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Ask HN: Am I too old to switch to Bioinformatics through a Masters?

4 points by biolurker1 ↗ HN
By trade I am a web developer and have worked a lot both in the backend and with different databases. My math is very rusty from high school (because as you may know, there is no math in "soft" software development any more which always surprises my friends when they ask). I remember almost zero about how cells work from school.

I was trying to forget this part, but I am 39 now.

There is a very nice Masters program where I live in Europe that is about Bioinformatics, I contacted the co-ordinator and said I could get in if I refresh my Math and Biology with a few books about linear algebra and the book "Essential Cell Biology".

So here is the thing. It would take me this year to prepare myself at my own pace for induction and study these. Next year I would start the 2 year Masters and I will graduate when I am 42.

I would like to either do a Phd or work in a research environment where as someone put it here on Reddit and it stuck with me "I would much prefer analyzing vast datasets of cancer causing molecules than datasets of user behavior to make the company monetize a product".

Questions:

1) Am I too old to be accepted in jobs and research environments after I finish the Masters

2) Is age-related cognitive decline an issue that you think might affect me? I couldn't find many examples of people switched to something very intellectually demanding with no experience later in IT (most of my colleagues are now project managers something that uses crystallized (learned) intelligence and experience rather than sheer processing speed & memory)

3) Will I be able to actually contribute or with my age I will probably end up cleaning excel sheet data? I want to contribute meaningfully

Please be blunt, I am about to spend 3 years of my life in this.

5 comments

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moksly
You haven’t even lived half your life. Hell you haven’t even gone through half your work life, how could you be too old?

Never let fear of the future stop you from doing something that you want to do. Well, maybe within reason, but changing careers is definitely reasonable. People make the weirdest things work for them. The real question is whether you want to do it or not, not whether you can, because you absolutely can.

discordance
If you can afford to do it without (or little) debt, and it doesn't effect your dependents, then why not?
biolurker1
Yes actually finance is no problem and in Europe you don't even need debt, the Masters course costs in total $2k/year which would sound strange to an American..
pedantic-fool
You're a software developer, so learning is something you're doing constantly without even noticing.

Sure the youngsters have an advantage in sheer symbol ingestion power, but you have experience and probably some intuition as to how to work with information, knowledge and systems thinking which they won't have. Just be open to new tools that go with the territory.

My concern in your case would be the ability to find relevant employment afterwards, as it is somewhat rare to change field mid-career. Certainly that, depends on both the job market you'd be targeting, and your willingness to take an "entry-level" job.

And if all else fails, you still have your developer skills to fall back on.

vasilakisfil
Bioinformatics is a quite tough subject to study as it involves 3 distinct sciences: CS, Biology and Chemistry. I would say be prepared for a lot of study.

Ideally you don't want to go all in to risk everything, try to do it part-time for the first 6 months or 1 year and see how it goes (if you are even interested).

Note though that there are few jobs in bio at the moment, and due to that, ads usually ask PhDs (who at the same time have bigger advantage over a Masters candidate, although your experience is of high importance).