[zissou]

I'd encourage any economist that has a knack for programming to really put in some time towards the area. I've owned econpy.org for about 3 years now (although I haven't updated it in a long time). I also own economics.io and run econpy.blogspot.com.

It's much easier (relatively speaking) for an economist to pick up some programming than it is for a programmer to pick up some economics. Economists are already familiar with the types of questions that are important to economists, and more importantly, how to frame them. The trouble with economics is that you can't just pick it up overnight as it is a way of thinking more than it is a tool set. Programming on the other hand is something that you can "get working" overnight (economic programmers don't need to be algorithmic theorists -- they just need to be really good at getting/scraping data and organizing it so they can run analyses on it).

Over a year ago, I dropped out of my PhD program in economics because I was not at a school that was going to allow me to do the econ/cs type work I was working on. Leaving my PhD program was one the best things I ever did because it has allowed me to pursue whatever I want to do with the skills I've acquired.

The problem with academic economics is that the data most economists use is so bad and outdated -- such as data from FRED, BLS, and other publicly available sources where everyone and their uncle can download the same CSV dataset that was aggregated by some government employee. The race then is to see who can put together the most elegant econometric model to handle all the issues with the data. The rules of the game change when you create your own dataset and thus have control over while variables to include, the aggregation, the frequency, etc.

Long story short, if you are an economist wanting to do programming, learn to adapt those skills in academia (best way is to find a great advisor -- if there isn't one in your economics department, check the business school as bschool professors are often much more open to highly empirical analyses and care [marginally] less about getting the theory perfect). Or, if you want an easier lifestyle that is much more rewarding, ditch academia for the private sector. You'll find the economists in the private sector to be much more knowledgeable about cutting edge technologies and willing to listen and learn from what you have to say.