Living in Portugal. But I have no problems in going to other countries.
Just finishing my Biology's Bachelor's Degree
Know some Haskell and Matlab
I'm doing the The Odin Project course (http://theodinproject.com/curriculum). I already know some HTML, some CSS, some Ruby on Rails and a good bit of Rails, I think.
What I Want
I want to be a Effective Altruist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism), that is, I want to do the most good possible in the world. I could have a very-well-paid job and give a good percentage of it to charity (a strategy called 'earning to give'). Or I could have a job with a direct impact on people, like biomedicine research on important problems. Or I could mix the two strategies.
Problem
I'm thinking about getting a Masters on Bioinformatics. But I'm afraid that after finishing it I could get a not-very-well-paid-job compared with other informatics-related jobs and that that job would not have a great positive impact on society. Maybe what I would give to charity with the earnings from other informatics-related job would do more good in the world.
On the other hand, I have no formal education on informatics.Could I really get a well-paid job in the area just from self-learning?
Questions
How much positive impact does bioinformatics research has on the world?
How a bioinformatics master's degree would raise my chances of one day have a really-well-paid-job compared with just self-learning?
Thanks. :D
Luís Campos
Ps: There's a worldwide community of effective altruists, so I think the answers to this question have the potential to have a high impact on some person's carreer.
As with just about all other careers how much you earn will be a combination of many factors. The most influential of these may be independent of the skills that you learn in school. What is more important is how you put these skills to use, what you choose to do with them, how you communicate with others, educate and lead newcomers and overall how you choose to interact with and shape the world around you. Finally framing effective altruism mostly from monetary perspective is also too limiting in my opinion. There many effective contributions that one can make that don't have well defined monetary values.
I think, arguably, it is a lot easier to pursue the 'direct impact' approach with bioinformatics. It almost doesn't matter what field you then work in, as long as you think you can assess the tangible benefits of what you do. I think your 'earning to give' strategy won't mesh so well, you can earn more money elsewhere (but you'd likely have to retrain - I'm not sure your Bioinformatics masters has great value in other informatics fields.).
I think the direct impact approach is also something that is far more amenable to a life-long goal. Earning to give will perhaps serve you well in idealistic, younger days, but I think far too tempting to deviate from in later life when the pressure to spend to maintain standards of life surrounded by a growing family or whatever future path you might take.
I've worked in all kinds of bioinformatics scenarios (mainly by supporting other peoples works) from helping to develop commercial products for cancer research to (currently) helping researchers realise the promise of crop improvement to improve sustainability of the food chain in an era of climate change. I think that's pretty rewarding. My own 'altruism' comes from helping others put together their research, providing the tools and platforms and access to technology they couldn't supply themselves.
I'd take bioinformatics over coding apps for a consumer culture in some thinly veiled philanthropic vein any day of the week.
Working for A, to give money to B, seems like a terribly inefficient and unsustainable model...
Working for A is not the most efficient way of making money - it is simply a convenient, albeit lossy, way of converting work into money.
Giving money to B is not the most efficient way of providing aid - it is simply a convenient, albeit lossy, way of converting money into aid.
If your goal really is to help others, become a social worker. Cut out all the middle men and translate your work into aid directly.
Regarding working in compsci because you learned how to program; best piece of advice anyone has ever given me was after I made my first program - "don't use your new skills to create solutions looking for a problem to solve. Go and find the problems and develop a solution."
I didn't get why it is a bad model. Charities also need money not just people.
In 'earning to give', you give money to a efficient charity (GiveWell), that you think does the most good per euro, money that you would spend elsewhere in things that you don't need. :)
Anyway, thanks for all the answers! I decided to do the Masters in Bioinformatics. ;)
Yes, but they need money to pay for aid - which you could argue you could give directly if you were an unfettered altruist. I recently gave $250 to charity via omaze.com, and later found out when the receipt came that only $160 actually went to the charity, because a very large amount went towards the advertising. Seeing as I have to work over 80 hours to earn $250, that upset me a little :P
Anyway, glad to hear you're doing a Masters in Bioinformatics! Masters are always a good idea, and hopefully by the end of it you'll have a really good idea of what you want to do with your time :]
This conversation reminds me of a talk I heard by Chris Dwan at MIT. He was lamenting that he's having trouble filling positions for skilled computer scientists because they can make so much money at other places. Here's the convo:
Chris Dwan competes w ad + game developers for computation staff he needs. MIT wants to cure cancer + Ebola, but pay less. Sigh. #BostonDOT
It's expensive to live in the places where this cool kind of work happens too. That said, have a look at the jobs at the Broad. He wants people who get the mission aspect. http://www.broadinstitute.org/careers/careers
that is a nice career resource!