Switching field to medicines/bio-engineering as a degreeless programmer

Question

I'm 24 this year. Started coding at 12. Dropped out of school & wrote my first mobile app at 16. Been in a couple of start-ups.After all these years I realised I'm more interested in living things. I have recently gotten into an (imo, extremely) decent job and finally have the confidence again to think about what I really want to do in life.I would like to switch fields to medicines or bio-engineering. How difficult will this be? Does having ~8 years of software engineering experience help although I don't have any degrees and formal qualifications?For anyone who've been there done that, what advises would you give to someone like me? Thanks!p.s. I can code in coq[1] and I have strong interest in applying automated theorem proving in consciousness research and BCI. And so I want to acquaint myself with medical studies & bio-engineering-specific stuff before I get too old.[1]: I've done a Ph.D course in programming language theory at 19 when I was vagabonding in a univ with my older sister's ID. And I've also done some work in combinatorics (never got published; just posted on arxiv & shared with friends in academia). I'm currently working on a new proof for an old theorem using coq and hope to get it published.

clusterhacks · Accepted Answer

You are going to have real problems breaking through without at least an undergraduate degree. Or artificially limited even if you land something.
I'm old enough to know that nothing is impossible, but how hard do you want the road to be?
I went back for an undergrad in CS in my mid-20's, pulled my MS in CS in my early 30's, and even after a decade of dev work, it took a lucky break in my personal network to get me into the academic research world in the medical space.
Just eat the time and knock out some type of undergrad - when asked, I usually tell folks to major in X with a minor in CS. The minor in CS is enough signalling for most programming jobs and the major in X with that minor gives you a head start on the competition in X. I think this is generally true for X=math, biology, chemistry, business, etc.

archibaldJ · Answer

I've known friends who did Bachelor's and PhD's in bio-engineering, computational biology, etc, worked in the lab one or two years, didn't find the career development aspect of things to be prosperous (this was 2005~2015), and then made the (often smooth, employment-wise) transition into the software industry and went on to become succesful product managers and CTOs.But I've never known of the reverse.

the_only_law · Answer

I imagine for much serious work, you probably have to go back to school and get at least some education in area. Assuming you're american: luckily at 24 going back to school is slightly easier than it would be in past years because of the nonsensical "dependent" requirements the financial aid system. If not, I imagine your education system is generally better for returning back to anyway.