[R] staying with R, jobs in R

[Berton Gunter]

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Weiwei Shi [mailto:helprhelp at gmail.com] 
> Sent: Monday, August 29, 2005 9:05 AM
> To: Berton Gunter
> Cc: roger bos; avneet singh; r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [R] staying with R, jobs in R
> 
> 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:
> > 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
> > > job you like
> > > at a company you like and then convincing them that R is
> > > better (not to
> > > mention the R skill set you are bringing to the table).
> > >  Good luck to you.
> > > Roger
> > 
> > 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
> > 
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide! 
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> > 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Weiwei Shi, Ph.D
> 
> "Did you always know?"
> "No, I did not. But I believed..."
> ---Matrix III
>