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Leveraging Development Skills in Other Fields?
It Can't Be All Bad asks: "I've been working as a programmer for a few years now, and I really love the work. I'm trying to think ahead of possible ways to leverage my skills into more specific areas where programmers are welcome and can find work. Areas like bio and chemical informatics appear very interesting ,but for the most part they seem to be for chem/bio majors with masters degrees. My biggest problem is that I'm self taught with only about a years worth of college experience. At this point in my life (with a family, kids, and bills), going back to school just isn't an option anymore. I wanted to know if anyone has had any success utilizing their development skills in specific fields that don't require masters degrees, and what areas I could be overlooking. Like most people here, I just want to be a part of exciting projects with some sort of purpose behind them."
I have found it well worth while to find jobs at small companies that are related to the field you are intrested in.. sure there isn't a huge ladder to climb up but you get a few years in the field and if your company is any good you get a good reputation.. then you can move up and to a larger company that is what you want.
.. they want to see it get bigger.
if you don't have the papers you must show your experience - best to start out small as they are the most likly to let you try - and if you can prove your self you can open doors..
but on the other hand i went back to the small company because i like the work better and the people are nice and not just out for a paycheck
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Although I mostly studied programming in my college Comp Sci major, most of what I actually learned (other than syntax) was problem solving. Self-taught or not, if you have what it takes to be a good programmer, you probably have what it takes to be good at other jobs which are about finding the solutions to problems. OK, maybe not social work or politics, but anything combining analytics with creativity... so if anyone asks about your academic credentials, point out what your real qualification is.
Find something that interest you, not where you think there are jobs...
Not to sound rude or anything but the best thing you can do is pick some area that you are actually interested in. You mentioned that you are interested because you can get work in those areas. You have a much higher chance of succeeding if you don't pick your career path based on potential jobs but truly on what you find fascinating. This will allow you to pick it up much quicker and if you express this interest in your work you will certainly do better work and be able to advance quicker. I am sure this might not be you, but there are way too many people that say they're interested in getting into Bioinformatics/Chemoinformatics/etc. I love the field and wouldn't want to work anywhere else, but it's dissappointed to see the applicants flooding with people who have no true interest, or experience for that matter, in any of the relevant fields.
Then I discovered that if I had absolutely no interest in what I was programming I didn't get depressed when management sabotaged it. So now I work for a megacorp and just code what they tell me to code. I get my "working on something interesting/important" fix by working on open source software in my spare time.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I think you misunderstand the point of going into these fields.
The point isn't for the programmer to go around and cure cancer. The idea is that while the medical and chemical engineers are great at what they do, they are not so great at computer science.
So you go into this field *to help them* do their work.
BTW to the OP I'd say look into the fields numerical analysis and informatics. The idea is that when you have to compute a *lot* of data knowing how to best use the processing power is important. It's also very important to know how to mitigate potential errors. And perhaps how to throw together a computation cluster or two.