I\'m a math professor that is losing his job, and I\'m trying to gain programmin

Question

I'm a math professor that is losing his job, and I'm trying to gain programming skills, since academic jobs are scarce these days.

Are there particular types of programming jobs that I should try to work towards, in order to leverage my math Ph.D? What particular skills should I try to obtain for those jobs?

Update, 6 months later: For those that are curious, I went the certification route, and it worked for me. I learned Java, then studied for the SCJP test, then obtained a job that is technically an internship, but is full time and pays comparably to being a math professor at a private school with tough finances. I recommend certifications for anyone without a CS degree or IT experience, it is the fastest and cheapest way to get something objective on your resume.

Explanation / Answer

I'm a mathematician turned programmer (after a PhD and postdoc in algebra and cryptography respectively). Here are the things that I didn't know before I switched!

1) If you're not straight out of college or university, there aren't many programming jobs for people without experience, so you will probably either need to get experience on say an open-source project in your spare time, or get a semi-academic job where the mathematical ability is the rare skill being sought not the programming ability. Such jobs are typically in scientific and R&D type environments, although there are some in the finance industry and games industry too. Once you have some actual paid experience under your belt, other options will become more open to you.

2) A lot of companies are nervous about people coming from academia. Possible worries tend to include a) you're not somebody who 'gets things done' and that you will get distracted by interesting academic aspects of the job b) you won't find the work intellectually challenging enough c) you will have a sharp learning curve with the team-working and communication sides of the job and d) you are going to want to leave and go back to academia at the first opportunity. There isn't much you can do about these other than try and find ways to reassure people and accept that you won't be able to change some people's minds on these things. Expect lots of questions about your motivation.

3) Don't assume that your mathematical experience is actually going to be that much of a help with programming. If you're a mathematician you are probably logical enough that you won't have much too much problem learning the basics, but a lot of the challenges aren't technical ones and there is a lot to know! Much of this can't be derived from first principles, and there will be large gaps in your knowledge for quite a while. Some people will treat that ignorance as stupidity which can get quite frustrating! However, you will have an edge in some areas - it's easier I think for a mathematician to learning programming than a programmer to learn mathematics.

4) Don't assume that the type of programming you are going to enjoy doing will have a mathematical element to it. This is from my personal experience. The thing I liked about mathematics was coming up with nice abstractions for things and as a result I actually prefer software design to e.g. programming cryptographic algorithms.

5) One other area to consider is programming software related to teaching mathematics, physics etc. My second programming job was in this domain - there aren't many people around who know both how to program, the subject domains and something about teaching.

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