Is there a place for me in CS? (Mid-career physicist with semiconductor automation experience) /u/theyllfindmeiknowit CSCQ protests reddit

I have spent a decade in the semiconductor industry automating microscopy (and other sorts of measurements), and I am moving to a new city where there isn’t much of a tech presence. The jobs that do exist seem to be more ML/CS oriented, and I’m hoping to get some feedback about how my experience might (or might not) prepare me for a more code-heavy role.

My experience with ML is mostly in training and using machine vision models (chiefly Cognex) and supporting more homebrewed image analysis projects. I was not generally responsible for the data pipelines or more backend stuff, though I have used a bit of opencv. I enjoyed this work and was successful, and my models functioned better than my peers’. I managed to automate some tricky things that had a real payoff, and it felt great.

I have a physics (Ph.D.) background by training, but I have done useful (though not super complex) things in Python for a long time, though I wouldn’t consider myself a true software engineer so much as proficient in scripting and data analysis. I have never wanted to break into full time coding because I found the mundane details of implementation (learning syntax for new packages I haven’t played with, managing version tracking infrastructure, etc.) challenging to hold my interest. ChatGPT, with all its faults, has been a great gift for me because it provides some shortcuts through the mundane parts and allows me to focus on the fun/interesting crux of the issue. Perhaps this is emboldening me to consider a career shift now.

Is this type of background useful in any CS jobs? What am I missing that I would need to land something, if not?

I have spent a decade in the semiconductor industry automating microscopy (and other sorts of measurements), and I am moving to a new city where there isn’t much of a tech presence. The jobs that do exist seem to be more ML/CS oriented, and I’m hoping to get some feedback about how my experience might (or might not) prepare me for a more code-heavy role.

My experience with ML is mostly in training and using machine vision models (chiefly Cognex) and supporting more homebrewed image analysis projects. I was not generally responsible for the data pipelines or more backend stuff, though I have used a bit of opencv. I enjoyed this work and was successful, and my models functioned better than my peers’. I managed to automate some tricky things that had a real payoff, and it felt great.

I have a physics (Ph.D.) background by training, but I have done useful (though not super complex) things in Python for a long time, though I wouldn’t consider myself a true software engineer so much as proficient in scripting and data analysis. I have never wanted to break into full time coding because I found the mundane details of implementation (learning syntax for new packages I haven’t played with, managing version tracking infrastructure, etc.) challenging to hold my interest. ChatGPT, with all its faults, has been a great gift for me because it provides some shortcuts through the mundane parts and allows me to focus on the fun/interesting crux of the issue. Perhaps this is emboldening me to consider a career shift now.

Is this type of background useful in any CS jobs? What am I missing that I would need to land something, if not?