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Ask Slashdot: Ambitious Yet Ethical Software Jobs?
First time accepted submitter hwaccaly writes "I'm a mid-career developer with a fair amount of experience working on data-intensive, mathematically ambitious software projects for fun — things like physics and systems simulations, written mostly in CUDA, targeted at Tesla GPUs and small clusters. Ideally, I'd like to get paid for this kind of work, but I've found little call for these skills outside of the financial and defense industries. My conscience won't allow me to accept money from either. The medical/pharmaceutical industries undoubtedly require complex software, but the unavoidable animal testing at the end of the pipeline probably lifts its body count higher even than the defense industry's. And academia pays in degrees, not dollars. So what's left? Do any ethical businesses have a pressing need for high-performance computing, or is it basically a hobbyist niche?"
Joined Slashdot just to post on this thread. No longer a lurker! 20 years IT, working with health systems for 6. Healthcare desperately needs math and physics gurus, and you will get respect in this industry. The data sets are finally large enough to need your expertise. I've worked on projects with meteorologists looking at boundary detection and then anatomy matching in 3D imaging data sets, We've done Gaussian curvature in mitral valve deformation. I've got another project looking at quality outcomes using mathemateticians we hired away from Oxford and Trondheim universities. Some of these are startups, some are nationally funded research projects. Some blur that line. All are ethical, in sense of first do no harm. In the tougher issue of weighing intentional harm vs capability, it's good the be surrounded by people who consider that their life's work. As those projects come up, each is evaluated and risk/harm is openly discussed. I love this environment, and love that occasionaly I get to run stats to show interventions prompted by new data modelling techniques saved lives over the traditional standard of care. You can make a difference, please do so.