Ask Slashdot: Which Ph.D For Work In Applied Statistics / C.S.?

New submitter soramimo writes "I'm currently a Ph.D student in Machine Learning and Biology at a pretty good European university. As my lab is moving to the U.S., I have the chance to get my Ph.D from an Ivy League university instead of the one in Europe (without much additional work, as I'm close to finishing). However, I would be getting a Ph.D in Biological Sciences rather than Computer Science. As I'm planning to work as an applied statistician / computer-scientist / analyst in the U.S. after graduating, I'm wondering which path to take. Is a Ph.D in Biological Sciences frowned upon by technology companies, or is it out-weighed by the Ivy League tag? How big of a role does the type of Ph.D play in the hiring process in the U.S., compared to what you actually did (thesis focus, publication record, software)?"

Comments

biology degree...

[Anonymous Coward]

its a funny thing about "biology" degrees. I've seen them mean everything from cutting-edge molecular biology to wildlife biology. and everything in between.

Re:biology degree...

[rwa2]

Meh, you can say the same thing about engineering... could be anywhere from a train conductor or someone who controls the thermostat for a building to someone who sits at a desk and writes papers about splitting atoms in deep space and everything in between.

I think if subby can get their work accepted in the "Quantitative Biology" section of arXiv, they'll probably do all right.

Do you plan to work in the real world?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the world of business, what you did is much more important. Your experience and actual outputs are far more important then the kind of Ph.D you have.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[nothousebroken]

That might be true at the bachelor level, but at the PhD level people hire you for your specialized expertise based on your degree. For example, no brokerage house is going to hire a biology PhD to do statistical analysis research. They're going to hire someone with a PhD in math/statistics. It might be somewhat different if you are going to work for a pharmaceutical or other biology-related company. But in general, don't expect to get a degree in biology and then get job offers from companies looking for a PhD statistician. In fact, I would suggest that you view the corporate PhD hiring process as being quite similar to the faculty hiring process.

A PhD is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, employers immediately assume you are mature, intelligent, and highly-motivated. On the flip side, they are generally not willing to pay PhD salaries to someone outside their field of expertise. Put yourself in the employer's shoes. Why would an employer pay PhD rates for someone who doesn't have a PhD in the required discipline.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who worked in High Finance, I can tell you that you are full of it. Most of the employees were science and liberal arts Ph.D's with very few of those degrees directly relating to what they were working on. My manager (I was doing fixed-income pricers) was a Chemical Engineering doctor, my partner on the project had a Ph.D. in english. There are other examples, but I'll stop there. All that matters is aptitude.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[Anonymous Coward]

if all that matter is "aptitude" why did you all have a PhD? You could hire a genius out of high school in that case.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Ph.D. will be the name of the department you graduate from, but that says little about the work you do. I work in a Department of Anatomy, and some of our students do purely physics work using MRI technology to quantify signal intensities based on a chemical marker. Their Ph.D. will be in Anatomy, but their work will be in Applied Physics.

Your C.V. should show your entire career trajectory, not just a single line with some name of a department on it. In fact, many people simply omit the department name because it is unnecessary. When you apply for jobs, you will write several letters: a general cover letter, a letter introducing your research, a letter proposing future research potential. You will not be judged on the name of your Ph.D., you'll be judged based on how cogently you can write a letter.

In addition, your P.I. may get a primary appointment in one department, but he can also request secondary appointments to OTHER departments, say in Biostatistics, Neuroeconomics, Computational Statistics, etc.. This might benefit him as well, by giving him a stronger association with potential collaborators. One of our professors has 'dual-appointments' in four departments, including Anatomy, Electrical Engineering, and Chemistry, because their research reflects all of these disciplines.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[Anonymous Coward]

> That might be true at the bachelor level, but at the PhD level people hire you for your specialized expertise based on your degree.

Every PhD that I have ever seen just says "Doctor of Philosophy" on it. You can claim any specialization that you want afterwords. It wont matter if he was in a bio department if he studied stats. He just says his PhD was in statistics, and his thesis will back up that claim.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[backwardMechanic]

The faculty hiring process (at least here in Europe) really doesn't care what subject is listed on your certificate, as long as you have the right experience. The title of your thesis is much more important. In fact, people who cross subject boundaries often earn a little extra respect - it helps you to bring new ideas from one field to another. My prof is famous for his work in biochemistry, but his degrees are all in physics. It hasn't hurt him at all. I do not know if this works outside of universities though, where there is likely to be less understanding of the details of your PhD. The hurdle, as ever, is to get past HR so you can speak to someone who actually knows something about the job you've applied for. Sadly, I suspect HR will dismiss anybody who has a PhD in anything other than stats, if that is the job title. I'm not sure CS has any advantage over biology in this case though.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[nothousebroken]

Special cases are just that, special cases. Sure, there are lots of PhDs working outside their degree field. But the reality is that most employers hiring someone fresh out of school are going to too look at what that person did in school, both in terms of the degree field and the dissertation. Companies generally don't pay PhD salaries to new graduates for aptitude. They pay for somebody who is highly educated in the desired discipline and who can hit the ground running. If you don't believe that, just look at a bunch of PhD-level job postings. They don't say: Candidate should have an aptitude for, and ability to learn, statistical analysis". They say something more like: Candidate should have extensive experience in xxx analysis as applied to yyy systems. If someone is many years out of school and can show the requisite experience they might get the job. But even then they could easily lose out to someone with similar experience and PhD in the desired field.

So, yes you can switch fields. Lots of people do. But if you have a PhD in math, you can expect to have an uphill battle convincing people you have PhD-level expertise in biology. You're probably going to have to provide a lot more evidence than the guy with the PhD in biology.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[pigwiggle]

I second that - you are full of it. People are going to look at what a PhD did. I've personally seen brokerage houses recruiting out of computational labs at the University of Chicago. They were looking at people doing computer simulations of large biological systems, among other things. They wanted people with experience in statistical mechanics and and computer modelling. I had a former colleague with a PhD in Physical Chemistry go through the application process for a Quant position. His experience was that the prospective employers took his computational and mathematical aptitude on faith, given his schooling, and were only interested in asking question about what he had taught himself about economic and investment models.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[idbedead]

Yeah, as a Biology Ph.D. I have watched many of my friends go into finance and consulting and a number of other fields. No one gives a crap what your Ph.D. is in. They will look at your publication record (academic jobs) or just interview you to asses your specific skills/reasoning abilities.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the world of business, who you know is much more important. Your friends and parents are far more important then the kind of Ph.D you have.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[winkydink]

I have hired five PhD's over the course of my career (maybe more, but five that I remember). All of the where hired based on what they did / what they could do and not on the basis of their theses. Granted my statistical sample is tiny, but there you go.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[idbedead]

A Ph.D. like all degrees has very little to do with genius. It is a signifier of your ability to work independently for long periods of time (3-6 years), and adapt to changing circumstances. This is the kind of aptitude that employers in nearly any field look for. A high schooler, even a genius, remains unproven in that area. This is why many genius people don't get any degree's yet companies still like to hire Ph.D.'s (even though most of them are not genius).

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[hrvatska]

if all that matter is "aptitude" why did you all have a PhD? You could hire a genius out of high school in that case.

How would companies identify HS geniuses? Grades? SAT scores? Dissertation? Oh, that's right, they don't have one of those. Generally speaking, aptitude + a PhD is a better indicator of ability and potential performance than aptitude + a HS diploma. A person with a PhD has a much longer and better documented track record on which to judge how well they would fit into a job and an organization. There's more to aptitude than being extremely bright.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[kubernet3s]

I think what Anon was trying to say is that the PhD is not a vocational degree. It's actually sad how little people understand that. True, there are positions which require vocational experience, and employers will fill those positions banking on PhD applicants previous experience. However, the PhD is more than learning a set of specific skills: it is an experience which teaches a broad range of specific cognitive behaviors, many of which are extremely useful to many disciplines, not just the one on the degree. A PhD must by default be disciplined, skilled in problem solving, an excellent written communicator, and have modest experience giving presentations. STEM PhD's have to have experience with math up through linear algebra, possibly with partial differential equations, and often quite a bit more than that. They are able to think critically, organize projects, work in groups, solve problems, and moreover their degree now indicates that they have *expert level* capability in those skills. True, a pharmaceutical company isn't going to hire a philosophy major to fill a position requiring the experience of a PhD in biochemistry, but the facts are that industrial positions for specific PhD's are fairly few and far between: a lot of companies are just looking for PhD's in general. That would be the only explanation for Anon's English major friend, who I sincerely doubt was hired in the firm's "English department" before clawing his way over to financial analysis. That bloke was likely hired for his degree, and the aptitude it promises.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[gl4ss]

if all that matter is "aptitude" why did you all have a PhD? You could hire a genius out of high school in that case.

seeing how "high finance" has done for the past decade(or two).. I don't think even aptitude matters that much.

they all had a phd because their HR thought it means something and that they're off the hook then if they fuck up, after all they hired phd's.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[ScottyLad]

Personally when I'm interviewing for staff (in the UK), I only look at what university they went to, not what they studied.

I'm not sure what other countries are like, but over here everyone under 30 years old has a degree, so the only interest I have in their university experience is whether they went to a "Red Brick" (Ivy league equivalent) or a "modern" university (re-branded technical college or polytechnic)

The fact you have a degree shows your ability to learn. What you learned in the past 4 years of University is of less interest to me compared to your potential to learn over the next 30 or 40 years of your career.

I personally value the fact someone even managed to get in to Oxford or Cambridge higher than someone else's 2:1 "degree" from some "university" I've never heard of in the North of England. Sadly this is what happens when governments devalue higher education with misguided targets such as 50% of the population must have a degree.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[Chapter80]

Applied Statistics?

Can I assume that the results of this Slashdot "survey" will appear in your dissertation?

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[ShakaUVM]

>>For example, no brokerage house is going to hire a biology PhD to do statistical analysis research. They're going to hire someone with a PhD in math/statistics.

Given that some of the best stats guys I know where biology researchers, that's a bit of a stretch. (What do you think biology research IS, mostly? You have undergrads to actually work with the test tubes and mice, and grad students to oversee them.)

Brokerage houses have been known to hire anyone, in the past, who are whizzes at math, and the guy in TFA should be able to do so. Especially if he takes advantage of the networking opportunities Ivy League schools offer.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[luis_a_espinal]

In the world of business, who you know is much more important. Your friends and parents are far more important then the kind of Ph.D you have.

Rhetorical nonsense.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[recharged95]

I concur.

But if you want personal insight (and associated ego with a PhD), I believe Computational Physics (@Columbia?) is your destination.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[Zadaz]

Exactly. A PhD is not a vocational degree. It sounds like the OP is doing it to get a specific job. In which case they're doing it wrong.

Not that it's terribly surprising. Schools love PhDs, but if you're looking to get your money back on your investment sometime in the next 20 years then you're doing exactly the wrong thing by getting one.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[Anonymous Coward]

Schools love PhDs, but if you're looking to get your money back on your investment sometime in the next 20 years then you're doing exactly the wrong thing by getting one.

If you're paying for your PhD, you're doing it wrong.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[repapetilto]

Yes, if you paid for it...

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you solve my problems?

I speak of quantitative finance. Once you get past HR, the first interviews, etc., you meet the person who has the power to make the decision. That person is intelligent, has many problems, but is under intense pressure and has no time to solve them. He/she wants to explain a problem to an employee/associate in a few minutes, often using a very specialized jargon, and be confident that when he/she checks back in a few days (or hours) there will have been significant progress toward a solution. No hand holding, no training courses, no nothing. To work in the quant world, present yourself as a problem solver.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[kubernet3s]

It's funny, the traditional wisdom on that front is that the five or so years you spend getting a PhD constitutes a huge loss, and that you should be busy scrambling up the corporate ladder to a six figure job by the time you're 25. However, with the dismal job outlook for new grads lately, the "slow start" for PhDs is now largely average, though others don't receive a degree for their pains.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the state of the universities in the UK, you have to look at the department the student comes from, not just the university. Sadly, there are certain parts of Oxbridge that rate a lot lower than equivalent departments in the universities around the country, and there are a number of universities that have one excellent and well-ranked department that turns out excellent students amidst a bunch that aspire to mediocrity ;-(

The perversion of the Polys is sad, but an indication of the snobbery about "doing research" in this country that has filtered through to the funding system; and as for the move to rebrand Techs as universities :-O

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[tehcyder]

I don't understand the point of having a firm full of PhDs in random subjects. Why not just take bright people with a first degree straight out of college? What does spending another three years getting a PhD prove, except that you're not stupid, which is easy enough to tell anyway?

I think first degrees in the US must be too easy if you can't use them to measure someone's potential. In the UK, if you want the sort of clever, hard-working drone who will work well producing the latest banking magic smoke and mirrors with lots of impressive looking formulae, you just get people with first class honours degrees from a good university in something like maths.

I mean, I can see how if you'd done a PhD in "ridiculously complicated pricing models for exotic financial instruments designed to bamboozle auditors and make actual valuation or regulation impossible" then fair enough. But how does having a PhD on the political subtext of The Faerie Queene help you?

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[tehcyder]

Someone with a PhD is also about eight to ten years older than someone who leaves school and doesn't go to university/college. So why not just hire a load of high school graduates and weed out most of them fairly quickly? By the time they're the PhDs starting age, they'll have had a huge amount of directly relevant experience.

This is how something like the accountancy profession works in the UK. After a couple of years of tedious work and a lot of additional evening/weekend study on top, you're left with the ones who have the necessary qualities, plus you've had a good amount of time to monitor their professional and personal qualities and future potential without having to pay them a fortune.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[tehcyder]

That would be the only explanation for Anon's English major friend, who I sincerely doubt was hired in the firm's "English department" before clawing his way over to financial analysis. That bloke was likely hired for his degree, and the aptitude it promises.

It's interesting though that everyone says how fantastically complex and brilliant the financial products and models are, and yet someone with (presumably) only a modest mathematical education can do it as well as someone who has studied maths for an extra ten years.

The point is, I don't think the maths can be all that difficult. So why can't all the auditors and regulators work out what the banks and other financial institutions are doing?

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[tehcyder]

Schools love PhDs, but if you're looking to get your money back on your investment sometime in the next 20 years then you're doing exactly the wrong thing by getting one.

If you're paying for your PhD, you're doing it wrong.

That depends what field you're working in. I'm sure if you did it in something that involved the more efficient slaughter of human beings you could find plenty of sponsors, perhaps less so if you're researching the influence of Dante's Vita Nuova on late Victorian Romantic painting.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[tehcyder]

I had a former colleague with a PhD in Physical Chemistry go through the application process for a Quant position. His experience was that the prospective employers took his computational and mathematical aptitude on faith, given his schooling, and were only interested in asking question about what he had taught himself about economic and investment models.

Then, at the end of the interview, he simply had to sign his soul to Satan in his own blood, like everyone else.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[tehcyder]

I personally value the fact someone even managed to get in to Oxford or Cambridge higher than someone else's 2:1 "degree" from some "university" I've never heard of in the North of England.

What a load of bollocks, a lot of the people who get into Oxbridge do so because they were born to well off parents who could afford to funnel them through the public school system. Yes, there are very clever poor students from inner city comprehensives at Oxbridge, just disproportionately few.

Oh, and there are many other very good universites apart from Oxford and Cambridge, depending on the subjects you're talking about. It's not just those two or ex-polys.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[tehcyder]

In the world of business, who you know is much more important. Your friends and parents are far more important then the kind of Ph.D you have.

Rhetorical nonsense.

I agree, with the right friends and family you don't need to waste your time getting a PhD at all, you just slide smoothly from Ivy League college to Wall Street without a hitch.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[Anonymous Coward]

as always, big things depends on small things, and those small things not necessary are related to the big one, in other words, the people who seek, look or categorize you for a possible position not necessary understand what kind of people are looking, so maybe you are very good in math, but for only get a PhD in biology, it probably never get a opportunity for a mathematician position. maybe you can explain your experience with the manager who looks for your skills to do the job, but the people who filters the candidate list will only look your actual degree.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[slashsloth]

A PhD is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, employers immediately assume you are mature, intelligent, and highly-motivated. On the flip side, they are generally not willing to pay PhD salaries.

Potential employers do make immediate assumptions about an applicant who has a PhD on their CV for sure; however those assumptions are not always as positive as you suggest. When I'd completed my PhD the only jobs for which I could even get an interview were junior developer positions, same as I'd have gotten if I'd just come straight from primary degree to job market. The PhD counted for nothing & was in fact a bit of a sticking point. Interviewers seemed to think that getting a PhD involves sitting on your ass wasting time & that you'd do the same on their dime if they hired you. Of course, that's Ireland for you -- go figure. Not that I'm bitter or anything :D

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[Courageous]

As someone who hires occasionally, and has been responsible for evaluating candidates for job positions, I tend to treat post-graduate degrees a bit akin to work experience. I'm not troubled by a degree that is off-theme a bit. For example, the work that we do is computer-related. I'll take degrees in computer science, computer engineering, computational biology, computational physics, mathematics. Note the math thing. In that particular case I would be looking for a lot of evidence in personal initiative with computing. E.g., "open source contributor" or otherwise.

Some of the threads here are failing to distinguish between employers who hire PhD's for PhD purpose, and those that just hire them. My organization is in the latter group. There are lots of such organizations. Just two buildings over from me, my organization hires PhD's in photogrammetry. So my organization isn't even consistent about that.

Point being, you can go either way with this.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[superwiz]

Not at the fore front. Your experience is only important if you plan to do the same thing you have been doing. But if your work is less repetitive and more ground breaking, how much of your time you spent printing license plates doesn't matter a whole lot.

Re:Do you plan to work in the real world?

[giggle.mpls]

Seriously. If you aren't getting funding, you're not good enough. At least, that's how it works in the humanities.

What you actually did is more important

[ClickOnThis]

Employers will care about what you did more than what your degree is named. There are lots people working in fields that don't correspond to the subject-name of their PhD degree.

Re:What you actually did is more important

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, the department isn't all that critical compared to the topic area. For your first job, the subject matter of your thesis may be important.

Once you have your first position, the topic area isn't even all that critical. The little title at the end is all that really matters.

Re:What you actually did is more important

[kubernet3s]

For that matter, there are plenty of PhD students working in areas that don't correspond to their PhD expertise. Maybe it's different in computer science, but in the physical sciences the extreme specialization you pursue in your undergraduate research doesn't really transfer to the function you'll be serving afterwards (that function is, after all, is your advisor's job: you aren't being trained to usurp your advisor!). While they won't hire someone with no background in the area they're looking for (i.e., you should maybe know a little about circuits if you're building chips for Intel) they will certainly be flexible if can convince them you are capable of applying your knowledge to the correct area.

Re:What you actually did is more important

[timeOday]

I would caveat that - big business and government do have formal requirements for such things, and they sometimes DO get enforced even when they don't make sense. It could also affect your job classification (regardless of what actual work you do), which would affect your pay rate.

I agree it won't matter in most cases, but to be on the safe side, I would personally rather have the CS PhD.

Re:What you actually did is more important

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they are generally failures.

Re:What you actually did is more important

[reg106]

I agree with this. Average starting salaries for a PhD in CS will be higher than for a PhD in biology. This could matter during salary negotiation.

For BS and MS degrees, the name of the university is important, because there is generally no guarantee that you spent significant time with a faculty member. For a PhD, the name of your thesis adviser takes precedence over the name of the university, especially if the adviser has a respected name in the field. For these reasons, I would opt for the CS degree from the (lesser known?) European university rather than the Biology degree from the American Ivy League university.

Put yourself in their shoes

[NeumannCons]

You're hiring a someone to be a computer scientist. Would you rather see them have a CS degree or a biology degree? Ivy League degree or Pretty Good European University? I think everyone is going to look at this differently. I know *I'd* rather see the CS degree. I wouldn't be overly impressed by Ivy League but I think a lot of others would be. I work in the the tech field along with people who have degrees in unusual areas (Dance?) but are technically top notch.

BTW, these days it seems a lot of resumes are searched for key words. If they're hiring a computer scientist - guess what keywords they're going to look for?

Re:Put yourself in their shoes

[tixxit]

Usually jobs at the PhD level don't get hundreds of applicants and the resumes can be looked at a bit more carefully. Moreover, if someone is posting a position requiring a graduate degree, they're probably interested in your thesis and research, not what your degree says.

Re:Put yourself in their shoes

[pr0fessor]

Applied Music but I'm a sys admin and I am usually in charge of teaching the fresh out of college new hires what the five "w"s are. Since no one ever teaches them how to think they just throw facts at them.

Re:Put yourself in their shoes

[Anonymous Coward]

I've applied for many university faculty jobs (that require a Ph.D.) and they routinely had several hundred applicants.

Re:Put yourself in their shoes

[ClickOnThis]

You're hiring a someone to be a computer scientist. Would you rather see them have a CS degree or a biology degree? Ivy League degree or Pretty Good European University? I think everyone is going to look at this differently. I know *I'd* rather see the CS degree. I wouldn't be overly impressed by Ivy League but I think a lot of others would be. I work in the the tech field along with people who have degrees in unusual areas (Dance?) but are technically top notch.

BTW, these days it seems a lot of resumes are searched for key words. If they're hiring a computer scientist - guess what keywords they're going to look for?

I think a good way to put yourself in the employer's shoes is to look at the requirements stated in job postings. If the software job calls for hard-core CS work, you might see "PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering or related field or experience" [emphasis mine.] For software jobs that involve a heavy scientific component (e.g., biology) you might see "PhD in Biology or Bioinformatics preferred; PhD in Chemistry, Mathematics or Computer Science acceptable; biology experience a plus." And so on. The point is that employers describe an ideal candidate in a posting. Yes, they do search for keywords, but in the end they're going to hire someone who they think can do the job, not someone with the ideal subject-name for their PhD.

Re:Put yourself in their shoes

[bjorniac]

Last few jobs I've been involved with had around 400 applicants for a single place. Jobs at the PhD level are like gold dust at the moment.

Re:Put yourself in their shoes

[tixxit]

Yeah, I'd imagine faculty jobs would. I was thinking of my experience in my previous job, where we were hiring PhDs to fill pretty specific slots. So, the job requirement wasn't PhD, papers, and lots of funding potential, but PhD with lots of research in this fairly specific area.

Re:Put yourself in their shoes

[ShakaUVM]

>>You're hiring a someone to be a computer scientist

No, he wants to work as a statistician. A biology degree is completely appropriate, as you basically have to be a SPSS whiz to do any research in biology these days. Undergrads actually handle the test tubes and mice, overseen by grad students. PIs get everything set up and then work mainly on the data analysis level. A lot also get involved in computer science for modelling and related reasons.

That said, if I was hiring a computer science computer science position (you know, to have someone refactor code for me or whatever), I'd definitely hire a person with a CS doctorate over a biology one (or a CS person without a doctorate over a bio person), because I can basically guarantee you that no Biology single-subject major will have the necessary classes in software engineering. As someone who spent years working with the code created by biology people... well, that's why they hired me and other CS grad students to do the actual software engineering side of things for them.

So, yeah. Basically it depends on what the ultimate nature of the job is. I'd hire a PhD in biology to do stats over a computer science guy, but I'd hire a computer science guy over a bio PhD for a software engineering job.

Re:Put yourself in their shoes

[superwiz]

Nah. The only time people ask you to discuss your thesis it is to see how well you can introduce a new subject to the un-initiated. Most math and hard sciences PhD's are too esoteric to be of importance. Even people applying to postdoc positions are very often switching specializations.

Re:Put yourself in their shoes

[f()rK()_Bomb]

One of the things that amazes me most is the lack of ability to think people have in college just fresh out of school. I'm 28, but just starting college and it's shocking to see how they know answers to some things and can do simple problems but they never learned to treat the knowledge they gained as cohesive concepts not just individual things. I kill them in maths because I can see the bigger picture, but they are far quicker at actually solving the resultant equations. Really tells me I was right to leave school early, it's only gotten worse at teaching people how to learn.

A few suggestions

[codeAlDente]

Bio-informatics is a good place to be an applied statistician. There are also good opportunities in neuroscience, especially if you want (or are willing to) do experiments. Some of the data analysis and acquisition code is pretty sophisticated, and a grad student from my last lab got a good CS job by doing that. Further, any lab that uses super-resolution or EM microscopy is a good place to look. If you tell me which school, I can perhaps give you a few names.

Re:A few suggestions

[ByOhTek]

From experience with the bioinformatics field...

not just sophisticated, but pretty damn fun too, once you get past the bits of manual labor involved. Or in my case, automate the hell out of many of them. I was such a lazy bastard, I automated everything I could when I worked in the group I worked in, and got done faster than most others.

Re:A few suggestions

[codeAlDente]

Looks like I misunderstood the question - you're probably staying in the same lab, in which case the department name on your degree will not matter at all. Only your skill set.

Re:A few suggestions

[pmgarvey]

http://xkcd.com/974/

Re:A few suggestions

[unkiereamus]

Actually, I think you'll find http://xkcd.com/196/ is the correct OXKCD

Re:A few suggestions

[ByOhTek]

LOL, nice, though mine did end up save time, usually after 2-3 data sets. And that was writing in the clusterfuck known as perl.

Re:A few suggestions

[gstoddart]

I was such a lazy bastard, I automated everything I could when I worked in the group I worked in, and got done faster than most others.

You're hired. ;-)

OK, so I don't actually have a job to offer you in bioinformatics (or any job, really) ... but on a recent project we took the opportunity to automate anything that allowed for it.

Automating reduces manual errors, cuts down on human time, and means you have more consistently reproduceable outcomes. It also means you've thought about the long-term and realized that if it was tedious and error-prone the first time, scripting it would yield better results.

I guess we probably saved hundreds of man-hours by automating some of our steps that would have had one or more techies plodding through some repetitive steps. And, I'm really not kidding about the amount of time we saved.

When I told my manager it was out of mostly being too lazy/unwilling to do that over and over again he more or less said "I'll take that kind of lazy any day of the week" ... most of these have become standard process now, since there's just no damned good reason to do it otherwise.

how about your Masters degree?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it CS?
I would think a CS masters degree + ivy league PhD in a related field (Machine Learning), even tagged as Biology should get your foot in the door for most software engineering gigs?
But it depends on what gig you expect? Are you thinking 6 figures out of the starting blocks? Manager? ppl under you?

Ask someone in the field

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you want a good answer? Find someone who has the job you want to get after you graduate. Then, ask that person's boss what job qualifications he or she is looking for.

Do you want a stupid answer? Ask slashdot.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he is sequencing DNA.

There are a lot of Biological fields that generate huge amounts of data that needs to be analyzed.

Many things to consider

[ByOhTek]

Biological sciences (as you are probably well aware) involves a LOT of statistics, and a LOT of computer work. Ironically, in my experience, it is also heavily populated by computer-phobes.

Would it be possible to add a statistical or computational focus to your Ph.D so it is mentioned on it?

Then biology would probably not be a bad idea. One of the things many friends of mine noticed in undergrad, that people in the hard sciences were doing better at getting many CS jobs than people with CS degrees. You can teach any monkey to program, and it doesn't take much more work to give them an idea of how to look at things to make them more efficient/clever. However, the logic an analytical abilities that are more heavily focused upon in math and science degrees are much harder to teach or test for in the training or hiring periods.

Mind you, that is from the undergrad level, the Ph.D. level could be very different.

Another thing to look at, is what do you want to do, where do you want to work, once you get your degree? If it is biologically focused statistics and applied computer science, then a biology degree may actually be pretty good. Is the degree in a specific subset of biology? In particular, I know genetics can end up doing a LOT with statistics and computer science, and in particular, for a good combination of the three, would Bioinformatics or Biomedical Inforamtics be an option?

And of course, as many have mentioned, what you have done often means more than the exact degree - will your disseration/thesis be any different? Will the papers you get first author on, along the way, be any different? In these cases, which do you think will look better for your prospective employers.

Re:Many things to consider

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Mind you, that is from the undergrad level, the Ph.D. level could be very different.

Yes. Yes, it is.

A graduate CS degree is really a degree in applied math. If you have the background to get into the program, they assume you know how to code already. It's in the graduate work that you learn to understand why you code what you code.

A Ph.D is only a foot in the door

[Matt_Bennett]

In my experience, the employers that really want Ph.Ds are educational and research institutions, and the odd technology company that wants to have some additional buzzwords to put on slides. It doesn't really add much for a technology company, unless your area of study is very specific to their business area. I'm kinda scared of any place that would do hiring based upon a degree or where it came from rather than what the person can actually do.

Re:A Ph.D is only a foot in the door

[Diss Champ]

My employer historically has hired lots of PhDs; we design mixed signal chips. My own PhD has basically nothing to do with my job, but the sort of person who can make it through the PhD process in a hard (science or engineering) field has tended to do well here. That high % of PhD folks is changing a bit as we have been growing way too fast lately to not hire a larger % of MS, but when your bread and butter is to do chips that are "hard" enough to get decent margins rather than being commodity priced the ability to go figure things out that everyone doesn't already know is quite useful. Actually FINISHING the PhD is a lot better predictor than STARTING a PhD BTW.

Re:A Ph.D is only a foot in the door

[tehcyder]

Actually FINISHING the PhD is a lot better predictor than STARTING a PhD BTW.

Well, yes, there aren't many jobs where an employer looks at all the stuff you've failed to complete or do properly and hires you on that basis.

Cue inevitable slashdot "except in government LOL" jokes.

Really?

[datavirtue]

Anyone tired of these tired Ph. D. posts yet? Unbelievably boring and lame. I guess several of the editors are "working on their Ph D's."

I went to school for art

[shadowrat]

Art! Other than my first job out of school, i've worked as a software engineer. I've been in several interviews where i've expressed a feeling of inadequacy because my education is not in comp sci. 100% of the time, that is pish-poshed away by the interviewer. If you can prove you are analytical and smart, nobody is going to look down on a PhD in biology. I'd even go so far as to say many american companies love a candidate who is multidimensional.

Re:I went to school for art

[rk]

Some of the finest people I've worked with in software have degrees distantly related to computer science, math, or software engineering. Music, religion, "interdisciplinary studies", and an accounting dropout are included in that mix. They are right to pish-posh it away. Actually, as an art person, you wouldn't happen to live near Phoenix, know Java well, and be interested in working on GIS applications for remote sensing, would you? We have a good product that probably could use a techie with an art background to improve its UI.

Re:I went to school for art

[shadowrat]

ha! i might have been had i not just taken a new position on the east coast.

Re:I went to school for art

[GregNorc]

Some of the finest people I've worked with in software have degrees distantly related to computer science, math, or software engineering. Music, religion, "interdisciplinary studies", and an accounting dropout are included in that mix. They are right to pish-posh it away. Actually, as an art person, you wouldn't happen to live near Phoenix, know Java well, and be interested in working on GIS applications for remote sensing, would you? We have a good product that probably could use a techie with an art background to improve its UI.

You want someone with a background in Human Computer Interaction (HCI).

If you're looking for local hires, Arizona State has an HCI program: http://technology.asu.edu/appliedpsych

Re:I went to school for art

[tehcyder]

We have a good product that probably could use a techie with an art background to improve its UI.

Use Vincent van Gogh's "Sunflowers" as the background image. Works every time, as everyone loves his stuff.

Re:I went to school for art

[rk]

Actually, that is *my* background. But having had my head stuffed full of perception, human factors, ergonomics, and cognitive psychology has not conferred good graphic design skills to me.

Are you sure you have a choice?

[vossman77]

In my experience when the lab moves the students either (1) get a degree from old university or (2) apply to new university and go through the qualification process over. I would check again, before assuming it is your decision. I even know a case, where a 3rd year grad student at Yale was turned down acceptance into Berkeley grad school

Re:Are you sure you have a choice?

[Anonymous Coward]

I applied to a software company in the Netherlands. They replied that non-European hires would have to be a for a research position, which requires a Phd.

Re:Are you sure you have a choice?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is not a surprising thing at all since Berkeley as a grad school is widely considered head and shoulders ahead of Yale in probably a wide majority of subjects ( though there are plenty of excellent faculty members at Yale too, many of them envy the quality of Berkeley graduate students --- it's not just the views, weather, and food that they envy!) Berkeley is also one of the hardest, if not the hardest, place to get into for PhD studies.

In order:

[ocean_soul]

(Applied) mathematics, physics, theoretical computer science (and yes, I have experience because I have a PhD in one of this fields).

Re:In order:

[tehcyder]

I have experience because I have a PhD in one of this fields

Not English, presumably.

Every PhD is unique, that's the point!

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the requirements of a PhD is that it makes a unique, novel contribution to human knowledge. Therefore no 2 PhDs are alike and therefore the skills you learn during your PhD will depend upon what you specifically did. Any employer who knows anything about PhDs should understand that any two PhD students from a given discipline may have very different skills and will hopefully dig down a little deeper to find out what your skills really are.

For example, I did my PhD in Computer Science but looking at Biologically Inspired Robotics. In this I gained a lot of practical robotics experience and some theoretical biology. A friend of mine did a PhD in the same department at the same time in computer vision, his skills are in mathematics for handling high dimensional spaces and optimising graphics algorithms to run faster.

Also today many PhDs are cross discipline, so it might not be unusual to find a biology student who needs to learn computer programming (and increasingly complex levels of programming) and applied statistics.

Market Your Skills Appropriately

[Frightened_Turtle]

Most of the Biopharmaceutical companies in the Boston area are going to look at your Ph.D. to determine whether it is relevant to the work they do. But it won't be the only thing they look for.

Many biopharms are leaning very heavily on computer simulations to model various molecules they are pursuing as potential drug candidates. Having a an advanced degree in biology and the ability to prove strong computer skills might open vastly more doors for you than just having a Ph.D. in a relevant field. Having a programmer who can also intimately understand what the scientists are trying to accomplish is desperately needed by many companies.

But don't sell yourself as a programmer with a doctorate in biology. Rather, sell yourself as a biology doctorate with advanced computer skills. If they think you are a programmer, they'll treat--and pay--you like one. Sadly, there are still WAY too many CEOs (and CIOs, CFOs, and COOs) who are still under the 1980's notion that "high school kids could do this work," and treat computer engineers like they are unskilled labor. As a "respected scientist" you'll be treated far more appropriately by management/business types.

Re:Market Your Skills Appropriately

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw something like this at one Biotech company I consulted with. The research lab had tons of funding... it would routinely use "arrays" (scientific ones and not data structures) that costs thousands of dollars each and were discarded afterwards. Millions of dollars flowed through that lab and there was only a handful of people in it.

The development group on the other hand that produced systems to help track all this information was one of the most unhappy, underfunded, and overworked group I've met. Most people lasted one year tops. I felt sorry for them and decided that this industry has a long ways to go before it's attractive to programmers.

Re:Really?

[misosoup7]

Why would you think that a PhD in Biological Sciences would be closely related (or even related) to one in Computer Science? Really?

The intelligence of PhDs really are Piled Higher and Deeper.

Biological Sciences have a lot of need for Computer Sciences right now. Everything from Genetics to Molecular Biology spends on staggering amounts of Statistics and CS work. I have a few friends of mine working for the National Health Institute and at Medical Schools and they all need CS and Stats background. So there is a pretty deep connect between Biology and CS right now. So yes, there is a very close relationship.

Obviously, a software firm may ask you why you got a Biological Sciences Ph.D. as opposed to a CS one, and why you are qualified. You may also get filtered out if CS is not on your resume as well. So, if you do get the Ivy Ph.D. you'll have some work cut out for you on your resume to make sure you come off the right way on paper.

Also, if you end up working for a Bio Tech, then this argument is moot, they would take a Biologist any day of the week.

The field is often irrelevant.

[ElmoGonzo]

If you intend to go into research, the area of concentration for your dissertation may be important but if you're looking for a job, it may not be. When I was in grad school in Anthropology, one of my fellow students ended up working for Chase Econometrics developing multi-variate statistical models.

Get the Ivy League degree

[Anonymous Coward]

Get the Ivy League degree. The difference in salary over your lifetime will offset whatever challenges you face in the placement/interview process. After you've worked at a couple places, your experience far outweighs the type of your degree.

Obvious Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a computer programmer in the US simply does not pay well. Your super skills are not acknowledged by MBAs or the general public at large. Use your PhD for what it was meant for, to become a doctor, save lives, and get paid the big bucks.

Re:Obvious Answer

[certain death]

So...with that logic, if you have a Ph.D. in Fish Hatcheries, you would save people's lives using Fish Mating?

Re:Obvious Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a computer programmer in the US simply does not pay well. Your super skills are not acknowledged by MBAs or the general public at large. Use your PhD for what it was meant for, to become a doctor, save lives, and get paid the big bucks.

I have an MBA from Duke. That's not acknowledged in any compensatory way, nor reflected in my rank. It was an unbelievable waste of time and money. But people constantly say, "Would you like to be an entry level Java programmer?"

No, the MBA isn't what you're thinking it is.

Re:Obvious Answer

[tehcyder]

So...with that logic, if you have a Ph.D. in Fish Hatcheries, you would save people's lives using Fish Mating?

No, if you have any PhD, obviously you should be a philosopher. Doh!

Reform the PhD system or close it down

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Fnews%2F2011%2F110420%2Ffull%2F472261a.html&ei=guLLTu3tG8yDtgedraF6&usg=AFQjCNG6bV91pWU2e2qiyWWRm092Y6IXpA&sig2=nu4pV40tSAQZgzvlUtXgV

Depends on what you want to do

[guruevi]

If you want to do research/find a job in the biocomputing field (such as programming clusters or designing data analysis) either will work very well. PhD's in business, I don't know, not really a good idea as you'd be overqualified and the perception would be not practical enough to work outside of academia or the (again) medical/biology fields.

If possible, get your degree from both places. If you're in a 'pretty good' EU University (such as Geneva, Italy, Paris or other well-known institutions) I wouldn't bother with Ivy League who have been getting a bad rep among the hiring personnel in other institutions in the last few years among other things the 'rich snob' syndrome, the quality has gone down in general and the expected salary being much higher. It also doesn't look good on your resume if you transferred at the end just to get a title from an Ivy League. EU schools are much higher regarded in the US.

Disclaimer: I work at a very well-regarded educational institution in the US.

The intuitive approach...

[ThorGod]

If you went-in working toward a PhD in CS/applied statistics...shouldn't you finish with a PhD in CS/applied statistics? There would need to be a compelling reason to make a drastic change at the last possible second.

(Of course, if the program you'd graduate under is closing...then the quality of it's name is uncertain. That might decide the matter in itself.)

In industry, what you actually did probably matters more.
It's the same thing in academia, only names of universities and where you've been published matter more than in industry. If your CV shows all tier 1 publications, that's helpful. If your degree's from a tier 1 university then you could teach at a tier 1 university. (speaking in gross generals)

It depends who you know and where you're applying

[Flavio]

1) Is a Ph.D in Biological Sciences frowned upon by technology companies, or is it out-weighed by the Ivy League tag?

If you're applying for a job at a company where you don't know anyone, your CV will end up in the hands on an HR person. I'm not in your field, but I think there's a considerable chance this person won't be able to see how a PhD in biological sciences connects to a CS/applied math job. The Ivy League tag will (on average) give you an edge, I suspect that to the uninformed eye, it might still look like you're applying for a job out of your field. Note that this doesn't make things impossible. They just make things more complicated, and you'll have to do some explaining on your cover letter.

If you use your connections to refer you to a hiring manager, then you'll skip HR and things will be easier in every respect. This is what you should always try to do, even if you get a PhD in CS.

2) How big of a role does the type of Ph.D play in the hiring process in the U.S., compared to what you actually did (thesis focus, publication record, software)?"

For a pure research position, your publication record is what matters (and people publish more in the US than in Europe). For an industry job, your work experience weighs in and people want to know what you can do (your publication record is important to show you can produce innovative ideas, but the industry generally requires a strong component of practical, hands-on experience).

Technology companies need a variety of knowledge

[burnin1965]

From my experience in semiconductor manufacturing, technology companies frequently hire individuals with degrees and areas of research that deviate from the core function of the business. Be prepared to discuss the details of your research and work while pursuing your degree and you will do fine.

Many of the skills utilized in your education are common across job fields and in some cases they are not utilized as often as they should in the work place. Some examples include...

- The scientific process itself. A sound decision process is key to problem solving within technology businesses and all too often mistakes are made by "gut feeling" or "common sense" decisions that are followed far too quickly without proper critical thinking.

- Understanding statistical significance and proper reading or presentation of statistical data. This is a hugely critical field to technology companies and at the same time a massive weak point in U.S. businesses. In my opinion there should be some basic statistics courses in K-12 education.

- Working in groups. U.S. corporations spend millions in consultant and training fees trying to instil some group working skills into employees but from what I have seen it is very difficult, and in some cases impossible, to teach people to set aside their individualistic wild west cowboy mentality.

- Communication and presentation skills. Meetings are frowned upon, partly due to the lack of group work skills, yet they are also necessary. You will quickly lose an audience that already doesn't want to be there so you need good communication skills to both keep the attention of individuals but also to transfer the information and knowledge effectively.

There are many more, of course, but these are just a few that come to mind.

Re:Really?

[ciderbrew]

Protein folding requires all the CPUs in the world and then some more. So to get the most out of all those you'll need a decent understanding of network programming. A while ago on here I recall a problem of non Computer Science students writing awful programmes to do their work. so its a real problem
Biological student need high level programming and stat skills to be effective Biological Scientists in day to day life. So yes Biological Sciences needs Biological Sciences.

If you get a chance watch this
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s0ggv/episodes/guide
Sir Tim Hunt gathered large amounts of data for his discovery of the mechanism of cell division. Sciences needs data - that data needs to be lifted. Programmers are lazy when you need to lift things and the best ones know how to lift the most with as little effort as possible. / getting my train - above not proofed - sorry.

what you do

[cthlptlk]

Bioinformatics seems to have an especially even spread of people over the continuum from comp sci to biology, so (from what I have seen) readers of C.V.s tend to focus on work and publications to figure out where you fall.

Re:Really?

[Sir_Sri]

We have a bioinformatics PhD where I am, which is half biology, half CS. Maybe you didn't read the part where he mentions machine learning which is decidedly computer science.

The Lead systems guy on WoW (Greg "Ghostcrawler" street) is a PhD in marine biology, so it's clear you can move around easily enough. You can simply omit the Biology part and say "PhD from Ivy league school, thesis: Machine Learning for ....".

My PhD is decidedly CS, but it steals a lot of stuff from strategic studies and economics, so just by the title, it's not really possible to know which field is the 'core' area.

I would stick with the degree that is at the heart

[spads]

of your invested work and interests. Similar to the above, I don't think the type of degree would matter much in industry, though it might matter a great deal in academia (ie. for teaching). (At least at the junior college level. (Private) universities might have more leeway in this area. I'm not familiar with that.)

If it was me, I would not look so much at the degree as simply a credential for gaining admittance somewhere. I would look at it as documentation of my core intellectual values.

Having / Getting a Ph.D.

[certain death]

I don't quite understand this - When I was a youngun', not that long ago, I swear, Getting a Ph.D. was a terminal degree in a subject that you had spent enough time learning about and researching that you had purely mastered the subject of said Ph.D. Now a days, I guess it just says "HEY, I CAN HAZ DR!!!11". The purpose of getting that deep into a subject is because you want to be a master of that field and a thought leader when it comes to the subject matter, not so you can get a job working on PCs!~ Jeezus H. Christ on a popcycle stick! Why would anyone work that damn hard and then _NOT_ work in the field?

Re:Having / Getting a Ph.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it highlights the amount of progress we've made in science and technology. Complex systems require even more complex skillsets. We build such intensly complicated systems that need scientists and technology experts. And in some cases, the task is so complex you need someone that is capable of understanding multiple complicated concepts to manage a team putting a project together.

Think about the legal battles between compainies like Samsung and Apple...I'm willing to bet they have a small army of lawyers with a heavy background in engineering. Try arguing the merits of an antenna patent with an attorney specializing in real estate law.

Re:Having / Getting a Ph.D.

[Rakishi]

The same reason being a secretary requires having a Bachelors Degree, degree requirement inflation.

Re:Having / Getting a Ph.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

You make it sound like there should be one Ph.D from each area. The beauty of academia is the amount of thinking that goes into minutiae, and the banter that occurs over such minor points. It's straight competition, with society's knowledge being the benefactor of every contest.

easy answer

[Khashishi]

Biological Science. Any scientist these days is going to have to be proficient with computers and analyzing data. In fact, you'll probably be doing much more statistics and number crunching in biological science than in PhD level computer science, which tends to be in some theoretical study less focused on crunching of numbers. And biologist just commands respect. There's just no similar honorary title for computer scientist, and although PhD is different, it's hard to not associate CS with a factory-like undergraduate program, churning out low-skilled CS majors.

Re:easy answer

[RandCraw]

No. I have degrees in biology and cs and work in a quant group at a major pharma. No one respects or cares about my background in bio. Large companies will look closely at your degree title. We probably would not even phone interview a bio major for a quant position. A bioinformaticist or biostatician would fare better. A computer scientist, computational biologist, mathematician, or any engineer is preferred.

You may want to odentify your degree on your resume differently than it reads on your diploma, especially since your education spans different departments at different universities. I doubt doing so would ever pose a problem, as long as the label you choose accurately describes your skill base. Employers care more about what courses you took and what quals you satisfied than the precise degree name on your diploma.

You could also seek a postdoc with a hard core ML group to solidify your street cred, or go to work in a medical or academic setting. Again, a bio degree is not respected in cs, engineering, or math settings. Quant folks will assume your education stopped with ANOVA and pre-calculus.

Focus on machine learning

[anandrajan]

If your real field is machine learning, it won't matter if the dept. is Biology or CS as long as you publish in machine learning conferences and journals (NIPS, ICML, Neural Computation, JMLR). When you're done, you should be able to get a postdoc/faculty/research lab position strictly based on your machine learning credentials because this is a hot area right now. OTOH, if you didn't actually work in machine learning but instead applied machine learning ideas in biology, then it is possible that you'll only get a job within biology. If this is the case and you want to switch to more standard CS/CE, do a postdoc for a year or two in the field of your choice.

It depends on who you work for!

[methano]

If you get a PhD, early in your career the most important thing is who you worked for in graduate school. If the people who will be hiring you know who your boss is and know about his work (and like it), you'll do much better. If you work for a nobody or you're trying to get a job a bit outside of the field that your thesis adviser works in, my guess is that the closer your degree sounds like the job, the better. You might try a post-doc to fix that while the job market sucks.

And, if they don't know anything, then the better the school, the better your chances. Unless the people hiring you are the kind of people who don't trust Ivy League graduates for whatever reason. There seem to be more of those people around these days.

Doesn't matter

[asher09]

It doesn't matter whether your PhD certificate says Biology or Computer Science. The only things that people will care when they hire you after your PhD are your references, experience, skill set, and publications. I got my PhD from Scripps Inst. Oceanography and so my PhD paper says Oceanography, but for my PhD I worked on organic synthesis of naturally occurring medicinal compounds from the ocean. So I don't know anything about Oceanography. I'm an organic chemist. So I was hired as an organic chemist at another university.

you are defined by your projects

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a PhD in Computer Science. I did a postdoc in Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins. I can tell you that you will be defined by your publication record and not your degree.

IT Jobs

[Botia]

As a hiring manager for software development, I typically have a need and am looking for a person who can fill that need. The schooling is less important than three things: 1) How quick do you learn / how intelligent are you? 2) How well do you already know the skills? 3) How well do you fit inpersonality wise with the existing culture?

"Almost finished?"

[kubernet3s]

In my experience it's pretty difficult to get a degree from a new university if you're "almost finished" even if your lab is moving. Usually, what happens is the new institution will allow you to complete your studies, but you will still receive a degree from your home institution, unless of course you have some preexisting arrangement between the two schools Additionally, what is the difficulty in receiving a computer science degree? I understand most ivy league schools would be expected to have a comp. sci. department.

Re:"Almost finished?"

[kubernet3s]

Oh and yeah: Ivy League tag means nothing for a PhD unless the program is well known, like chemistry or physics at Berkeley, or computer science at UIUC. Your adviser will be a much more important name than your school.

PhDs less important in the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

My gut feeling (and I'm an AC with no references whatsoever, so keep that in mind) is that a PhD of any kind is much less important, in the business world, in the USA than in Europe.

In the USA, a PhD is almost exclusively valued only in research-oriented positions. That means academia and those few companies (eg. pharmaceuticals) that have big-time R&D operations. In your case, a PhD would be a big advantage in any sort of bioinformatics company, or at Microsoft Research or Google Research. But the less specialized and more mainstream the work, the less valuable a PhD is. You'd be considered overqualified and possibly overspecialized, and probably to expensive to hire versus someone with a masters in the same field.

In Europe, especially in (for example) Germany, a PhD is always a plus, even when the position is not research-related. Even executives consider it to be a major feather in their cap long after they've ceased to be involved in any research or technical work.

Please note that these are huge, huge generalizations, and there are exceptions to everything.

Re:easy answer FTFY

[hyperfl0w]

"Any scientist these days is going to have to be proficient with computers and analyzing data" IAMA phd bioinformatics person with a CS background and love for math. The biological problems are increasingly requiring graduate level math and computer science training, for example gene network analysis, biological structure and binding prediction, and bayesian analyses, to name a few. While the biology is obviously not simple, it can be more easily learned as "on the fly" (though this is still very difficult). Why? Because biology is more QUALITATIVE and computer science/math is more QUANTITATIVE. FWIW, 1 opinion + 1 more = 1.

My 2 cents

[M0j0_j0j0]

When you are good, you see the profit, if not you can always go for a MBA.

You should read this

[afabbro]

Just so you're fully informed:

Biology-specific General

In short, the advice from grad students is, "if there is anything else in life that you would be happy doing, do that instead of getting a PhD."

Schools

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a degree from Berkeley and I know that has opened a few doors. I think the school name counts for a lot and gives you an opportunity to explain yourself. Then again my degree is in my field, so what do I know. ~Ben

Why are you asking?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are going for your PhD in Machine Learning. You have the tenacity and ability to research, dissect and analyze the most minutia of details about a subject to generate some sort of inference. What does your research indicate you should do? All you are going to get here is biased group think. If you base a career decision on the comments posted here I would sincerely question the intelligence of both you and your adviser in granting you the sheepskin.

Hurm.... Maybe you are a Touring Machine posing as a grad student...

Depends on the department

[JimThePravoNut]

I have a PhD in statistics from the University of Minnesota, and I also have read extensively on machine learning since the degree and have used that learning on the job. Statistics programs vary widely in their emphasis, so the answer to your question comes down to exactly what direction you want to go into. Loosely speaking, the main statistics directions I see (in the health area) are clinical statistics, industrial statistics (including optimal experimental design), and machine learning. There are some who do two or more of these well, but most statisticians do well at one. A machine-learning expert is not necessarily an excellent applied statistician, and vice versa. You need to think about what exactly you want to do and then find a department (statistics or c.s.) that best achieves it. One thing to ask yourself: do you want to fit models and analyze data after it's collected, or do you want to be an interactive contributor to the design of the data collection and the evolution of a project? The former is more in line with machine learning, the latter with applied statistics (traditionally understood). They require different skills. Nothing says you can't do both, but most statisticians and machine-learning people I know don't. General advice: pick a program that will cover decision theory. This provides a valuable perspective that is often missing. It's possible to have an interesting type of model but miss out on how best to evaluate it or make predictions with it. At that point you're in the world of clever ad-hockery. Also, check out Hastie and Tibshirani's _The Elements of Statistical Learning_.

Mathematical Biology or Biostatistics

[Yoik]

I expect that you will find a PhD program at an Ivy league school to be incompatible with your current job unless the head of your lab was hired by the department with your intended degree. Unless a lot has changed, those programs are more about apprenticeship than education. They are full time jobs in themselves, and you pay tuition on top of that. Grants, scholarships, and loans may make it possible if you are good enough and were not born into the 1%.

That said, Mathematical Biology or Biostatistics departments might be your best choice. They are likely to have people that can teach you something without looking down on you too much for your history. In the dark ages, I worked for Dr. Carol Newton, in Chicago, trying to teach programming to biologists. Talk about teaching pigs to sing, the thought modes were completely incompatible. Musicians make much better programmers.

Recently, the big money in statistics was going to physicists as Wall Street tried to use statistical models. Those PhDs unfortunately don't include a lot of the practical knowledge a statistician needs when the assumptions are uncertain. The results may have made for some good openings for biostatistics folks.

PhD degree is a waste of time

[Anonymous Coward]

Google (the company with the highest percentage of PhDs have realized that an this is why they created "Summer of Code" - to hire extremely smart coders before they have been corrupted by the school system.
In our company we had the misfortune of hiring a CS PhD with 10+ years of experience leading the performance lab at HP. Three months later we decided that PhD is enough to disqualify a candidate.
What degrees do Jobs, Gates and Zuckerberg hold?

Re:PhD degree is a waste of time

[Anonymous Coward]

you're dumb and HP is a garbage company anyway...

We are the Borg!

[Anonymous Coward]

Suggested Resume Headline for your next job: "We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your jobs. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your company will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile"

Which PhD for Applied Statistics?

[Smallpond]

Just choose one at random.

Re:Which PhD for Applied Statistics?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Oh, well played!

Applied Mathematics

[Anonymous Coward]

I always thought the Applied Mathematics programs at UWO looked very interesting. Seems to bring together many facets of science such as biology and physics and combine them with computer science.

Hiring Scientists for Financial Services

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been actively hiring PhDs to do analytics work for financial services for the last two years. We primarily use machine learning techniques to develop risk management tools. We prefer the applicants to have a PhD, although industry experience can make up for the lack. In general, however, we do not specify that the PhD come from a specific field. Indeed, we have a bio-informatics PhD in our group, and we have interviewed several others. I myself come from a physics background, and others came from engineering, cognitive science, etc. We like to interview candidates who have experience in machine learning or computer science, but even those without such experience are considered if they have shown strong analytical skills during the course of their research.

Asking in the wrong place - epic fail.

[BitZtream]

You should be asking in Academia circles, not slashdot.

Your Ph.D will be worth exactly dick the instant you get your first job afterwords. PhDs matter to schools, in the real world, no one gives a shit.

So, if you intend to stay in or around Academia, then your question is valid, but you should be asking around in the academic world, not slashdot.

If you aren't staying in Academia, then drop out of your silly Ph D program and get a real job, the experience will be far more profitable for you in every way.

Either way, as a Ph D student ... asking on slashdot would be considered an epic fail by anyone that matters, this is hardly the place to go for that sort of advice.

Re:Asking in the wrong place - epic fail.

[Rakishi]

You're an idiot who apparently has some very limited real life experience.

I talked with a company a week back who does various machine learning/data analysis consulting for companies. They've got 100+ PhDs and without one you're not getting hired.

Finance companies, which pay $$$$$, want a PhD if you're doing any sort of financial analysis work for them.

Big tech companies love PhDs and will pay for them. If you're doing science at such a company (ie: algorithmic product improvements, machine learning, etc.) then a PhD is essentially required.

Bio companies will want PhDs to design their various bio-informatics systems and algorithms.

Basically if you want to do anything scientific for a company (algorithms, machine learning, statistics, etc.) and not be someone's monkey helper then you better well have a PhD. Trust me, pain in the ass to not have a PhD and like doing that sort of work.

Why ask here

[Anonymous Coward]

Worked for JP Morgan Chase for 2 years, and Sungard Data Management for 6 in Forcasting and Modeling. Have BS CS, MS Information Systems Mangment, and PHD in Business. None of which matter after a year in either company. Everything after getting my foot in the door was do to my output, not where or what I studied in school.

Broaden your appeals

[Anonymous Coward]

My advice is to broaden your appeals to future employers by having a CS degree instead of biology one. I have a computational biology Ph.D., but my salary in that field was less than what I am getting from other IT fields because there are so many underpaid Ph.D. in the biotech or pharmaceutical industry. If you really want to get into the big pharma or biotech companies, you can still convince them with your publications and relevant training on your resume.

Re:Really?

[ByOhTek]

With (admittedly, only a BS, not Ph.D.) in both fields, I have to say...

Which field are you lacking knowledge in? Is it both? Given this is slashdot, I'm inclined to guess the biological sciences, but you never can be certain.

Re:Really?

[ByOhTek]

You should add statistics to bioinformatics.

40% bio, 40% comp sci, 20% statistics that isn't highly overlapping with the generic needs of the other two fields.

Re:easy answer FTFY

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Speaking as another bioinformaticist who comes from a mostly CS and math background: math is hard, CS is hard, and biology is hard. There is a good reason why people earn separate PhD's in each of these fields. All are rigorous intellectual disciplines demanding years of study to master, and none is any easier than the others. Anyone in any of them who thinks that any of the others is easy to pick up on the fly is in for a nasty shock at some point.

You might not be able to do it

[antifoidulus]

A little late to the party, but a lot of schools have a policy of explicitly not admitting students who have a PhD in another field. For instance, here is MITs official stance on that:

10. If I already have a PhD, can I apply for another PhD in EECS?

No, we will not admit an applicant who already holds a PhD degree (even if it is in a different area such as Physics or Math)

Better Network from US University

[tildeequals]

With respect to your first question, I'd suggest going for the PhD from the American university. I went to an Ivy League university as an undergraduate, and I've found the network to be extremely valuable. There are networking events in virtually every city for my university, and it's been a great avenue for establishing professional contacts and friendships. In contrast, my brother had great marks but decided to attend a small liberal arts school. The education he received was very good, but there are no alumni mailing lists where he can post his resume or find a reputable roommate.

What your PhD is in

[drstevep]

Your PhD won't be "in" biology. If relevant to your employer, your PhD is "in Computational Modeling and Machine Learning for Biological Systems". It was granted by a biology department, but that's not relevant. And yeah, as has been pointed out, in all probablility, in five years you'll be doing something else. Hopefully equally interesting.

Big Bang

[Anonymous Coward]

what would Sheldon say ?

Networking, networking, networking...

[aojensen]

Coming from the enterprise IT consulting field, I can tell you that what is just as important is the network that you build up through your education and work. It sounds like the Ivy League University is going to give you better network opportunities plus a really good way of branding yourself in future interviews. From a career perspective, I would go with the Ivy League option.

Smart is smart

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone is smart, they are smart and will do well in life no matter their degree (if any). And the Ivy League tag holds a great deal of sway in this country and abroad not to mention, the Biology & CS fields seem to be merging on many levels, so it may be less of an issue in the future or maybe even position someone for unique opportunities doing CS in Biotech Industry, et cetera

But even with all that, what matters most is what does your gut say? Listen to it!!!

Thomas
Cambridge Mass.

Seriously....

[DukeLinux]

If you want to make good money go become a plumber's apprentice. Then open-up your own company, hire some skilled plumbers to work for you and live in a mansion. I know people who leave their Ph.D off their resumes just to get hired. Other comments are correct in that you will be hired based on your specialty or real-world experience.

PhDs and code

[Anonymous Coward]

I've met perhaps 100 PhDs in CS. Most couldn't code their way out of a paper bag. I'd never hire one. NEVER.

There are exceptions. I've met a few PhDs who could create nice, elegant code, but those are the exceptions, not the rule.

Sorry for my bias against PhDs. Just calling it like I see it.

Find a professor that you like

[Anonymous Coward]

The most important is finding a professor that you like. Determine what you want to work on for your PhD, then checkout the faculty of a few schools and try to find a professor that is doing something similar. Contact him or her and get more details. If the conversations go well, then getting admitted is much easier.

After that, I assume you are working for a biology type of lab. Given your description of "applied statistician / computer-scientist / analyst", I would suggest not getting a PhD in Computer Science since Machine Learning is only a small fraction of CS and you would spend half of your time learning algorithms, network systems, and other areas that don't interest you. For the same reason, I think a PhD in Biology might not be the best choice. Given that you work at a biological lab and want to continue in that industry, there is also the area of Bioinformatics which, as you have alluded to, is an interdisciplinary degree across biology, statistics, and computer science. If you're looking at other technology companies, I think a PhD in Statistics would be closer to your job description and is more general which can carry you further past the lab you're working and into other industries. Many statistics departments have concentrations on biostatistics and also data mining/machine learning.

The Ivy League question is a big one with many opinions. I think if you want to work for a non-research technology company, getting an Ivy League degree will open doors for you. It has for me. But if you are going to work any type of research lab, then I agree with other comments here. The name of the school is less important than your work and publications. Some of the low scoring answers have good comments about this.

I depends on whom you are

[bkmoore]

Disclaimer, as I am not a PhD. Most of the comments here are very good. But to add my two cents, no matter what is printed on the piece of paper, you are what you are. Either you are comfortable in your own skin or you are not. A PhD won't change that. A PhD is a sign of experience and hopefully maturity, but it won't make you any smarter, or wiser and it won't make your penis grow. You can either solve technical problems, or you cannot. Almost all PhD candidates already solve problems before starting on their degrees. The PhD is just a verification of that fact. In the end, you will be judged on how valuable your contribution is to whomever you end up working for.

Most HR people aren't very smart, and they probably won't even know what to make of your degree. They have a job description and they look for someone who matches that profile. Unless your PhD exactly matches what they are told to look for, you might have problems getting your foot in the door. On the other hand, doing good PhD work opens contacts and doors. It all depends on where you want to work. I would take a close look at the industrial partners and contacts of the school you are considering attending. Would you want to work for any of those companies? Or would you prefer to stay in Europe? Your work is your best calling card, and if you do good work you can bypass most of the HR B.S.

Re:I depends on whom you are

[bkmoore]

"I depends on whom you are" Typo disclaimer, drank too much beer before reading /.

My opinion...

[Anonymous Coward]

if I were looking for a statistician, or a cs doctorate, and someone sent me a resume with their degree in biology, and no related work-experience to offset it, I'd put the resume in the "no" pile.

Prestige?

[Spazmania]

Foreign degrees usually get the stink eye in the U.S. -- too many shops in India and the like handing out PhD's whose recipients exhibit skills on par with one of our 2-year trade schools. A well known university (Oxford) gets respect but if the university is not known outside your country, don't hang you candidacy on the fact of having a degree.

At the U.S. Bachelor's Degree level, the main thing companies look for is whether or not you have a degree in an accredited program. It is very common for computer science workers to have gotten their degree in a random unrelated engineering field such as Mechanical Engineering. Pure science degrees are less common for CS workers but if the work is even vaguely related no hiring manager will think twice about it.

Someone fresh out with a Biology PhD looking for applied math / computer programming work is pretty weird though. Biology BS with a CS PhD sure (and not uncommon) but the Biology PhD is going to raise questions during job interviews the first half decade out of school. You're supposed to have figured out what kind of work you wanted to do before starting your PhD program and the application of biology to computer science is not obvious.

If your area of interest is machine learning, you want to be in Computer Science with an AI focus. The biology degree is either going in to biology academia or medicine.

Beyond the first half decade, no one cares. Degree? Check. Now, does he have the experience we're looking for?

Re:Prestige?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone fresh out with a Biology PhD looking for applied math / computer programming work is pretty weird though. Biology BS with a CS PhD sure (and not uncommon) but the Biology PhD is going to raise questions during job interviews the first half decade out of school. You're supposed to have figured out what kind of work you wanted to do before starting your PhD program and the application of biology to computer science is not obvious.

What do you think Biology IS? At the Ph.D level, it's number crunching. It's not like high school frog dissection. It's high speed gene sequencing and the like. At that high level biology has a hell of a lot more in common with math and compsci than whatever you seem to think biology is. I suggest you look up the word "bioinformatics".

Re:Prestige?

[Spazmania]

Computer Science IS NOT about number crunching. Beyond high school algebra it only crosses paths with Mathematics in some very specialized niches.

If PhD biology is heavy on the math then it surely bears no relationship with computer science.

Good decision

[prefec2]

Honestly this was a good decision to ask slashdot about anything in education. Especially about a Ph.D. Beside that, if you are a real Ph.D. student you know that it does not matter what's written on your degree document, as long as you can show what you really did and if it matches your next position. In the industry this is even less important. More important are contacts in the right places. And a nice resumee.

One of the few biases I recognize in myself...

[Assmasher]

...(although there are doubtlessly many others) is my predisposition towards people with a P.h.D. in Computer Science.

I didn't use to have this bias until I worked with some of them. I have worked in 3 different corporations/companies that have had Comp Sci. P.h.D. personnel. Only one of them was in any sort of management position and he was seriously useless. The other interactions were with corporate research teams, which tended to have a large number of Comp. Sci. P.h.D.s attached, and some computer vision engineers.

Each and every one of those people was hopeless as a software engineer. They were smart, they were nice, they were idiots when it came to anything pragmatic. Now, I am sure there are many P.h.D.s in Comp. Sci. who can code their way straight to nirvana - I have just not met any of them.

The only P.h.D. in Computer Science I know, outside of professors who are doing it for the love of it, worth his salt is a guy with an MBA as well and a penchant for turning companies in the software world around. That guy is someone I actually admire. His P.h.D. topic was genetic algorithms (I forget the specifics but I believe it was something practical.)

So, unfortunately (and I recognize this as a shortcoming) a P.h.D. in Comp. Sci. who wants to work for me (I'm a CTO now) has to weather the standard - "Why did you spend so much time and money getting a P.h.D. in a field where practical experience is most valuable?" I also tend to ask a lot of sillier basic questions such as "Can you please implement a doubly linked list in C++ on the whiteboard behind you..." - You would be shocked how many graduate and post-graduates stroke out right there (or maybe you wouldn't be surprised.) Occasionally (about once every 5 years) I get some crazy f***er who looks at me and says "How about I write something similar in assembly?" LOL. Really...

Re:One of the few biases I recognize in myself...

[cheesybagel]

Q: "Can you please implement a doubly linked list in C++ on the whiteboard behind you..."

A: #include <list>

Re:One of the few biases I recognize in myself...

[Assmasher]

Good luck with that resonse in an interview ;).

Try Top Tier Management Consulting

[Anonymous Coward]

Go into Management Consulting - the top tier ones

Hiring PhD's

[BanteringCTO]

I read most of the comments to this post. Some are good, some leave something to be desired, as usual. As a current CITO for a decent sized public company, I employ two PhD's. One has a degree in Biology. The other, a degree in process (not exactly right; but, it's from an Indian institution and doesn't exactly map to US/European degree fields). Although neither of them has a PhD in CS or a related field, they both have extensive experience in CS-related work. So, I hired them because of both their proven ability to deliver in the real world and their proven ability to apply the scientific method over extended periods of time and effectively present their results. I really didn't care what their academic field of interest was years ago. Based on my experience, and I have hired hundreds of people into CS-related positions, you'd be much better off completing your current degree and beginning to amass experience in a particular discipline. People like me respect the dedication required to complete an advanced degree (I have one, myself); but, we want to see real world results. So, for what it's worth, I'd be much more inclined to hire you in 2014 with a degree earned this year and two years of demonstrated experience than I would with a degree earned in 2014 from a "better" institution, regardless of the field. BTW, both of the individuals in question are doing amazingly well. One has worked for me in multiple companies for more than a decade. The combination of education and experience they bring to the table makes them enormously valuable, and I compensate them accordingly. Finish your degree and get out there. There's fun and reward to be had!

Research results over text on sheepskin

[Anonymous Coward]

More important than the subject listed on your degree is the quality and subject of your Ph.D. research. What have you done? Where have you published? In what research communities is your Ph.D adviser known and what employers engage with those communities? Will the people you want to hire you have read your papers and seen your presentations? These answers are more important than the field on your degree or name of the institution for many employers. If the person looking at your resume is first judging you based on the field-of-study or worse the institution's name, you are already at a disadvantage.

The ivy league sheepskin will help with certain employers like high-ranking academic institutions and elite non-technical employers like patent-law firms or financials. If that's not your target, it may not matter.

Something else to consider is pay scales across the fields. In my experience, CS or Comp E Ph.Ds have substantially higher starting salaries for working in their field compared to pure life sciences working in their field. Life science Ph.Ds seem expected to spend years in low paying post-docs before moving to somewhat better paying industry or academic research positions, where a good CS PhD can start out at something quite a bit better. A specific job will likely have a narrower pay range, but the general scales will apply if you look at the spectrum of jobs in each field.

(my background: Ph.D in computer engineering now working 5+ years in industrial R&D and married to a life sciences Ph.D. Both Ph.Ds from top-10 US schools in their respective fields.)

Keeping things simple

[jamej]

Choose the best possible education in the subject nearest your heart. Everything else will fall into place.

What?!! WHY??!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

That is bizarre to me. I have double Bachelors (BA LAS, BS EE) and I have friends with double MS (Industrial Engineering, MBA). Why can you know get a double PhD?

what planet are you from?

[LostMyBeaver]

You hire Ph.D.s because they can put Ph.D. on their business card and make them sit in mundane, boring ass meetings with customers so that they'll think you have a bunch of smart people working for you. After all, if you can waste such a special person on a stupid sales meeting you must be overflowing with super smart people. The company I work for has already turned most of their Ph.D.s into little doggies to keep in the customer conferences. The masters on the other hand are doing all the research and development.

A Ph.D. from an Ivy League school is almost guaranteed to land you a great sales job at a tech company. If you want to actually use your Ph.D. as more than just toilet paper, then take a professorship at a private university or a teaching position at a high end secondary school. I used to dream of a degree like the on you mentioned, but after seeing what it's done to most of my friends, I am really glad I didn't.

Oh... there is one tech job which you could get and actually write some code and papers at.... wall street... they're hiring people like you to write high speed trading algorithms. They don't actually know shit about shit, so they assume that guys with a Ph.D. from the Ivy League or MIT are the best people for hacking and using trial and error to manipulate the trading system and win more at gambling than they lose.

Re:Really?

[tehcyder]

Anyone tired of these tired Ph. D. posts yet? Unbelievably boring and lame. I guess several of the editors are "working on their Ph D's."

Agreed, the whole "I'm a highly intelligent nerd and as long as I keep getting good grades and qualifications and learning new programming languages I am entitled to a fabulous salary" thing is pretty tedious.

If you're that fucking clever and want to get rich, just go and do it, it's really not that interesting. Plenty of people with average intelligence and a winning smile earn fortunes as recruitment consultants, estate agents or investment bankers.

My Recommendation

[SoothingMist]

Computer Engineering, from an engineering school, with a minor in applied statistics from a math school.

Industry? Bio OK. Academia? CS better.

[Anonymous Coward]

US university accreditation typically requires that all instructors have completed a year's worth of graduate courses in the discipline they're teaching, and that a certain proportion of faculty in a department have PhDs in that department's subject. If you're ever thinking of going into academia, it may be easier with the "right" flavor. (And CS faculty have substantially higher pay, lower competition for job slots, and moderately higher rates of tenure success than Bio faculty.)

At Google, there are two CS PhDs in my tiny satellite office, and one Bio PhD; the CS PhDs are engineers, the Bio PhD is a tech lead/manager.

The Name Opens Doors

[Anonymous Coward]

We hire PhDs with unrelated degrees but useful analytic skills. One common theme is that the majority of the interviews are for people with well regarded universities.

You can do it either way, though.

go for the statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

There can be enough biologists with no understanding of statistics, that go unpunished through their life. Not so much with the statisticians. This gives the PhD in statistics better standing in your desired field.

Re:Really?

[radtea]

so it's clear you can move around easily enough

Yup. Ten years after you graduate your specific subject is irrelevant, unless you're trapped in academia. My PhD is in pure physics, and I've worked in pure physics, applied physics, imaging, robotics and pathology (genetic data analysis) and run my own software and scientific consulting company. Any good PhD in a hard subject from a decent school is an adequate stepping stone to a diversity of futures, so it doesn't pay to be too focused on the details. Do what you love, work hard, always keep learning, and be willing to do what it takes to learn what you need to do the job you want to do (this last part trips a lot of academics, who only want to learn certain kinds of thing, not all that messy practical stuff.)
   

like everything, it depends..

[rmettu]

Long time slashdot reader, first time poster. Being a computational biologist myself, I'd say that if you're in the market for a job in in academia, people look at your publication record and impact and all that, but also tend to be swayed by where your work is published (first perhaps), then who your advisor is, and then perhaps your department. Having participated in a number of faculty searches, the home department is important, but things can really play either way depending on the other criteria: "This candidate is so impressive, he published these papers with interesting CS results even though he was in a Biology department" or "This candidate is a great biologist and he has great papers in Nature/PNAS - but come on he's hardly a computer scientist". The bottom line is that the subjective part of your application materials (your letters of reference, and your research statement, for example) need to have a cohesive story about what you might consider your home discipline(s). I'm actually on the opposite side of the coin: I'm looking for a postdoc with your type of expertise (get in touch with me!) and I'm looking very broadly. I'd love to work with someone with complementary skills, and I'd wager that in the right circumstances that is often the most effective hire to make. Good luck!