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Ask HN: Advice for medical doctor in tech field?

4 points by livleenvj ↗ HN
I am a med school grad looking to transition in working for a start up, I have 2 year clinical experience and would assume I could use my skills in the marketing side of a startup, is there any specific place that would be a good fit for me where I can learn marketing skills and maybe put an extensive science background to use. I am looking to transition more into the marketing field after graduation, but am not sure what positions would be best suited for me since I don't have a coding/sales background. I studied digital marketing for a while and would like to advance that skillset.

7 comments

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rajacombinator
Quite simply, it’s a bad idea. You should try to make something of your med school degree.
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kohanz
As an engineer with experience in the medical devices field, my advice would be to continue to building your clinical experience (if it's in a specialization, even better) and look to establish relationships with startups in that field. They'll be very eager to partner with you as an advisor.

If you go into marketing, I'm not sure that your existing experience is anything but wasted.

jrowley
I agree. I think a few more years of clinical experience will provide them more clout, then they can go be a Chief Medical Officer of some startup.
itamarst
There's a lot of product management work where being a doctor is very helpful. E.g. I know at least one Electronic Medical Record vendor hires doctors for non-medical positions.
DoreenMichele
Insurance companies also like hiring folks with any kind of medical experience and may be willing to provide training or pay for it.
altvsnda
I'm a medical doctor as well, working as a software engineer at a medical startup. I switched from medicine to software engineering more than ten years ago. Basically, what I did to make the switch was to follow courses, did a lot of reading, and a lot of programming. Not too long after that, I got my first job as a programmer. From then on I learned mostly on the job. I'm now at my fifth tech job after switching. Like others have commented, there are companies that will hire doctors for non-medical positions, I know quite a few doctors that ended up in non-medical jobs. If marketing is what you'd like to do, I'd say try to find a position that enables you to grow into that, while learning on the side, and take it from there.