Job categories?

[sciencenewbie247]

My kid (high school jr.) wants to pursue a career in science. I'm a Marketing executive, my wife is a CPA. There is literally no one in our family that knows anything about careers in science so I'm trying to educate myself to give him the best advice possible. I'm curious. Are there general categories in science that jobs typically fall under in that field? For example, if one were to tell me they wanted a career in business, I'd say that the main fields are: Finance, Marketing, Operations, and Management. Then, there are specific jobs under each of those main functions. Are there equivalents in Science? e.g. R&D, ....??

[bfinio]

Hi sciencenewbie247,

First off, don't worry. My parents are both lawyers and I wound up with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. I didn't really know anything about engineering until I started applying to college.

Second, our site has an entire section on science careers, if you want to poke around that: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ng-careers

Finally..."career in science" is REALLY broad, so it's hard to give a list of general jobs without narrowing down the field first (physics, biology, chemistry, civil engineering, electrical engineering, etc etc). The good thing, is that with a B.S. in any of those fields, you will still have a huge variety of job options. There are people who get engineering or science degrees, then go on to law school or get an MBA and go into the business side of things. There are people who go on to get a Ph.D. teach that subject as a university professor. You can go work for a huge technology, chemical or pharmaceutical company (think Boeing, Lockheed Martin, car manufacturers, Merck, Dow, etc); or you could go work for some tiny start-up. You can even go into education and work for a science museum or a nonprofit (which is what I do working for Science Buddies). You can really wind up being anywhere on the spectrum - from a research scientist locked away in a lab somewhere attempting to avoid contact with any non-scientists, to a business/sales engineer who needs to meet with clients and explain the technical aspects of your product.

For a high school junior I would think first about what he wants to major in when he starts applying to colleges. Has he taken any AP science courses? If so, does he have a favorite? Does he really like building or designing stuff and applying that science knowledge, in which case engineering might be a better fit? I'm obviously biased since I'm an engineer, but I'd strongly suggest considering engineering, as job prospects and salaries are generally better for a bachelor's degree in engineering than a B.S. in science. For example, if he really likes chemistry, he might be better off with chemical engineering than a chemistry degree.

Hope that helps - happy to provide more info if you have any follow up questions.

-Ben

[bradleyshanrock-solberg]

I agree with the prior poster. As a bright teenager interested in many things, I went and got a solid engineering education because I figured I could pursue most of my interests either self-taught or by doing the equivalent of joining a team/band/whatever in my free time, but doing anything involving science required a proper education.

When in school, I ended up getting a mechanical engineering degree, which is another way of saying "I learned a little of everything, not much depth in anything but I learned really well how to break down problems and solve them with whatever tools are at hand". I actually started out doing research science, took a short detour into traffic engineering, a very long detour into Information Technology and am drifting toward Data Science now, as I'm finding (after 20+ years of being more of an engineer) my true interests and aptitude lie in analysis and finding answers to questions, rather than building things.

The point is that if you have a solid STEM education, your career can follow your enthusiasms/interests or, alternately, your opportunities are broad because you can step into a lot of roles and learn as you go, because you have internalized the scientific method and problem solving techniques that are less common in the workplace than perhaps they should be, so you can find solutions where others are at a loss.

You're a marketing executive - that means you must know that people good at what you do can do more than just work in Sales/Marketing in a single industry. They can transfer their skills to other industries, or they can shift to a non-sales/marketing job and use their skills internally - for example to promote the accomplishments of their team and get work directed to their team suitable to their talents. It's similar with science. Your degree's specifics matter less than the fact that you HAVE a degree (showing you have the basic training and once finished something hard) and your specific experience in, say, Biochemistry might give a leg up in a Biochem position, but you could easily shift to Biology or Chemistry and would not actually have a huge difficulty shifting to nearly any other field that used similar experimental technique or tools to what you used in your prior work, even if your new position is environmental science, a financial quant or helping somebody's re-election campaign with data analysis. The further you go from your past training/experience, the more effort you have to do to show that skills transfer, but you are not locked for life into the major you chose at age 18-22.

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Case study - my experience with a STEM degree:

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Just to take my career as an example, I've participated in work in all of these areas:

Fluid flow modeling of Mount St Helens Ash
Mossbaeur spectroscopy
Traffic Jam studies (modeling, predicting causes, developing real time measurement)
Research into strength of Ceramic-Metal interfaces
Data analysis and presentation
Code Development
Software Engineering & Architecture
Statistical analysis and modeling
Built an Ecommerce site, including usability, multi-language and browser-independence
Quality assurance of software products
Project and program management


In my career I've had to learn and work with with the following technologies...

Scanning and Transmission Electron Microscopes
diamond cutting tools and grinders (making electron microscope samples on ceramics nearly as hard as diamond is tough)
Computers large & small, plus understanding most of the ecosystem (data centers, networking, etc)
Machine shop work, pouring concrete, improvising a variety of tools/sensors from random available equipment
Drafting (so other folks more competent than me could do difficult machining, wielding, etc)
Many programming languages and software tools, and business tools from Excel to Oracle ERP in complexity

I've done science and engineering in support of....

academic research into traffic flow, materials science & fluid dynamics
employee #10ish at a traffic information startup
multinational manufacturing, order management, shipping & receiving
sales and marketing, contracts lawyers, payroll/commissions systems
Pure internal information-technology "plumbing" - guaranteed messaging systems, troubleshooting system crashes, etc
I also have a variety of hobbies that I'm "good" at largely because of my scientific training and experience (turns out that knowing statistics, how to set up a hypothesis and experiment, models and automation can give you a leg up in finding a good poker strategy or a good fireball rotation for your World of Warcraft Wizard....).

[sciencenewbie247]

Thanks to both of you for your detailed replies. This is great information that I'll be sharing with my young one.
I really appreciate you taking the time!