Asklemmy

45225 readers

868 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

138

What is your profession? (reddthat.com)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

141 comments fedilink hide all child comments

My profession is in programming. Initially, my dad tried to teach me Javascript. It was a struggle and couldn't get it.

A few years later, I took up computer science in college and that's where it all clicked: I can imagine the end result. It's a matter of being curious and finding (or I daresay... hacking) my way to that conclusion. Programming languages have a very funny way of allowing you to do just that. In studying computer science, I discovered the art of engineering all kinds of software-based solutions.

Because my way of solving problems is more deductive than inductive, I have to consciously build foundational knowledge and routines. Constant learning and insatiable curiosity is required for me to identify when my hunches are wrong and discard them accordingly.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Manager in the neuroscience lab where I did my PhD. Actually pretty nice because I know the lab and everyone so we'll I can often do the management in a few hours and then just focus on my research (finishing my thesis because behavior plus in vivo neurophysiology takes more like 7 years instead of 4 lol). Although, there can be some very stressful moments, big grants or so (and my boss is one of those breathing-science profs that will msg on WhatsApp on the weekend or days off lol, but yeah fuck that). I learned that I'm not good enough/invested enough to actually become a PI or prof, so this management stuff is pretty nice on the edge. I don't have the responsibilities but my opinion is often respected due to my research experience in the lab. Pay is shit tho.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I manage an infectious disease monitoring lab in industry. Pay's a whole lot better out here, and my team is amazing and self-driven so I can do minimal people managing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Oh that's sounds nice. Not sure how to word it well, but: is that a bit interesting to do long term? Is it following the advancements in science in a nice tempo? Do you have room for innovation yourself?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

What I do specifically is called wastewater based epidemiology. While the term has been around for a few decades, it really took off in concordance with COVID. Previous PCR techniques like qPCR are heavily inhibited by co-elutors from wastewater extract. We use digital PCR which is way more resistant to inhibition due to the partitioning. We are using cutting edge technology and our R&D dept is constantly looking into additional targets we can test for. As a company we also do some non-pcr-based wastewater testing (drugs of abuse by LC/MS is a big one).

Additionally we also do next gen sequencing to track the COVID variants in communities.