What would be a good careerer in lasers?

I have been planning on going to college for computer programming but after trying it I don't know if I would enjoy it as much as I expected to, sense I am in 11th grade now is the time when we look into colleges and decide what we would like our future career to be and I (surprisingly) never even thought about a career involving lasers, besides being something I'm interested in it would surely give me a great excuse to be spending so much on lasers . I don't think I would want to be a laser light show person or anything like that but more of someone who helps develop laser diodes and such is that an actual career or just something they would choose some engineers working at their company to work on ? As far as I know there are no companies (besides the ones selling lasers) devoted to only lasers usually it is just a side thing for bettering their current product line :undecided: What do you think would be a realistic career involving lasers? I know a lot of people never end up doing the thing they studied in college and that is probably because their interests change and like anyone else mine do too but out of the many hobbies I've tried lasers seem to be the only one that I have not gotten bored of, I mean I do not use my lasers every day but a year or so back when I only had 1 cheapo red laser because all my others broke I was dying to get my hands on a laser again, it's like an addiction. And so I think this is a career choice which I would not get bored of and even if I did a short break would be all I needed to get right back into the game. My only problem is that I can't think of any realistic jobs. Having a company selling lasers and laser accessories would be amazing but I don't feel like moving to china So yeah I know this has been a lot of writing and kudos to you if you read it all but please just let me know your thoughts on this and if it is just not a realistic career choice (which I suspect it is) then just letting me know that would be helpful as well :thanks:

You need to be a scientist to develop laser diodes.
A realistic career for you involving lasers might involve going to school for dermatology.
Then you could shoot lasers at people.

Physics? I mean do you want to work in labs?

Obviously some type of science, but i think the above two posts probably answered it pretty well

And hey, a small term career cold easily be selling lasers here on LPF

Then possibly grow and create your own site, and have worldwide customers. That is honestly an option.

Like the owner of a big forum. That owner most likely created it for fun, and it turned into a huge career, resulting in him making a lot of money solely from his website.

Major in electrical engineering and specialize in optics. Yes, it will take a lot of study and work, but you'll eventually be working in a field you're interested in.

Yes, people make laser diodes as a career. At this point, that's me. I'm not sure if I'm still going to be doing it in 6 months, but as of right now I research and invent new laser diodes.

Laser diodes are mostly made by electrical engineers and materials scientists with advanced degrees, but also physicists and chemists to an extent. Graduate programs in EE and materials are fed by all sorts of undergraduate majors, including materials, ECE, physics, chemistry, etc, almost anything technical could get you there.

Now if you just want to be involved in making them, you don't even need an advanced degree. The advanced degree is necessary if you want to be the guy who knows what is going on and is making the decisions, planning the experiments, running the show, etc. But there are plenty of people below him doing hands-on work to make laser diodes. And even new graduates right now aren't really running things in most cases, they're often underneath guys who have already been doing it for many years.

But to be honest, the research in this field is slowing down a lot. The area of a lot of real research in making laser diodes recently has been in GaN, and even that is slowing down. As problems are solved, there are fewer problems left to solve, so things slow down. There is definitely still work going on out there right now in making new laser diodes and improving existing technologies, but who knows what the field is going to look like in 4 years when you finish undergrad.

You can always be a TARGET MAN. Just bend over & paint a bulls-eye on your butt. The job is a pain in the a** though. Lol, J/K man.
rob

I went to school for laser electro optics. If you have extensive knowledge of laser systems, you may want to look into a laser/optics technician position. You dont have to be a scientist. Look at companies like Cymer or Gigaphoton. They manufacture and distribute Excimer lasers for semiconductor wafer production for places like Samsung, Intel, AZ, Telefunken, etc. "Technician" is the key word to search. Most of these jobs will be for field service.

Laser hair removal!