But what you want to do is going to be interesting, to say the least. If you are coming from a management consulting background and can get a data sciences gig using R (is that bioinformatics-oriented?) I'm going to be HIGHLY IMPRESSED. You could write a book about it.
I think Pxsant may have an interest in that subject, but my opinion informed by own experience is that you'd better pick something that
you know you personally can actually sell effectively.And that's the rub, the deeper problem with pre-selecting a technical domain and going after it. You're just guessing about a ton of things:
- Whether it will be in demand at jobs you can plausibly apply for after you are tooled up.
- Whether your own experience mix plus "R" or whatever will be accepted by any employers.
-
In summary whether you can effectively sell the new tech skill for new work consistently.That's exactly why I stopped marketing my "software copywriting" services. It's a bag of shit. I'm a competent writer. But it turns out that everyone WANTS the service but NONE of the cheap bastards running tech businesses wants to actually pay for the skill.
The billable work I could find was astoundingly low quality - pennies per hour, pretty much. Yet you'll run into tons of blog articles and Youtube videos about how copywriting is a gold rush.
That is a key instance of possessing a skill in a supposed marketable area and you still can't find acceptable work in it.
For instance, I received this a few weeks ago through my copywriting website:
Message Body:
Hi,
My name is Yury, and I am the marketing director for VironIT company. I found your profile via google.
We would like to create an article "How to hire app developer?"
Here is the example we like. https://thinkmobiles.com/blog/how-much-cost-to-hire-app-developer/
Could you create a similar article but with some improvement? (unique pictures, video etc.)
Could you please provide me with the price for 1000 words?
Doesn't he fucking KNOW what he's willing to pay? YES, but it's a game and he won't say because he's fishing.
G***damned games. These places are all alike. He probably has a budget like $150 which would be rock bottom pay scale, but he's fishing to see if he can get it done for $75, I bet. Because that's been exactly the pattern with every one of these requests.
I just replied with one word: "No". I was tempted to write "f*ck off."
It just gets into your head. And that's the larger challenge with the "Pxsant method" of retooling: staying motivated and sticking with the plan. Because, trust me, it will be EXTREMELY hard to get any respect when you start out on such a path.