On 06/09/2012 10:56 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:

>>>> The thing is, I can't think of any career that makes use of an ability
>>>> to memorise and apply pointless algorithms...
>>>
>>> Off the top of my head:
>>
>>> research
>>
>> Seriously? That's a career? Talk about "vague"...
>>
>
> Every company that manufactures stuff has a R&D dept. Every university
> has professors doing a lot of R and a little D to pay for more R.

OK, well "research" is rather vague. It could mean almost /anything/.

"Motor design research" sounds like something that could be an actual 
career.

> You already have some chemical knowledge acquired by osmosis, why not
> try to focus on bio-tech or pharmaceutical companies?

Because the bio-tech industry is going south in a big way currently. 
(Actually, this arguably applies to /every/ industry right now...)

>>> finance
>>
>> Wouldn't I need extensive finance qualifications to do that?
>
> To become a floor trader at the stock exchange, sure. But to crunch the
> mountains of numbers that the financial industry needs to crunch, no.

It's interesting; one of the careers advisors I went to see advised me 
to go into financial modelling. Trouble is, when I looked into it, 
nobody is the slightest bit interested unless you have a PhD.

Also, the financial industry is kind of ground-zero of the current 
global recession...

>>> crypto/security
>>
>> Seriously, almost *nobody* actually does that.
>>
>
> Right. And encryption/decryption algoritms sprout from trees?

 From what I've seen, there are, like, three academics globally who 
write the vast majority of this stuff. And there are already /way/ more 
ciphers in existence than anybody actually wants or needs.

>>> logistics
>>
>> Really? I'm sure it's difficult keeping track of stuff, but I don't see
>> much technical detail involved. It's just about keeping track of a lot
>> of stuff all at once. It's hard, but it isn't very technical.
>
> Planning bus routes, garbabe disposal truck routes, snow removal routes,
> etc... are not exactly trivial.

I didn't say it's /easy/, I said it isn't very /technical/. It's 
difficult for mundane, real-world reasons, not because the maths is hard.

> Operational reasearch is a field
> of mathematics that is quite active, and those mathematicians need
> programmers who also can understand them. You'd fit nicely.

Really? There's actually mathematics involved in remembering to do stuff?

>>> data mining
>>
>> Does anybody actually do that? I thought it was just a fashionable
>> middle management buzzword.
>
> See airline example above. They don't decide to put an Airbus 319 or 388
> on each flight just for the fun of it. There's very extensive data
> analysis that goes in to determine the best aircraft size for a
> particular flight, and that analysis comes from crunching as much of the
> previous passenger stats they can. Most industries also do so at all
> levels to see how many widgets to pre-order to keep the aseembly line
> running, without having to pay for a larger than necessary warehouse.
> When to time your yearly discounts, how to target your advertizing
> campaigns. Etc...

All of that sounds to me like an extremely specialised, extremely small 
niche role that would be almost impossible to get hired for.

>>> robotics
>>
>> Is there any commercial application for that?
>>
>
> Apart from all the manufacturing that's done by automation, even today's
> dishwashers have programmable controllers that can sense the dirtiness
> of the dishes and adjust the cycles accordingly. If I was named Sarah
> Connor, I'd be worried at the moment.

Sure, there are autonomous machines all around us. I don't think that 
designing or programming them requires a vast amount of technical 
knowledge - just extensive testing and experimentation.

>>> communications
>>
>> From what I've seen, installing comms equipment doesn't require a great
>> deal of technical skill - you just need to be good at carrying stuff
>> around and running cables.
>
> Right. That's because the shmuck who has to go onsite to run the cables
> isn't the one who has to keep them running. It's like if you'd said
> "mechanical engineering doesn't look that hard... I mean the guy at the
> gas station barely does anything".

Again, "communications" could mean just about anything.

If you mean the 3 people on Earth who design the protocol stacks... 
well, those have already been designed. And we already have the 3 people 
who design them.

If you mean the people who design switches and routers and so forth... 
then there's maybe, what, 6 companies globally who make the hardware for 
that. And it's already been designed. And they already have the 20 or so 
employees each who do that work, so they aren't hiring. And besides, I'm 
no electrical engineer.

If you mean something else...

>>> disaster response
>>
>> What kind of disaster response requires technical skill?
>
> Planning to avoid them, and planning to deal with them when they can't
> be avoided. And dealing with them once you're knee deep in the water and
> the roof has flown 5 miles away. all of these steps require as much, if
> not more, technical-know how than heavy lifting.

When I wrote our disaster recovery plan, it was /way/ easier than a 
trivial programming exercise.

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