Pharmacy school tuition... The biggest scam on earth.

[DIPEA]

Interesting. Can you elaborate on the role of machine learning within a pharma company? And if or how a pharmacist's knowledge can add to that?

This can be a lengthy topic. You can google "machine learning clinical trials" or "applications of machine learning in pharma and medicine" and read more about it. Pharmcists' clinical knowledge can be very beneficial in clinical data analysis and management, also pharmacoeconomics, just to name a few, despite the fact that most PharmDs currently don't work in those areas since they seriously lack the programming/data analysis skills those positions require the most. So PharmDs now heavily populate in pharmacovigilance, medical/regulatory departments. But again, the more gaps you can bridge, the more valuable you are. From what I have seen so far, very few clinicians can comfortably program, and very few statisticians/programmers really understand why they are doing the job they have been assigned to other than taking the instruction from their superiors. If you look at finance nowdays, Fintech has completely turned the finance world upside down to the point that the CFA exams will have a dedicated Fintech section starting next year. It's just a matter of time for biotech/pharma, at least that's how I see it.

In addition, once you adopt the mindset of a programmer and finish a few projects, you will soon realize just how easy pharmacists' routine work can be automated. Most clinical guidelines is nothing but a series of if/else statements. If you know some SQL and a general purpose programming language like Python or Java and know how to read and interpret clinical guidelines and product monographs, it's not difficult at all to build a clinical recommendation system or medication counselling program that can at least partially substitute pharmacists' clinical roles. If you know ML and consistently keep training such a program, it can eventually replace even the most competent clinical pharmacists, and it never makes the same mistake twice! Don't believe me? Just look at how AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol. I think the only obstacle from wide adoption of such clinical programs in all hospitals and pharmacies across the country is from the legal perspective, but I think this will be inevitable in future since it is just so much cheaper to automate than paying 6 figure annual salaries per pharmacist. The huge cost-saving incentive is just too hard to resist from business standpoint.

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[Momus]

If you are lucky, you'll work in one of the top companies. There are many of them and you start close to 200k compensation. If you aren't lucky, you still end up with 120k+/yr in other companies. Levels.fyi - Compare career levels across companies

 

[gwarm01]

If you are lucky, you'll work in one of the top companies. There are many of them and you start close to 200k compensation. If you aren't lucky, you still end up with 120k+/yr in other companies. Levels.fyi - Compare career levels across companies

Or if you live in a flyover state without a real tech scene, you'll be forced to take a 40k/yr salary working for whatever company will hire you. I knew someone who was in a job like that for a few years, but eventually they moved to a more vibrant city and found a great job.

Just a reminder, kiddos. If you want that amazing career you may have to move away from the nest. Momma and papa will get over it eventually.

 

[smercer]

Of course, not everyone is actually good at programming. Using a lot of this programming software, the actual true work is being done by the software not the person. When you actually have to write code from scratch or create a real program not using this, things become a lot more difficult. I do not really get the idea that if you are interested in pharmacy, then you will be great at coding. To be a coder you need to have a certain mindset that is not the same as that of a pharmacist. I guess you could argue being detailed oriented, but really beyond non-skilled labor that is something one needs for most jobs. Maybe things have changed, but when I did some CS courses back in mid-2000's I quickly realized that I had a lot less interest in it than I originally thought.

 

[DIPEA]

Of course, not everyone is actually good at programming. Using a lot of this programming software, the actual true work is being done by the software not the person. When you actually have to write code from scratch or create a real program not using this, things become a lot more difficult. I do not really get the idea that if you are interested in pharmacy, then you will be great at coding. To be a coder you need to have a certain mindset that is not the same as that of a pharmacist. I guess you could argue being detailed oriented, but really beyond non-skilled labor that is something one needs for most jobs. Maybe things have changed, but when I did some CS courses back in mid-2000's I quickly realized that I had a lot less interest in it than I originally thought.

I was a heavy math/engineering mindset-oriented student back in high school. Both of my parents are engineers, so they pushed me not to be another engineer, and I listened to them. I never really liked pharmacy, nor did I ever wanted to be a full-time practicing pharmacist, even now as a pharmacy student. Pharmacy schoolwork is pretty easy for me, so I am currently spending vast majority of my time programming while enjoying it and whatever time left to study for pharmacy exam etc just to get that PharmD degree, that piece of paper. CS for me is not difficult to pick up, but requires a lot of time drilling and actually getting hands dirty doing projects. Pharmacy itself is fairly easy and requires mostly memorization, and I found that not challenging enough. But the bottleneck is that degree, people need that piece of paper and title to be recognized for their clinical knowledge. CS, on the contrary, values actual skills, and not that many people care if someone has a degree in CS or not, as long as they can get the job done.

The talk about future medical/pharmacy/chem/bio-informatics applications is abuzz in the Bay Area and keeps getting larger, and the company I worked at were heavily pushing towards that. To make a career at the interface, a clinical degree is very beneficial cuz CS guys have no idea what the need and the actual problems are, yet clinicians/researchers know the specifications and details of the problems but have limited capabilities to solve the problem on their own or to write the specifications and outline the algorithms to guide CS guys to implement solutions.