Alternate title: "How I finally convinced my Dad that open-source can put
food on the table". Since this entire story got started on this mailing
list, I figured it would be appropriate to end it here.
Last Friday, I signed a contract to begin working as a "Senior Scientific
Programmer" for a research company. The company has recently begun making
Python the "preferred language for new development" and has become heavily
dependent upon NumPy, SciPy and matplotlib. They have been doing fairly
well for a while now, but a few months ago, they ran into a problem with
matplotlib. After spending a few weeks butting heads on it, they finally
decided to post a question about it to the matplotlib-users list. After
reading the question and seeing the code example, I replied with a one-line
fix within half an hour of its posting and moved on.
About a week later, I got a personal email from the original poster
informing me that my solution worked perfectly. He also noticed that I was
working in a neighboring building on campus and wondered just how much
longer my PhD was going to take and if I had any interest in going into the
private sector. (The company happened to deal with atmospheric science and
my PhD is in meteorology).
It turned out that the company realized the value of having on-staff a
"SciPy Guru" (I still consider myself a beginner). After the usual visits
and interviews, I was offered a position. At multiple times throughout the
process, it was obvious to me that while it was good that I was an
atmospheric scientist, what was most valuable to them was my knowledge,
insight and expertise with Python and its tools.
The lesson I hope everyone here can take in is that there are many
companies out there that are using open-source tools and libraries for
their purposes. Learning and using these tools for your own purposes not
only solves your immediate needs, but also sets you up for future
opportunities.
Therefore, I would like to thank John Hunter for making matplotlib
available for the community, and a hearty thanks to the rest of the
community for their contributions to matplotlib. Without this, I doubt I
would have found this job opportunity, nor have the "value-added" skills to
have them consider hiring me.
Lastly, a reminder to everyone on this list, I hope this encourages more of
you to help each other out with answers. You never know if the person you
help out is your future co-worker!
Cheers!
Ben Root
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