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Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

(www.ycombinator.com)
1106 points sama | 1 comments | 15 Sep 16 18:05 UTC | HN request time: 0.211s | source
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etendue ◴[15 Sep 16 18:37 UTC] No.12508615[source]▶
How would one go about meaningfully contributing to solving problems in genetics without having done the work leading to a MD or PhD (or both)?
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1. Myrmornis ◴[15 Sep 16 22:45 UTC] No.12510494[source]▶
You can definitely contribute. If you're a software engineer, then you could join a research lab as a scientific programmer. Good labs are well-funded in these areas and will have funding to cover salary for a programmer to implement data analysis pipelines, polish research software and make it publicly available etc.

Alternatively if you're a software engineer or a product designer, or many other roles, then you could join a company working on commercializing genetic medicine. They're are lots and those companies are definitely not just looking for people with PhDs.

Once in a place like that, you'd be able to chat further with people about your career direction.