hg.stevelosh.com > .plan

# About Me

Graduated in 2008 with a BS in Computer Science.

Worked in the tech industry:

* 1 year at telecom veal farm.
* 2 years at small web development startup.
* 2 years at a non profit (started working remotely).
* 2 years at a bank.

Simple got acquired, I got some money.  Decided to go back to school.  Packed up
everything and moved to grad school for two years.  Graduated with an MS in
Computer Science.

Moved back to Rochester.  Got my old job at Simple back.

Pretty soon it was clear that Simple had changed and I was miserable.  Started
looking around for new jobs.

Eventually I found a job posting at a biotech company (10x).  I didn't have any
biology background but that was okay for them.  Joined in 2018 and I've been
there for about two years.

# About Them

# Learning Biology

First, definitely want to learn more about biology.  I've been learning on my
own via:

* Khan Academy
* Textbooks
  * Lots of pop science books
  * Campbell Biology
  * Genomics books from book club
* A few partial Coursera courses
* Two classes at RIT
  * Bioinformatics 101
  * High throughput sequencing

Wondering what the next steps are.  Microbiology of the Cell?  Coursera classes?
Something else?

# Finding New Things

How do people find areas that interest them?  Genomics interests me, but I don't
know if that's just because I'm working at a genomics company and that's what
I have the most exposure to.  I see advice like "find a lab whose work
interests you" and "keep an eye on new papers" — for CS/programming I know how
to do that, but with biology I don't really know where to start.

# School?

I like working at 10x because even if I'm not doing super sciency stuff myself,
I still get to work on things that are used by e.g. cancer researchers.

With that said, I really enjoyed going back to school a few years ago.  I like
learning new things a lot.  I enjoyed the research end of things too, but didn't
feel like it was very meaningful to humanity at large (esoteric CS topic).

Learning a lot about biology and been really interesting to me, and I could see
myself going back to school one more time for a PhD.  Is this completely crazy?

I have a BS and MS in computer science — would I have to do a full BS/MS in
biology or bioinformatics first before being able to do a PhD in comp bio or
bioinformatics?  Or is it possible I could learn enough biology on my own over
the next year or two and lean on my programming/CS experience in a comp
bio/bioinformatics setting?

I was lucky enough to join 10x when it was significantly smaller and get some
stock options.  I'm golden handcuffed to them for the next year at least, but
after that I have more flexibility.
author	Steve Losh <steve@stevelosh.com>
date	Thu, 15 May 2025 13:23:53 -0400
parents	97111cd8535b
children	(none)