREME Burger-flipping

• EXTREME Jizz-mopping

Wow, you're right. I bet even Randall would go for the last one.

Self-Employed

[The Cat]

Well, someone has to provide jobs, and business certainly doesn't appear up to the task.

Shoddy products, poor customer service, wasted budgets, inept management, constant layoffs. Eventually former employees will get fed up (and they probably already are) and start their own companies.

A Renaissance of Entrepreneurship is precisely what the economy needs. Not more cubicles.

Re:Self-Employed

[squaretorus]

this is fair enough if you have the guts for it. The problem is - by the time you take into account all the costs involved in running your new company you'll realise you can't really afford to have good customer service, provide secure ongoing employment in the lean times, and that finding good management caliber people willing to work for a sensible sum is impossible.

Entrepreneurship is about more than just 'starting a company'. Its about having a vision, and having the skills to implement it. Oh. And the vision has to be good - most aren't.

We need a poll!

Would you consider going self employed?

No, Never
Yes, if I had 3 years living expenses in my personal account, and 2 years funding for the business
Yes, if I had 1 and 1
Yes, but not right now
Yes, now
Already did
No, but Id work for that cowboy guy

Bioinformatics

[Lictor]

Things I was unaware of until the article's author enlightened me:

- Bioinformatics == Computational Pharmacokinetics

- Designing sophisticated algorithms requires only "familiarity with computer technologies" (I suppose being a professional astronomer requires only "familiarity with telescope technologies" too)

- Bioinformaticians need graduate training in a biological science. This one scared the heck outta me... I *thought* I was a bioinformatician, but my graduate training is in computer science. Come to think of it... the great majority of 'bioinformaticians' I've met at conferences were CS grads. I must have been tricked into attending those fake bioinformatics conferences...

- Journalists don't need to bother researching or providing pesky 'facts' in their articles anymore. Its OK to just make stuff up... right off the top of your head.

Re:Bioinformatics

[Jonathan]

Things I was unaware of until the article's author enlightened me:

- Bioinformatics == Computational Pharmacokinetics


That annoyed me too. On the other hand, everyone seems to have a different opinion as to what the main problems in bioinformatics are. According to the O'Reilly books, bioinformatics is just writing Perl scripts to parse BLAST output...

Come to think of it... the great majority of 'bioinformaticians' I've met at conferences were CS grads. I must have been tricked into attending those fake bioinformatics conferences...

Well, I did a postdoc in a CS department (my doctorate was in microbiology), and there do seem to be a number of bioinformatics conferences that seem a little *too* much CS and not enough biology -- RECOMB is the classic example -- hardly ever is a practical problem discussed -- simply proving that some simplified bioinformatics problem is NP-hard doesn't cut it as bioinformatics IMHO.

But at the more useful bioinformatics conferences like ISMB and PSB you'll find a good mix of people approaching bioinformatics from both directions. And sometimes it is hard to tell who is who -- most people would imagine that Hidden Markov Model guru Sean Eddy is a computer scientist, but his background is actually in experimental genetics.

Re:Bioinformatics

[Lictor]

I heartily agree on all points. I didn't mean to imply that bioinformatics is/should be dominated by computer science... merely that a deeper knowledge of algorithms and the theory of computation is as essential as deep biological knowledge of the problem at hand.

It has been my personal experience that my best work is almost always a result of a colloboration between biologists/biochemists and mathematicians/computer scientists. Thats what attracted me to the field in the first place... the opportunity for interdisciplinary research.

As for the HMM's... no mathematician would admit to being a Markov Model guru. Far too much voodoo (by which I mean complexity, of course). ;)

Re:Bioinformatics

[just4now]

I have to agree. Journalists seem to be experts in, well, nothing.

The worst are those writing about "Hi-Tech" (their term, not mine) as if they completely understand it. These guys were a pain in the butt both before and after Y2K. First they hyped it out of proportion and then, when all of our work paid off, they tried to deride the entire thing.

Maybe a computer professional should be writing this stuff

Re:Bioinformatics

[DanThe1Man]

According to the O'Reilly books, bioinformatics is just writing Perl scripts to parse BLAST output...

What other languages and common computer processes do you do in Bioinformatics?

I am a Junior undergrad and I was a computer science major but chnged to BioInfomatics (before I heard of it being a "hot job") because of my first love for Biological Chemistry. I am a BioChem major with a minor in CS right now and I am looking at BioInfomatics major for a masters degree.

What else besides learning as much Science/CS should I do to prepare myself to compete with all the "my guidence conselor said this would be a good job" people? I am reading every Perl book I can get a hold of, includeing thouse said O'Reily ones on Bioinfomatics. What else should I be doing at this level and in the future?

Thanks for your time,
Daniel Jerome Broz

Re:Bioinformatics

[DanThe1Man]

(sorry for basicly copying this from a pervious post, but since you didn't leave an email address, and the questions are the same, I had to)

I am a Junior undergrad and I was a computer science major but chnged to BioInfomatics (before I heard of it being a "hot job") because of my first love for Biological Chemistry. I am a BioChem major with a minor in CS right now and I am looking at BioInfomatics major for a masters degree.

I also have the option of going to medical school. If getting in wasn't a problem, what would be the better path to becomeing a good BioInformatic Scientist? I'm sure I could learn a lot more about the human body in Med school, and I could pick up the languages and structure of CS by myself. What do you think?

What other common computer processes and languages, Besides Perl, do you use in Bioinformatics? What else besides learning as much Science/CS should I do to prepare myself to compete with all the "my guidence conselor said this would be a good job" people? I am reading every Perl book I can get a hold of, includeing thouse said O'Reily ones on Bioinfomatics. What else should I be doing at this level and in the future?

Thanks for your time,
Daniel Jerome Broz

Re:Bioinformatics

[Lictor]

>I also have the option of going to medical school.

If your true interest is bioinformatics, then I would hazard to say that medical school would be a massive waste of your time. People will hate me for saying this, but Medical school is essentially a trade school. It has very little do with science, and lots to do with aquiring piles of knowledge along with the tools and techniques to apply that knowledge. The thing is though.. its a *very* difficult and demanding trade school.

If you are serious about pursuing a scientific career, you'd be much better served by doing the Master's degree which will expose you to wonderful world of doing new research (which you will not get at med school). Until you've tried doing your own research, its really tough to understand exactly how boring/frustrating/rage inducing/exciting/euphoric/fun/rewarding it is.

Now, on the other hand, if doing bioinformatics and getting a nice fat salary is your goal, then med school might not be a waste of time. In my limited experience, MD/Ph.Ds get paid truckloads more money than straight Ph.Ds.. though the dispairity is narrowing these days.

If straight bioinformatics is your goal, I would have a tough time recommending med school just because you will devote much time and energy to something that will have minimal value to your chosen career.

>I could pick up the languages and structure of CS by myself

This is a dangerous statement. Are you sure? Computer science is *NOT* (sorry for the shouting, but this is a very sore point for me) about programming. Bioinformatics research is also not about programming. Monkeys can write programs. Serious research in bioinformatics falls into many areas, but one of the major ones is designing new algorithms. Sure, at the end of the day you have to implement the new algorithm, but thats the trivial part. The hard part is coming up with the algorithm. If you don't believe me, write up a program and submit it to the journal/conference of your choice. If all you've done is implemented someone else's algorithm, it will not be considered new work and I can almost guarantee it will be rejected outright. (Now if you can *improve* on an existing algorithm.. thats definitely publishable. But whats interesting is the improvement in the algorithm.. not a new implementation).

You could pick up the CS on your own, but it has nothing to do with programming languages. It has to do with analysis and design of algorithms, formal language and automata theory, semantics, complexity theory and so very many other things. Learning this on your own is a very tall order. Although looking back at your post... I see you are doing a CS minor. I suppose I should've read more carefully before I threw on rantmode. In any case, the text above still applies, but if you are doing a CS minor I would imagine you would *have* a lot of that background... so I'll just shut up on that topic now.

For programming, I never use Perl for anything serious. BioPerl is great for parsing files and quickly formatting things, but for any serious work it is just too slow. Take a look at the major bioinformatics software packages (BLAST, clustal, etc.)... how many of them are written in Perl? None. Not one. Several have hooks so they can be called by BioPerl, but the programs themselves are usually written in a lower-level compilable language like C.

BioPerl is wonderful for biologists who want to *use* the tools that are created by bioinformaticians, but its not always appropriate for the people creating the tools. Many bioinfo problems are very computationally intensive and every iota of performance you can squeek out is critical. Perl is a bit of slug when it comes to performance ;)

As for actually answering your question (sorry, I tend to rant on at times), I'll tell you first what I tell my students: anyone with a decent computer science background, 24 hours and a reference manual should be able to learn a new computer language. That may be true, but its still less than helpful.. if you really want concrete recommendations: definitely learn C.. it is the king of performance and you will need it. Learning LISP, Scheme, ML or some other functional language would be smashingly useful, as some problems can be solved very elegantly using the functional paradigm (and for those that will say "functional programs are too slow!".. rubbish. Check out a modern ML compiler and then get back to me). PROLOG would also be great.

In addition to BioPerl, you may want to check out Python/BioPython. In certain cliques, Python code is considered to be more scalable/maintainable than Perl code. I won't indulge in a holy war here, but I believe both have their advantages. (Though currently BioPerl is *far* more popular).

As for what you should be doing at this level, personally I'd stop fretting about what programming language to learn. You're obviously a bright person, so picking up new languages is no big deal. No matter what language you learn today, you can count on the fact that n years from now it won't be trendy and all the buzz will be about [cool new language x]. What I'd focus on is the actual *content* of the field rather than the implementations. Read up on the basic algorithms (stuff like Smith-Waterman), take a look at genefinding (HMMs and neural nets), secondary structure prediction, and so forth. This knowledge will never go out of date.

Finally, the disclaimer: Everything I've said here is a matter of personal opinion. I've been awake for well over 24 hours at this point and still haven't had my morning coffee.. so if the sentences even parse, I'll be amazed ;) The point is: take everything I've said with a grain of salt. So *I* don't think med school is necessarily the right path. That doesn't mean that it isn't. If med school is something that you really want to do, then do it! The bottom line is that there is no such thing as the "canonical path to bioinformatics".. and even if there were, there will still be infinitely many other paths.

The only really good piece of advice I can give you is: do what will make you happy.

I hope that was moderately coherent and helpful in some way =)

Re:Oatmeal

[larry bagina]

Smart Money's 10 sinking careers:

1. Crack Whore
2. Day Trader
3. Monica Lewinski's dry cleaner
4. goatse's proctologist
5. Arthur Andersen accountant
6. Enron Executive
7. Palestinian Suicide Bomber
8. Taliban soldier
9. Al Gore
10. Slashdot spellchecker

Just one word ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Plastics!

A.I. Programmer

[DarkHelmet]

"You have to build in a personality, responses and realistic behavior for any characters you encounter," she says.

That's funny. Why do you have to build a personality into something that's fake when so many real people I know don't have one anyway.

Salaries start at $50,000 and climb to $70,000 to $80,000 after a few years.

Now tell me, is that estimate real, or artificial?

You'll need a four-year degree in either computer science with an A.I. specialty ...

Oh yes, not to mention a LISSSSSSSSSSSTHP.

i agree

[Anonymous Coward]

i would also have to say that the top 10 is missing a major market: HIV/AIDS workers. with homosexuality and homosexuality-related diseases increasing in proportion to population growth in westernized societies, i'm predicting a major need for people in these fields.

Re:i agree

[3.5 stripes]

Funny, most of the growth in AIDS infections is in minorities (and africa, but that's not westernized) and is not specifically related to homosexuality.
I'm not denying it is a factor, but you have to be pretty myopic to believe that only homosexuality is responsible for this mess.

Cab Rank Rule

[JWhitlock]

According to this website (about midway down),

There is also a professional rule among barristers, known as the 'cab-rank rule', which is intended to prevent them taking on only those cases which they think they will win. The rule says, in effect, that provided a barrister has sufficient time and the necessary expertise, he or she will take on any case which is offered; like a taxi-cab at a rank.

From this site:

Chief Justice Phillips: The Cab Rank Rule shortly stated, is that it's the advocate's duty to act for and to do the very best for a client regardless of any personal feelings, and it really has its origins in the conduct and writings of a very famous 18th Century advocate in England, Thomas Erskine. Erskine was briefed to defend the famous pamphleteer Thomas Paine who was charged with sedition because he'd written some very rude things about the King.

Erskine thoroughly disapproved of Paine and his writings but he was determined to represent him because he thought it was his duty to do so. In fact the King put a lot of pressure on Erskine to return the brief, and he refused, and the King punished him because he removed from him a very valuable office that he held of Attorney-General to the Prince of Wales.

And I think, although other people had been acting in a similar way up to that time, it was Erskine's eminence - he was the most brilliant English advocate of the 18th Century - which brought about the universal acceptance of this ethical duty.

It wasn't easy to find this info - most web sites that use the term are for lawyers, and assume that they learned the term at some point in law school. At this point, I will resist the temptation to say that any lawyer would define the term for you, for a small hourly fee.

Re:Cab Rank Rule

[panurge]

The "cab rank rule" has the minor caveat that lawyers don't take on clients who cannot afford their fees. Whether you get justice or not depends on whether you can afford a newly qualified, inexperienced lawyer who hasn't got into a big firm, or a large firm who can put a team of maybe 20 experienced lawyers on your case, with so much muscle that they can intimidate the judge and the jury. In complex issues like IP and competition law, which is being made up as it goes along, the small guy is at an immense disadvantage.

If you doubt this, consider. The average income of barristers (attorneys) in the UK is around $50k per annum. The income of the big guys is up to $5000000.
You might think this was against the interests of clients. But if you're a multinational, by paying the big lawyers so much, still peanuts to you, you effectively make them unaffordable by the smaller competition. You buy them, but in a way that it looks as if they haven't been bought.

Re:Cab Rank Rule

[Slashamatic]

It is a side comment to the porinciple of The Cab Rank Rule, but this is also one of the reasons that the death penalty was dropped in England and Wales. When a capital offence was to be tried, if the defendant did not have anyone suitable, a solicitor and barrister would be appointed (the appointment could be theoretically refused, but couldn't be in practice). They would be paid out of the public purse but as they were expected to be the best, this was at a substantial discount to their normal fees. Whether or not the solitor/barrister had any qualms about the death penalty, they hated to be tied up in a murder case which they couldn't refuse.

Re:Cab Rank Rule

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this ethic of the lawyer not judging his or her client is the main reason so many non-laywers see lawyers as unethical. It really is a very different standard than the ethics of the rest of us. For example in engineering, our professional ethics require us to defy our employers if we feel we are creating something that would endanger people (weather many engineers actually live up to this is another matter). For non-lawyer proffesionals, passing judgements based on our broader understanding of the consequences for the world is the core of our proffesional ethics (indeed this is one of the justifications for making us take liberal arts classes, to make us aware of the broader world beyond technical issues). I'm not saying if it is right or wrong, but lawyers are held to essentially the opposite standard, they are supposed to withhold judgement and do everything in their power to help the client, regardless of their personal opinion. I think one of the main reasons for this difference is because the legal profession has a designated judge assigned to, well, make judgements and it is important to keep some distance between the one who makes judgements and the clients for objectivity. In engineering, there is no assigned judge of things. Everyone involved in a project needs to be evaluating, forming opinions and acting on their judgement.

Re:Oatmeal

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot Assistant Crack Whore :)

The best of both worlds.

[MongooseCN]

Let's see, I'm a software contractor now so I could switch that over to AI programming, but I also ride my bike to work through rush hour traffic in Boston every morning, so could I be an Adventure Travel Guide too?

Data Mining.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but that just conjures images of spammers being killed by claymores.

Now *that's* a job I'd love to have, especially if they let you go in at close range to finish 'em off.

Can't Choose?! Chemical Engineers do it all!

[Salis]

Well, except for the rare athletic, daring, and adventurous ChemE (all three of them ;), maybe being an Adventure Guide is out...

But ChemEs can do the rest!

Seriously, graduating with a ChemE degree, I can pick from four of the 'hot' jobs listed:

IP Lawyer, Bioinformatician, Fuel Cells, or Data Mining.

Really, data mining & bioinformatics are basically the same. Bioinformatics assumes you have a working knowledge of biology & biochemistry and can apply it to computer programming. But, it is much easier to learn biology than it is to learn data mining. But, without a very good mathematical background (Partial Diff Eqs, etc), you can kiss being an exceptional data miner out the window.

People underestimate the utility of mathematics. :(

Salis

Re:Can't Choose?! Chemical Engineers do it all!

[Anonymous Coward]

While I think you're very, very right and extremely clever to suggest the ChemE degree, I believe you are so wroooong about the reasons why. Contrary to your implications it is neither easy nor quick to understand biochemistry, nor is any heavy math is required for most data mining.

Re:Can't Choose?! Chemical Engineers do it all!

[Salis]

There are two ways to learn biochemistry:

Analytically or through memorization...

In high school, I had to memorize the entire TCA cycle & glycolysis _structures_ and mechanisms (all that was known at the time, ~90%). I also had to learn why it works the way it does..and what its purpose was.

In college, they made us do the same thing...except they never cared about structures or mechanisms...and they didn't go into details into why it works.

As an engineer, that's bullsh!t. You start learning how enzymes _actually_ work, examining their active sites and methods of reducing enthalpy and increasing entropy, and you can understand how all functional enzymes work.

You learn control theory (non-linear) and can easily apply it to enzyme pathway feedback loops and regulatory mechanisms.

You learn heat and mass transport (good god, do we ever) and can apply it to concentration gradients in neurons, mitochondria, enzyme transporters, and general cell-signalling.

So instead of memorizing the names of a thousand enzymes, what they catalyze, and what order they come in (...and the order is defined by us in our minds...not in the body necessarily), engineers are more prone to _understand_ how and why it works on a very broad scale, enabling us to apply it to any enzyme, to any pathway, to any system.

I've taken some advanced biochem courses and I have never heard any discussion on the physical forces involved when enzymes catalyze reactions.

I needed to take a protein engineering course to get that.

And that's my rationale.

As far as data mining, I said if you wanted to be an exceptional data miner, you needed math. You can always take other people's algorithms, but sooner than later, you gotta roll your own. And that requires understanding.

Salis

Can't spell GEEK without EE!!

[MicroBerto]

Sounds like it's still (and will be for a long time) a great time to be an electrical/computer engineer! Of course, it's not worth it if you don't enjoy what you're doing, especially in EE fields!

Proud ECE student at The Ohio State University,

Re:Can't spell GEEK without EE!!

[nil_null]

True that. Everyone is acting like the computer field is dead. My mom tells me I should've done something else. I don't get it. I guess its because of the dot-com crash that people have this impression. I'm an comp eng grad (c/o 2000) and I've got a great job. Going to get a masters degree now.

Re:Can't spell GEEK without EE!!

[ObviousGuy]

You can't spell goatse.cx without the CS!

Meaningless Titles

[nathanh]

I really hate the over-inflated titles that computer mechanics keep giving themselves. I'm sick of seeing business cards for Software Engineers and Network Architects.

So what's next? Computer Surgeon? Information Astronaut? Why not go the whole nine yards and call yourself a Software Deity or Network Visionary?

I want to see some realism in titles. The person paid to maintain legacy COBOL should be called a Code Janitor. The person who designs networks should be called a Network Foreman. And anybody who writes code should be called a Software Author.

But please, enough with the self-aggrandizing titles.

Re:Meaningless Titles

[Elvises]

Oh, fer chrissakes. One way to describe a surgeon is a human body Mechanic. Would it make you feel better if they referred to themselves that way?

People like to feel important - hence Admin Assistant instead of Secretary. If someone wants to call themselves a Sanitation Engineer (or MCSE for that matter) I say God bless 'em -- I doubt they have any illusions of pulling down six figures anytime soon.

Re:Meaningless Titles

[Kintanon]

Hmmm... So I should get rid of my 'Network God' business cards? Man! And I really liked the seraphim and trumpets I got with them...

Kintanon

Re:Meaningless Titles

[Anomie-ous Cow-ard]

The person paid to maintain legacy COBOL should be called a Code Janitor.

I don't think that quite fits, although i don't have a better suggestion for you. The job 'janitor' tends to involve cleaning and minor maintenance, while your example involves little cleaning and rather more maintenance.

At least, i suspect you're pleased with the Linux Kernel Janitors?

The person who designs networks should be called a Network Foreman

Hmmm... Actually, "Network Architect" sounds more appropriate for someone who designs networks. Someone who manages a group of people to build the network to those specifications would be a "Network Foreman".

And anybody who writes code should be called a Software Author.

Among other things, we are.

Re your comment about "Software Engineers", several dictionaries seem to define 'engineer' as "One who is trained or professionally engaged in a branch of engineering", and 'engineering' as "The application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems." How does that not include computer programming?

Why not go the whole nine yards and call yourself a Software Deity?

Because i don't have to, others do it for me? ;)

Re:Meaningless Titles

[freeschwag]

No kidding...try TECHNICIAN on for size....that term is so bastardized I'm embarrassed to use it. I've been a Electronic Calibration TECHNICIAN for 10 years, doing component level electronic repair, but the f-ing secretary down the hall has been doing data entry for her first 2 weeks out of high school...viola, a Data Entry TECHNICIAN, give me a break.

Re:Meaningless Titles

[maggotbrain_777]

I've always been partial to the title of 'Protocol Stud',myself. That with the tagline 'If you weren't so fucked up, you wouldn't need me.' always netted me th emost lucrative contracts...

Re:Meaningless Titles

[Slashamatic]

Sorry I'm not a Code Janitor, I'm a software archeologist. The code is the documentation for the older stuff so you have to dig deep and extract meaning from the Cobol crud here (which is still being written).

Re:Meaningless Titles

[squaretorus]

The finest titles I saw on business cards in the past couple of years:

Chief Entrepreneur
Code Jockey (this guy was a grade-A twat)
Architect (he just dropped the 'software' from it, coole enough guy, but so far up his own arse he could fart dandruff off his shoulder)
The Man (this guy was boss of a smaller software start up. Didn't want to be MD, Boss, whatever - so 'the man' - again, cool enough but beleived the hype)

But yep - couldn't agree more - sensible titles all round please - why not just all be called 'coder'?

Re:Meaningless Titles

[Te1waz]

You obviously know nothing of legacy COBOL systems.

It's hard enough getting programmers to work on these less 'sexy' systems as it is, but what with 'no disclosure' contracts it's hard for COBOL programmers to feel they are well compensated for working on antiquated, complicated and sometimes wholly illogical systems. Companies need to be able to give 'ego boosting' titles to their staff in order to make up for the less than ego boosting salaries, otherwise they'll all run off to work on Lotus Notes, Visual Basic or the other easy stuff(?).

Sometimes titles adopted by those seeking work are related to the degree they obtained, not me though, Information Engineer or Computer Scientist doesn't say a lot...

And if you think the technical titles sound grandiose, you should see Management titles these days(although all I'd get is 'Lord of the Privvies' or something. I'm not even important enough to get 'business cards' and all my colleagues got given them...

Re:Meaningless Titles

[Anonymous Coward]

Computer programmers are not noted for their
mathematical skills. The level of methematics
required during programming and design in most
cases is not grater than the begginer algebra
level. I am a computer engineer (that is electrical eng.)
and i am willing to bet you that very few
CS majors, if any, have the skills to attend
electical eng. classes. In contrast, a mechanical
engineer should be comfortable with the mathematics
in electical eng. cources.

Re:Meaningless Titles

[ProfBooty]

Software evangelist is my favorite, Cisco has a bunch of them.

Re:Meaningless Titles

[ProfBooty]

I feel the same way about the title engineer, you get people with that title who don't do engineering or even engineering work.

it devalues the meaning of the word for those to whom the term originally implies in order to raise the self esteem of those in less technical jobs.

Re:Meaningless Titles

[jo42]

"IT Guru" - it's mine and you can't have it!

Where is...

[ArcadeNut]

Prostitute? I would think that job would be on the RISE all the time...

Home Care Nurse 'hot'?

[Internet Ninja]

My wife cares for highly disable individuals including quad, tetra- and paraplegic individuals.
She's required to perform simple tasks such as toileting, showering, preparing and feeding of meals. Sounds easy? Wrong!

Other things she has to do include manual extractions (removing faeces from the bowel by hand), changing leg bags, removal and fitting of tampons, and insertion of catheters.

One of the problems with profoundly disabled people is that having someone do all this stuff while you're so powerless can be a source of shame. Additionally, newly disabled people can have personality problems - this is usually a male thing because their penis's do not function correctly so they usually verbalize their aggression. Quadraplegics are usually living on borrowed time mainly die to kidney failure.

So she doesn't only have to be competent to do all the physical work, but she also has to be acutely aware of the mental needs of the patient so they don't feed shame or embarresment or anything else negative.

Think about it for a second. Could you keep someones mind off what was going on while you were inserting a tube in their penis?

So don't think it's a 'hot' job. It's a job that requires knowledge, skill, and above all - compassion.

Accuracy?

[asv108]

How can anyone accuratly predict what the top 10 jobs will be in this decade. Does anyone have a list of so-called hot jobs from 1992? I doubt they mentioned anything dealing with e-commerce.

Dubious Ethical Value???

[Compulawyer]

IP lawyer! Give me a break! Last time I checked software companies made money by SELLING software. IP laws are the only things that protect intangibles like software and allow companies to actually realize a return on their investment.

Uninformed people complain about software patents because they are "bad." No one ever quantifies "bad" or defines "bad." They simply label patents as "bad." What these people reason from is the flawed premise that because something is easy to copy (i.e. - I can write code to do that) that it is unworthy of protection. They could not be further from the truth.

Without IP laws there will be no innovation. History discloses thousands of inventions that are easy to copy. It is precisely because someone CAN copy an invention, getting the benefits without the development costs incurred by the original inventor that the patent and other IP laws exist.

Flame away ... I'm expecting a karma hit. But I'll keep writing those software patents and suing the theives (yes -- THEIVES) who infringe them anyway.

Re:Dubious Ethical Value???

[Kintanon]

Flame away ... I'm expecting a karma hit. But I'll keep writing those software patents and suing the theives (yes -- THEIVES) who infringe them anyway.


No! Not 'THEIVES' you imbecile, Thieves! And the lack of IP laws didn't stop Leonardo De'Vinci from inventing a whole SHITLOAD of stuff, nor did it stop anyone before him. If you do something first and you do it best, you'll make money off of it, regardless of whether someone else copies it later. So quit bitching.

Kintanon

Re:Dubious Ethical Value???

[Random Data]

Uninformed people complain about software patents because they are "bad." No one ever quantifies "bad" or defines "bad." They simply label patents as "bad." What these people reason from is the flawed premise that because something is easy to copy (i.e. - I can write code to do that) that it is unworthy of protection. They could not be further from the truth.

And here I thought a lawyer might know the difference between copyright and patents. Yes, you can patent software in the current US legal environment. However, the pace of development in the IT industry is such that this patent effectively removes a way forward for everyone else, even if they independently develop a similar system.
To sell a piece of software you only need to hold copyright on that software (or more correctly, have a license from the copyright holder to do so, but let's not get picky). From my point of view if someone legitimately codes something to do the same thing, without reverse engineering or stealing copyrighted code, they should be able to. What's next, a patent for a self help guide for Windows [Next Version]?

Flame away ... I'm expecting a karma hit. But I'll keep writing those software patents and suing the theives (yes -- THEIVES) who infringe them anyway.

For a lawyer you sure can't spell "thieves" very well. I thought pedantic attention to detail was your job?

Re:Dubious Ethical Value???

[Percy_Blakeney]

Uninformed people complain about software patents because they are "bad." No one ever quantifies "bad" or defines "bad." They simply label patents as "bad." What these people reason from is the flawed premise that because something is easy to copy (i.e. - I can write code to do that) that it is unworthy of protection. They could not be further from the truth.

No, you don't understand the argument. Patents are bad when they betray the very thing that they seek to create -- new ideas. The fact that something is easy to copy has nothing to do with the patent argument.

Have you ever thought about what patents do to a field where there is already rampant innovation? People are coming up with new ideas all the time in the world of software. When things are moving as quickly as they are, patents tend to discourage innovation by threatening developers with the chance of a lawsuit. If I independently come up with a great idea, and then find out that Microsoft has a patent on a distant, yet vaguely similar concept, there is no way in hell that I will further develop on that idea. I would rather try to find something that involves less risk, even if Microsoft's patent doesn't seem to cover my new idea.

This is somewhat tolerable in most other fields, as the idea overlap tends not to happen quite so frequently, but the world of software is a very young field where new ideas happen every minute (of course, it depends on what you call a "new idea," but I'm using the term loosely here, just like the Patent Office does.)

Without IP laws there will be no innovation.

That is very easily disproved. Have you ever noticed that one of the most innovative things to come along in recent years -- the Web -- is not patented? Keep your eyes open; you'll notice a lot of things in society that are innovative, yet not patented.

But I'll keep writing those software patents and suing the theives (yes -- THEIVES) who infringe them anyway.

I feel sorry for the poor guy who comes up with "your" idea on his own. In all reality, he wouldn't have "stolen" the idea from you, but you can sue him into oblivion anyway. Between you and him, I can honestly say that you are the thief, as you are the one who are stealing his money for the crime of thinking up something new. Kind of ironic, isn't it?

Of course, patents do have a place in the world. I just don't believe that software is a placed where they are needed at the moment. You should really look into how software patents are being used by companies now; it reminds me more of the Cold War philosophy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) than of promoting the arts and sciences.

Re:Dubious Ethical Value???

[torokun]

Sorry, bud, this is not true.

Anecdotal evidence it may be, but my wife's grandfather invented tons of stuff in Korea. He had his ideas stolen by big corporations when he proposed the ideas to them, not understanding the patent system at the time... They took his ideas and never called him back, making tons of money from them. I've heard about this happening over and over, even when the inventors made them sign NDAs, etc.

Leonardo never was able to produce most of his so-called inventions. He wrote them in his journals, and sometimes built models for his jollies. He never really made money from his more innovative creations, but rather from his painting.

It is a fact that we need protection for inventors, not just to protect corporate inventors, but to protect individual inventors from greedy corporations...

BTW, it's 'Da Vinci', not 'De'Vinci'. Are you an "imbecile" as well?

Re:Dubious Ethical Value???

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, it's "da Vinci", not "Da Vinci".

Re:Dubious Ethical Value???

[Kintanon]

Of course I'm an imbecile. We all are. >:) But I've seen it spelled both ways from semi-reputable sources, so I tend to use both.
As for inventing and making money, your grandfather made the cardinal mistake, he tried to get rich quick by selling the invention to someone else instead of making it himself. If you invent something, you should then begin to produce it, or go to some bankers and get a loan to start a company which produces it. You don't go showing it to people who can then copy it and use it. You DO IT YOURSELF.

Kintanon

Re:Dubious Ethical Value???

[Anonymous Coward]

Most inventors I've ever heard of are keen on invention, not production. That's why they're called inventors, they go on to invent other things, not to produce their very first invention.

Re:Dubious Ethical Value???

[Kintanon]

Then their motive isn't to make money is it? It's to invent stuff. If they want to make money they should find a partner who will market and produce their inventions. Not try to sell them off to corps for a quick buck.

Kintanon

Careers They Never Told Me About

[Greyfox]

When I was a lad, I was quite good at catching lizards and spiders and creepy crawly things. Fifteen years after I decide on a career in IT, I tune into Animal Planet and they've got several folks on there who make a living catching the biggest damn lizards you've ever seen, along with all sorts of other creepy crawly things. If ONLY someone had TOLD me!

Forget the lists

[Anonymous Coward]

The really hot jobs, which will allow you to make a good living, live where you want (not in silicon valley) are the trades. There is a serious shortage, you can work for someone or yourself, schooling is quite cheap and short, and you can tell the mouthy programmers, nuclear physicists etc 'if you want it fixed, money up front'.

Derek

Bogus advice

[Anonymous Coward]

Ten years ago, the career counselors were "shepparding" people into parallegal and computer software. Guess what? We we still need software people! Parallegal? It got filled very quickly. The longevity of these fields obviously depends on not on supply and demand, but future supply rates and growth. Supply is affected not only by the level of degree required, and how long it takes to get that degree, but the level of relative scarcity of inviduals capable of comprehending that subject matter. I mean anyone can *file*, but apparently a large number of people just cannot *code*. I know, I've met them. And tomorrow's demand is also affected by how truly *deep* that demand is. Yesterday's OS programmers became today's Java architects. By contrast, yesterday's paralegals became today's ... paralegals. So on the basis of this argument, what can we see for bioinfomatics, for instance, versus Data Mining?

Bioinfomatics spans multiple fields, thus making the field doubly intimidating. Not only will student think "I'm a programmer", but "I'm a geneticist". On the flip side, more women might just be encouraged to enter the field, as women tend to be more interested in biology than in any other science. However, grasping both the catgorical, the empirical, and the logical mental frameworks to work with bioinfomatics will still be a scarce trait. Thus, I can expect bioinfomatics to be a degree not commonly successfully pursued. Bioinfomatics can also be expected to continue to grow. The more we learn more about DNA, the more we will think of ways to use the information, and so the more the demand for bioinfomatics experts.

Data mining, on the other hand, can easily be filled, and its growth is linear. Once the positions are filled, and the tools come along to further automate the labor (as happened with paralegal in the 80's), the labor market will dry up.

Me? I'm taking a job working on a Beowulf Cluster. Oh yeah, and helping the bioninfomatics group parallelize their code for it.

Enjoyment and skills and no jobs=$0

[Anomie-ous Cow-ard]

Or so is the impression i get from a string of articles like this...

(i purposefully chose a link that should display only comments, not the actual question. The many comments of "you're screwed, we're in a recession" are more telling than someone asking about certs.)

Nice Fucking Timing.

[teamhasnoi]

Christ. Both my parents are Speech Pathologists, andd have been for the last 30 years. Where was the HOT JOBS List 20 years ago? Then I could have gotten to ride to school in a Porsche instead of a rusty Ford truck.

Everyone can take the hot jobs and shove them up their ass.

If you want some real jobs with growth potential for the future, here's a real list.

1.Terrorist
2.Undertaker
3.Disney Congresswhore
4.Presidential Oil Rig Tech
5.Media Manipulator
6.Political Aide Professional Killer
7.Infomercial Producer
8.College Athlete
9.Fuck You
10.Hot Jobs List Maker

Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life.

Mod it up your ass, I'm pegged at 50.

Re:Nice Fucking Timing.

[espilce]

9.Fuck You

Sorry, punk music died fifteen years ago. That attitude stopped being profitable when "Excuse me, I'm emo" and "BOING! BOING! POPPY POP!" overtook the market.

Re:Nice Fucking Timing.

[teamhasnoi]

Sorry, punk music lives. See that Green Day Video where he knocks the handset off the pay phone. That's super-punk-rock. I think he had a real leather jacket too.

grow up slash dot wankers

[Anonymous Coward]

you fucking socialists, wake up to yourselves and stop being choir boys for RMS.

Scumbags

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, my girlfriend's a forensic accountant. You'd be suprised how interesting the job actually is.

Grid Computing Developers

[tellurian]

With what the Internet did for information sharing, Grid computing will do for resource sharing. Grid application developers will be in high demand to tap into this new area which has the potential to change the way we use the Internet. Just ask IBM, Microsoft, and Sun.

--
The state of Grid Computing
The Grid Report

CVS?

[jcsehak]

I want to be a Corporate Visionary Strategist, so I can prove my mom wrong -- you can get paid for daydreaming all day.

IP lawyers? Dubious? I dont believe I am thank you

[geeklawyer]

IAAIPL.

I hate to inject any rationality into an empty jibe but I am not evil or dubious, for the most part. Most lawyers are merely professionals paid to represent the interests of their employers, whoever they may be. Some employers [fill in your favourite hate figures here] are aggressive cynical corrupt and manipulative and they will use the law to enforce those objectives. Lawyers are the merely the tools for doing that and any lawyer who takes his job seriously will do it to the best of his ability, I do.
Equally of course lawyers like everyone else have a moral framework and lawyers values differ. Many lawyers do their training and do not ever get the opportunity to see the wider picture. This happens because you are trained in your discipline and get a job with a partnership or a firm and become inculcated in the traditions and value of your industrial sector. Certain things become a given because they become a habit: "patents are useful to us so they must be generally good." "Trademarks are very valuable so we must prevent anyone useing them in ways we dislike lest they become less valuable" etc., etc. Most IP lawyers are taught policy issues and legal history but they are not, in my experience, given much academic prominence. I tend to think also they are too inclined to be implicity pro- rights holders but without seeing the wider social context. This is a failing of universities and to some extent,through a lack of introspection in the profession itself.
Lawyers like all members of society vary in their integrity: at the bottom of the market you will find the ambulance chaser and the mafia conciliere(sp?) but even these fellows are just trying to make a living in a cut throat difficult world, by contrast geeks have been know to accept jobs with Microsoft and the *IAA. Many American lawyers I know will not act improperly and will not lie and twist the truth for clients. And even those unethical lawyers with dubious morals will know that there can be a market value in acting ethically.

It should also be said that it is a peculiarly American thing to hate lawyers so much, in my country, England, and I belive Europe it is a high prestige and entirely respectable job. The difference arises in part because of the different charging structure of the professions. In America there is the contingency fee which often gives lawyers a personal stake in the case and this has distorted the ethics of some classes of practitioner. In the UK and Europe we are more likely to be disspationate advisors, although regretably UK practise is being polluted by American values and in some respects we may be slowly sliding into the American cesspool.

There are also certainly double standards here: I have helped a number of free/OpenSource groups on some high profile IP issues such as the DMCA, p2p ,IP, libel, etc. and everyone just loves my free advice. But the moment I act for a corporate group against warez groups or a legitimate IP issue I am slime. IP is, with the exception of patents, a useful and proper asset to industry providing it is reasonably constrained and not distorted in favour of any one group

if you really must carp at least choose the most suitable target: vested interests such as corporate groups and corrupt government. They provide the source of almost all the abberant behaviour you hate.

Taking a dig at lawyers is just cheap. [nik removed due to DMCA violation]

Example of a good software patent?

[BCoates]

All we ever hear about are obviously bogus software patents--ones that ignoring the "software" issue, are just new patents on old ideas. Do you have some examples of good software patents, describing a new, non-obvious software invention? Either ones you've worked on or just others you've run across...

--
Benjamin Coates

Maybe...

[Black-Man]

Do you want to work the off-shift hours and the weekends - like retail... or you can work in one of those assembly line - like pharmacy's. Oh, and the one's working at the hospitals... they just love being dissed by the doctors all the time.

Not as glorious career as it may seem.

Re:Maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see you speak from experience. I got the hell out of pharmacy and am a lot happier as a programmer, even if I do make 20k less per year.

Dubious jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Among them, many familiar to slashdotters (wireless engineer) and several of those are of dubious ethical value (data miner, IP lawyer).

I dunno, all three look like they should be filed under dubious ethical value.

Everyone - quick!!

[Mr. Foogle]

Everybody, quick, stampede off to school and learn the skills you'll need to succeed at any of these jobs. You DON'T need to have passion for what you do - the money will be soooo good.

See, CNE, MCSE, the crop of lawyers that graduated in the 90s etc. etc.

my recomendation

[ProfBooty]

Get an engineering degree, this will allow you to enter nearly any field. if yoy want to continue in the tech field get your ms/phd in engineering, but if you want to make more money and can read and write well or are interested in managing people, get your law degree or mba.

Very few engineers enter these areas, and you can make aton of money. Your engineering degree shows that you can think rationally and logically, skills which apply to other areas than design.

Most engineers aren't engineers their whole lives, at some point they move on to management, as your knowledge isn't as up to date (unless you keep it up to date via classes degrees etc). Getting an advanced degree in something else just opens more doors.

Meaningless titles - to a degree

[(trb001)]

I have to agree with you on one point...the software engineer title. I spent 4 years in school as a computer engineer only to come out and be working with lots of CS majors who called themselves software engineers. I feel like 'engineer' is a function of your training, similar to a doctor or a lawyer. Different mindset, different coursework. I think it's an earned title.

--trb

Re:Meaningless titles - to a degree

[Dirk Pitt]

Gimme a break. This is just snobery. Are you a PE? What's that? There is no professional engineer testing given by the NSPE for CompEs? Most MechEs and some EEs wouldn't consider you an engineer either then.

Most CS guys call themselves engineers because that's what most of them do--engineer computer software. They aren't doing theoretical research in the field of algorithms or other pertinent fields, they're designing and building complex systems.

As for different mindset, different coursework, where did you go to school? I have a BSE (and now ME) in CS, that was granted to me from an ACM accredited institution. I took digital design classes, automata, diff eq, physics for eng, and many of the classes that the CompE guys took. Those guys had more specialized hardware courses, as I'm sure you did, like heat transfer and signals, and I had DB theory, compiler theory, etc.

Now, certainly there are still non-accredited so-called CS programs that grant BS degrees through arts and science schools, but before you scoff at the guy who calls himself a software engineer, keep in mind he might have more credits earned from the engineering college, and if you earned your degree in four years probably more co-op time, than you.

Re:Meaningless titles - to a degree

[(trb001)]

Gimme a break. This is just snobery.

Yeah, it is snobbery, but I believe it's well deserved snobbery. If, like you said, the CS degree is given through the engineering school then it probably is more of a software engineering degree and should be called that. But a great many CS majors that I know (it all depends on the university) graduated with a BA. They took the CpE's entry level courses (up through 1 or 2 2nd year classes) and that was it. No applied knowledge of hardware other than classes on drivers.

Ofcourse, it all depends on what kind of person you are and what kind of curriculum you went through. If you took dgitial design, good, it should be required for anyone working with a computer. Did you take microprocessor courses? Did you ever actually wire a computer together, solder in the connections and then write code for it? Our CS majors didn't, they never touched hardware. How about learning why memory is designed the way it is? Bus architecture? Software is all well and good, but it doesn't do much without the hardware so you should at least have an understanding of what you're developing a system on. I would argue that engineers think differently than other majors because of the type of coursework they had to take.

I didn't co-op, but I did intern every summer and worked as a sysadmin, programmer and hardware technician (which I define as a job that requires soldering and basic electrical knowledge) during the year for the college. I would consider that to have equal weight to a co-op.

Perhaps there shouldn't BE a software engineering title, since I don't really consider developing software to be an engineering practice. But it shouldn't be given to someone who hasn't gone through an engineering curriculum.

--trb

Re:Meaningless titles - to a degree

[WinDoze]

(Disclaimer - I have a coupla CS degrees)

A colleague last week remarked how any degree with the word "Science" in it is anything but, and is just trying to sound more impressive. Hence, "Social Science", "Political Science", and "Computer Science".

Not that I agree being a CS-type, but it made me think...

yet again

[AssFace]

crackwhore doesn't make the list.
a real tragedy I tell you.

Re:IP lawyers? Dubious? I dont believe I am thank

[H-1B_visas_suck]

Neither are patent agents evil/dubious. I am (almost) a patent agent and work with IP lawyers daily. We are more or less geeks who can write. We tool around with perl scripts in our spare time, etc., thus qualifying us for geekhood.

Lawyers are hated for a simple reason.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no other profession *in the world* that I can think of which has the circular relationship with themselves that lawyers do.

A lawyer uses laws... that lawyers help to make. Lawyers become judges that rule on those laws. Most politicians are lawyers, and they are the ones who make the laws.

So they make themselves useful by obfuscating laws that they write, that they rule over, and that they in turn have made into policy by their interpretations. They set precedents by winnning or losing cases that they try....

You wonder why people hate lawyers? They have the power, they create their own power, and they decide how where and when to apply the power, taught by other lawyers in law school.....

Can you imagine what the world would be like if engineers had this type of monopoly?

Pick a "hot" because you'll be switching anyway

[edstromp]

I'm all for working in a field you really love, but you must also remember that the average person switches jobs every 2 years, and switches careers about 6 times during their working years. Sometimes, you just need to plan ahead and find a position that will pay for your life, and one that you might learn to love.

I remember starting college... They said that 50% (maybe higher) of the jobs that we would take upon graduation had not even been invented yet. I have certainly found this true. You always have to keep teaching yourself new things to stay on top.

What you love can always change.

Lawyers?!

[cornflux]

America has been called the most litigious society in history, so there's no doubting the need for lawyers. But intellectual-property attorneys-specifically, patent lawyers-have the sunniest prospects of all.

I guess I'm the only one that thinks fewer lawyers would be better!

Too bad patent examiner didn't make their list. Eisntein would be proud.

Law.com article on IP laywers

[scubacuda]

Law.com has an article about schools offering LL.M. degrees in intellectual property as a way to try to catch the latest wave.

Taken from Smart Money:

America has been called the most litigious society in history, so there's no doubting the need for lawyers. But intellectual-property attorneys-specifically, patent lawyers-have the sunniest prospects of all. Every burgeoning biotech firm has to patent its research, weave through regulations and fend off competitors trying to steal its work. Intellectual-property-related squabbling is rising in the software and engineering worlds, too. "Legal recruiters are saying demand is going to remain high in the future," says William Seaton, founder of legal careers site Emplawyernet.com. Starting pay for business lawyers ranges from $60,000 to $86,000. Intellectual-property attorneys, says Seaton, can make 20 percent more.

How to become one: In addition to your JD, it's good to have a technical bachelor's, such as chemical engineering. And for patent work, you must pass a special federal bar exam.