Agreed. I am also in Canberra, and tried both Optus and Vodafone before switching to Telstra. Vodfone had very poor coverage both in my home suburb and at my workplace (only a couple of kilometres from the city centre -- but probably affected by local hills). Even where the coverage seemed good, data speeds were very slow. Telstra has much more reliable and very much faster coverage, and better service these days, too.
Search for "scientific programmer". The HPC and CUDA bits are likely to be implied between the lines rather than mentioned in the ads.
You have rare and important skills for environmental modelling and I very much doubt you'd need prior experience specifically in that context to get a good job in a research support position. You'd be working with scientists with that experience and expertise, and using your own expertise to provide skills that they probably don't have.
Yes, you be in a research support position rather than a research scientist or lecturing position -- at least initially (people do move from one to the other, with or without PhDs). But the sort of work you say you want to do mostly sounds like a research support role rather than an academic role. it wouldn't make you a second-class citizen.
PS - OP, please leave a comment below if you'd like to get in touch with a scientific programmer or three who are working with oceanographers, so you can hear from them directly what the work is really like and how rewarding it is. I'll send you some contact details.
As an oceanographer, I absolutely agree. People with the OP's skills in the earth sciences rare and very highly valued.
These roles are not generally highly paid compared with what you could be getting in gaming, because research just doesn't pay as well as commercial work. On the other hand, there's a good chance you'll get to play with high level HPC and a near certainty that you'll be contributing in a very tangible way to research with public good outcomes.
Probably more valuable than becoming a researcher yourself would be to take on a research support role, and work with scientists. The job title might be something along the lines of "scientific programmer".
As a research student, you don't take classes, but you still cost money: almost certainly more than undergraduates cost, though you are doubtless also giving back a great deal of value through your productive research.
Costs include (at very least) the cost of your advisors' time (probably more time than you think), the cost of your office space and furniture, IT, HR, and HSE support and library services, as well as little things like access to counselling and other student/staff services. You may not use any of these much, but they need to be funded and there for you anyway. Probably also research operating costs and travel costs.
Ah but there's a danger in that. So many young men who move to OZ end up marrying Australians and never make it home. My husband is one of them
Don't forget that lots of highly skilled people want to work in another country for a while, but have no intention of living there permanently.
My brother in law worked happily in the US for a few years on well over $150K/year, but after he and his wife had a daughter, they wanted to move back to NZ to bring her up. He found a job back home (at a considerable paycut) and left the US after 4 years, 10 months. His US colleagues thought he was mad to leave a good job so close to getting a green card, but he had no interest in a green card. Living in the US forever had never been in his plan.
I have several other friends who have worked in the US for a year or three after getting their PhDs, just for some overseas experience before heading home. It's pretty common among younger, highly educated people.
I picked "slightly safer". It's much safer from accidental deletion or corruption, much less safe from hacking. It's probably slightly safer if anyone really wants to target me specifically (most of my data has no protection if you have physical access to my hardware). But for me, the biggest risk is accidental loss.
This is a complete misunderstanding of the chemistry involved.
Increased dissolved CO2 concentrations (pCO2) make it much HARDER, not easier for corals and shellfish to fix calcium carbonate.
The reaction is:
Ca2+ + 2HCO3- CaCo3 + H2O + CO2
This reaction can go in either direction. It needs to run from left to right to create coral and shells. Increase the concentration of CO2 in the water and you increase the pressure in the other direction (right to left, i.e. dissolution of CaCO3 rather than accretion).
Doesn't Australia have the same "might is right" style of employment laws we have in the US where they can just fire him for not being a team player or spending too much time in the can?
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
