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Ask HN: Are there any software jobs in nature/animal conservation?

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Re: Ask HN: Are there any software jobs in nature/animal conservation?

#81

Post by fock »

linuxftw wrote: post #65
fock wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, if museums would drive the same marketing campaigns (read propaganda or simply media based manipulation), this might easily change... Also generally the amount of time you can spend in museums is somehow limited, as most don't allow you to be active (like videogames do in a sort of lobotomied way). As for your example: if you compare the amount of time people play in bands/sing in choirs (often without any dire…

> this might easily change This is a perfectly testable hypothesis in the free market. You can start a museum and market it, and see if you generate a profit. If you don't, then you have to fund it yourself (pay) or hope a handful of others value it and pay. > often without any direct money involved, e.g. around church or school There's much money involved in organizing people and having venues for whatever it is the…

> Modern instruments cost a lot of money, lots of labor to produce.

well, I'm not sure, how the trumpet from 1970 differs from a modern instrument (and yeah, people are still using these, where I play), but yeah, "lot of money, lots of labor" >

And btw., one of the bands I'm in plays sometimes for money, but incurs no cost for membership or anything. It's just there.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any software jobs in nature/animal conservation?

#82

Post by pknerd »

walleeee wrote: post #56

Not exactly conservation, but there's plenty of computational work (and funding!) in plant biology. I do web development and data engineering for plant phenomics automation in a plant bio lab. Crop optimization (e.g., for abiotic stress resistance, reduced fertilizer requirements, atmospheric carbon sequestration, yield) basically requires digital surveillance infrastructure on the same scale we've (regrettably) deve…

I am interested to know details but I am in Pakistan. I work (Ed) on multiple technologies but mostly python these days for ETL and automation. Learning Go too. Check out http://adnansiddiqi.me

Re: Ask HN: Are there any software jobs in nature/animal conservation?

#83

Post by errantspark »

fulafel wrote: post #64
jefurii wrote: post #17

It's most certainly better for your soul, but get ready to take a pay cut. After a short career in game development and a much longer career in museum/library/archives, my take is that our societies values are out of whack: the more your job benefits your community and the planet the less you will get paid, and vice versa. It's even worse for social services. You'll also take a hit in your reputation among other deve…

Can you elaborate why you speculate a hit in reputation? I'm pretty sure it would be the opposite. Meaningful domains in tech jobs are looked up to by peers in my experience.

This isn't my experience. There's a difference between signalling admiration and actual respect.

Of course there are plenty of good people out there, but in my experience the plurality, and probably the majority of FAANG peeps will be made uncomfortable by the implicit challenge to the morality of their choices. Even though they might signal support for your actions; privately dealing with the cognitive dissonance does often result in eroded respect. A common defense mechanism is to see themselves as better than you because you just couldn't take the pressure to work at a "world leader" company, after all if they aren't the best people making the best choices, why would they be paid so much? You just burned out because you couldn't make Level 5.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any software jobs in nature/animal conservation?

#84

Post by linuxftw »

fock wrote: post #81
linuxftw wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this might easily change This is a perfectly testable hypothesis in the free market. You can start a museum and market it, and see if you generate a profit. If you don't, then you have to fund it yourself (pay) or hope a handful of others value it and pay. > often without any direct money involved, e.g. around church or school There's much money involved in organizing people and having venues for whatever it is the…

> Modern instruments cost a lot of money, lots of labor to produce. well, I'm not sure, how the trumpet from 1970 differs from a modern instrument (and yeah, people are still using these, where I play), but yeah, "lot of money, lots of labor" > And btw., one of the bands I'm in plays sometimes for money, but incurs no cost for membership or anything. It's just there.

> well, I'm not sure, how the trumpet from 1970 differs from a modern instrument

I consider a trumpet a modern instrument. How did you procure said trumpet? Did you pick it from the wild trumpet tree? No, of course not.

Someone mined the copper and zinc, refined them, someone combined them into the alloy brass, someone formed that brass into a trumpet. Of course, the trumpet wasn't conceived magically, it was something that went through countless iterations and revisions as instrument building matured. Then someone had to sell the trumpet to you. Unless you were at the factor-direct trumpet store, it was shipped to a retail location or warehouse where you then purchased it. Money and labor was invested just so you can obtain the trumpet.

How much labor goes into making a trumpet? Lots. Someone realized there was a market for trumpets and invested a good bit of capital to produce them. Improvements in manufacturing (aka, market efficiency) has resulted in high quality trumpets being produced cheaply, same as anything else. I'd say, the entire price structure of the trumpet (or much of anything, really) is entirely labor based. The metals exist in the ground. Digging them up is free (purchasing mineral rights notwithstanding) in terms of needed to pay the earth for them.

Much like libraries, there are places you can rent musical instruments like trumpets. These are often 'required' for education purposes, so why doesn't the government just have a trumpet library same as the book library? Don't you enjoy music? Why don't you demand taxes pay for instruments for the homeless that can't afford their own instruments? They're so enriching and such.

All those things exist because people voted with their money to make sure they exist. It's not because some greater good commanded their existence.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any software jobs in nature/animal conservation?

#86

Post by walleeee »

pknerd wrote: post #82
walleeee wrote: post #56

Not exactly conservation, but there's plenty of computational work (and funding!) in plant biology. I do web development and data engineering for plant phenomics automation in a plant bio lab. Crop optimization (e.g., for abiotic stress resistance, reduced fertilizer requirements, atmospheric carbon sequestration, yield) basically requires digital surveillance infrastructure on the same scale we've (regrettably) deve…

I am interested to know details but I am in Pakistan. I work (Ed) on multiple technologies but mostly python these days for ETL and automation. Learning Go too. Check out http://adnansiddiqi.me

Hi Adnan. Unfortunately I'm only familiar with the situation in the U.S. Pakistan may have different agricultural practices and a different funding landscape. Here are a few links about the motivation and current state of the art if you want to read more.

[0]: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/327/5967/818

[1]: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pce.12107

[2]: https://academic.oup.com/jxb/article/66/18/5429/482901

[3]: https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S13601385110020...

[4]: http://www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/doi/10.1104/pp.114.243519

There is a ton of software-oriented work involved, from robotics and embedded devices in the field, to data engineering (containerizing and automating pipelines in grid, cloud, and HPC environments), to web development (creating research portals), to simulation of growth processes and modeling yield as a function of genetic/physiological/environmental factors, etc. Python is very widely used for all of the above. Go not as much, but Singularity (Docker for HPC, basically) is written in Go iirc.

If you want to discuss more let me know and I'll contact you directly.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any software jobs in nature/animal conservation?

#87

Post by pvaldes »

fock wrote: post #80
pvaldes wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people want to have kids

yes? if you want to have kids by 30, a PhD probably isn't right for you. A career in science might as well probably not work out. So what, not everyone needs to procreate?!

Do I need to sacrifice my children to have the privilege to be allowed to solve your problems?

Okay. Good bye, science.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any software jobs in nature/animal conservation?

#89

Post by acituan »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #39
jefurii wrote: post #17

It's most certainly better for your soul, but get ready to take a pay cut. After a short career in game development and a much longer career in museum/library/archives, my take is that our societies values are out of whack: the more your job benefits your community and the planet the less you will get paid, and vice versa. It's even worse for social services. You'll also take a hit in your reputation among other deve…

> my take is that our societies values are out of whack: the more your job benefits your community and the planet the less you will get paid, and vice versa. It's even worse for social services. There is no "what society values" at work here, only supply and demand. What you witness is the fact that jobs that have intrinsic meaning and are more fulfilling are paid less well, because employees are willing to make that…

> There is no "what society values" at work here, only supply and demand

That sounds as if supply and demand were laws of nature like gravity or speed of light. They are nothing but forces we create (i.e. purely anthropogenic), and appear god-like only because what society solely values right now is the normativity of the market (as opposed to historical normativities such as the state power, religion, morality and so on).

> You could say the increase in happiness is priced in

That sounds further like market essentialism. "If market is paying you less it means you must be compensated in externalities". If only markets were that good at pricing in externalities, we wouldn't have climate change problems for example.

Markets are great tools for deciding the prices under specific conditions, but it is a grave misapplication to try and orient the entirety of human potential around them.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any software jobs in nature/animal conservation?

#90

Post by [deleted] »

linuxftw wrote: post #22
jefurii wrote: post #17

It's most certainly better for your soul, but get ready to take a pay cut. After a short career in game development and a much longer career in museum/library/archives, my take is that our societies values are out of whack: the more your job benefits your community and the planet the less you will get paid, and vice versa. It's even worse for social services. You'll also take a hit in your reputation among other deve…

> the more your job benefits your community and the planet the less you will get paid, and vice versa. It's even worse for social services. In a free market economy, this is an entirely false statement. People pay for the things they value. They more they value it, the more they pay. Compare the amount of hours spent playing video games to the amount of hours spent touring museums. It's not close. People value video…

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