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staying with R, jobs in R

7 messages · avneet singh, roger bos, Weiwei Shi +3 more

Original
Bert Gunter
# 
Avneet:
Not to throw a wet blanket on your enthusiam for R (which I share) but ...

-- Bert Gunter
Genentech Non-Clinical Statistics
South San Francisco, CA
 
"The business of the statistician is to catalyze the scientific learning
process."  - George E. P. Box
 
 
 Your better off finding a
Fine advice, but a tad unrealistic. The reality (according to Bert):

1. Most jobs for statisticians are in the pharmaceutical/medical industry
(which includes academic research centers) in clinical trials. Data: See job
ads in Amstat News.

2. For better or worse, in this arena SAS is the standard. You will **not**
-- repeat, NOT -- convince industrial employers who have thousands of lines
of legacy infrastructure code and legions of SAS programmers to change. You
may well make some inroads in academic research venues. In both, you will
generally be free to use whatever software you like for your own work, but
the final code submitted for FDA approval will almost certainly necessarily
be SAS. Rail all you like, but those are the realities.

3. Another significant amployer of statisticians these days is the "finance"
industry (credit scoring and the like). Data: See Amstat News ads again.
There S-Plus is already widely used, so you should have no difficulty using
R and even getting others to adopt it.

I think outside these arenas -- for example, in industrial research and
engineering centers or in pre/non-clinical pharmaceutical work, you'll again
be free to use what you like. But there are relatively few jobs there, so
that despite Roger's noble advice (with which I again agree), first you
gotta eat and pay the mortgage.

And I also say: good luck.

-- Bert

-- Bert Gunter
Genentech Non-Clinical Statistics
South San Francisco, CA
 
"The business of the statistician is to catalyze the scientific learning
process."  - George E. P. Box
Weiwei Shi
# 
Hi, there:
Could I ask another question, which is a little bit off-topic; but I
tried hard and did not get good enough info... so please help

I am very interested in seeing where to find those
bio/pharmaceutical-related industries, using R and data mining as
approaches?

thank you very much!

weiwei
On 8/29/05, Berton Gunter <gunter.berton at gene.com> wrote:

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Frank E Harrell Jr
    

    

      
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Berton Gunter wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
One disagreement Bert - code submitted to FDA does not need to be SAS 
either from industry or academia, but especially from academia.  Many 
sponsors submit no code at all because they use Excel (!) which FDA 
allows (just as they allow Minitab).

The number of job ads in Amstat news desiring R/S-Plus skills is on the 
increase.  There have even been such ads from industry, though few.

Frank

            

      
      
      
    

        

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Bert Gunter
    

    

      
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Weiwei:

Job searches are difficult! One obvious answer is Amstat news and the ASA
job site, but there may be many not posted in these places. Most large
Pharmas (Pfizer, GSK, Merck, etc.) have (relatively small) pre-/non-
clinical research groups, so you might check on their websites for open
positions (I believe Merck may have some). Large industrial employers like
the auto companies, GE, DuPont, etc. often have a few openings in their
quality or research organizations, but again they are scattered all over and
may be hard to find. Check their individual web sites again.

If you have some signficant work experience already, you might try working
with a head hunter, as many jobs are never advertised. 

As I said, it's hard .. and harder than it used to be as engineering/science
type jobs are drying up for statisticians.

-- Bert

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

        

      
      
    

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Adaikalavan Ramasamy
    

    

      
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Like Berton Gunter said, jobs are usually classified by subject than
softwares used. It is difficult to change the mindset of people in a
workplace that worships software A and condemns software B. Try learning
enough of A to know its weakness/strengths and demonstrate some examples
where B can do the job much better than A. Warning : This can be a slow
and sometimes a pointless one.

What you should be looking for instead is for a flexible and
understanding employer that will allow you to experiment with other
softwares. You could enquire about this before you apply for a given
job. My biased opinion is that academic line gives you this flexibility.
If you are interested in academia in UK, check out www.jobs.ac.uk.

As for bio/pharamaceutical-related jobs, especially those dealing with
*omics technology, knowledge of R and BioConductor can be a real
advantage. Some of these are advertised on the BioConductor mail list.

Regards, Adai

        
On Mon, 2005-08-29 at 11:04 -0500, Weiwei Shi wrote: