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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!"
our IP Lawyer's (2) account for 20% of my company's yearly revenue.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
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.
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.
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.
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?
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
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.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
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.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
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.
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.
hi!