Jennifer Hodgdon's site comes highly recommended.

"Many scientists and engineers spend much of their lives writing, debugging, and maintaining software, but only a handful have ever been taught how to do this effectively: after a couple of introductory courses, they are left to rediscover (or reinvent) the rest of programming on their own. The result? Most spend far too much time wrestling with software when they'd rather be doing research, but still have no idea how reliable or efficient that software is. This site presents an intensive course on basic software development practices for scientists and engineers. Its aim is not to turn biochemists and mechanical engineers into computer scientists; instead, it introduces them to the 10% of modern software engineering that will satisfy 90% of their needs."

"Our top programmers are pure mathematicians who can, at a moments notice, turn off their programming skill and work in the rarified atmosphere of pure mathematics, though their most typical mode is to do both simultaneously. The relationship between empirical and theoretical is synergistic, with neither driving the other out."

from the Chronicle of Higher Education. "Making the decision to pursue a nonacademic career is a big step for many Ph.D.'s. But once you've taken it, the challenge becomes figuring out exactly what you want to do. You may be puzzled about how to proceed. That's why we've compiled a long, if not exhaustive, list of Web resources where you might find useful information and job listings on a variety of alternative careers."

An overview of the roles of mathematicians in industry and their working environments. A must-read for those considering careers outside of academia.

The Newton Fellowship Program trains mathematically-talented individuals to become high school math teachers and supports them in the early years of their careers. The fellowship pays your tuition for a master's in education from Columbia, NYU, or Bard plus $90,000 (total) over a 5 year period while you teach.

Posts from Derek Lowe's blog, In the Pipeline, on getting a job in the pharmaceuticals industry. Lowe is an organic chemist who has worked for several major pharmaceutical companies on drug discovery projects.

"What's it like working outside academe? How should you prepare? This site explores these questions and more. Sellout is produced by Mark Johnson, an English literature PhD who works in the software industry."

by Margaret Newhouse, Chronicle of Higher Education. A healthy perspective on life outside academia.

Philip Greenspun, a well-known web guru and MIT instructor, is setting up a computer science boot camp in which older students take classes and work in groups for 12 hours/day, 6 days/week. After 1 year's time, the goal is for all the students to have received the equivalent of a BS in Computer Science at a level of quality comparable to Stanford/MIT/CMU. And it's all free. Quite an ambitious project -- very, very cool. They're taking applications now.

by James Glanz, The New York Times, May 31, 2000. "A national organization of scholars and educators voted on Friday to call upon Asian-American scientists to boycott federal laboratories by not applying for jobs with them." (Requires free registration)

Article from The Chronicle of Higher Education on pathways out of bench science.

The University of London Careers Service web site containing advice, vacancies and an ever increasing Virtual Careers Library of careers related links for graduates.

Opportunities in bioinformatics once abounded for the self-taught and industrially minded, but employers are now turning towards the formally trained and academics...

The collected wisdom of sci.research.careers on going to graduate school, doing a postdoc, and alternative careers.

Learn how to enter the field of patent law. Relevant to scientists and engineers.