This blog will probably never be incredibly technical. I will talk about pipelines, software, general cool tools I get excited about, etc., but you probably won't see any code of mine up here. I feel as though there are plenty of resources already available and, if I do something technical, I'll post it as a vimeo (I have a few in the making, but time is one resource you cannot replenish and you always need more of). But I do see this blog developing into a resource for soft skills. And soft skills can be equally as important as the technical skills for career development! Now don't freak out if you are slightly socially inept (or very inept). There are plenty of careers for those types of people too. But in order to explain your work to an audience, soft skills are important. And a certain amount of soft skills are necessary for a general working environment with other people (specifically gives a knowing look to network guys).
One thing that I will share on this blog are some bits and pieces of conversations with my husband (Ace). He is a bit of an economics/statistics wizard! Seriously. And a lot of what we both do at our jobs overlaps. Data mining, analytics, database and reporting are comparable no matter what the data are to start with. In fact, it isn't uncommon to find someone with training in bioinformatics in another field such as banking. Why? Well to be blunt, these individuals have the same skill sets businesses are looking for, they make more money and there are more opportunities for career growth. Personally, I am passionate about the science. I get a high from working in biotech because I see it as much needed service for human advancement. Ace gets a high from saving companies millions of dollars. I get a high from helping with the research and development of biologics that will save millions of lives. To each their own.
But since Ace and I have similar skills and have different areas of expertise, we often look at data from different angles. This is super cool because we can pick each others brains, but the trick is that we have to explain our data in terms the other can understand. This is a great exercise for each of us because it helps us work on explaining complex concepts without all of the jargon. This can be fairly difficult for me because it also requires an explanation of the science behind the data and that adds to the complexity.
It really doesn't matter what job you have, at some point you will need to be able to adequately explain your work either to your boss, a client, etc. Given different backgrounds and expertise, this can be challenging. Data scientist, IT, bioinformaticians, etc. are usually considered black boxes. A black box means that other people at work have no idea what you do, but they know it is important. This can be a good thing because it usually means no one will ask you what you are doing and you sort of get a "free" pass with some things (meaning you are generally left alone to do your job which requires that ability to "tinker" with your computer all day). BUT a black box also comes with frustration. No one understand why you don't have results yet, why it is taking so long to fix a network issues, or why you cannot just use the same pipeline someone else published with. So, I try not to be a black box and explaining things without the jargon to Ace during dinner helps me hone those soft skills necessary to help explain myself to other people I work with.
This shirt was a vendor handout at the 2015 ACTG conference and plays on how bioinformatics is a black box. I challenge my soft skills to match my technical skills so that this shirt becomes just a joke and not general perception of my profession.
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