Science can pay me more.
Science needs more research software engineers
91–100 of 366 posts
Re: Science needs more research software engineers
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the flip side of that, many experiments run for decades or longer, and "state of the art" software is often a poor impedance match for that.
State of the art doesn't necessarily mean React. Just something with unit tests and more than one giant 5000 line file. If the requirement is that it lasts 30 years, you can choose more timeless languages like C, over say Rust.
I guess a better word for that might be "not terrible" :).
And yes, way too much research code reads like somebody's first coding project.
Re: Science needs more research software engineers
#93This looks great, and I would have loved to see this when I was in the lab. When the software industry says to you: "We will nearly triple your salary, you don't have to work weekends, and you also don't have to feed the mice on a Sunday night." You will 100% take this deal. I was a 10yr+ academic tool maker in biochemistry, built cutting edge microscopes, hardware, and image analysis software. My lab was successful…
I heard nih might be a decent place for possible permanent position other than PI in bio fields
Re: Science needs more research software engineers
#94Well, then science needs to do more to create an environment where software engineers would want to be an RSE. From my experience "science" does not appreciate RSEs, the compensation is bad, the freedom is bad, and you get all of the big company bureaucracy from the University. It's just a bad environment and to top it off, even if you have a PhD many will see you as "less than."
> even if you have a PhD many will see you as "less than." Inside academia and outside of it. Inside academia you are not on a tenure track or similar, and will have to put up with a lot. Outside academia, your peers will be making 3x or more than you, working less hours, with less stress, etc. The reason RSE's jobs are hard to fill and often aren't even opened is that they don't make sense. If you are good enough fo…
I'm curious which company pays a RS 10x more than a SE/RSE. I've found its usually SE/RSE's that make a bit more than RS's but I've never seen an RSE comp significantly outweigh an SE unless its in ML/Crypto.
On that note I wish levels.fyi had RS and RSE roles...
Re: Science needs more research software engineers
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the flip side of that, many experiments run for decades or longer, and "state of the art" software is often a poor impedance match for that.
I'm not convinced of that. Because what I've seen (several times) on a somewhat small scale perhaps, is someone's code, sometimes written decades ago, never maintained upgraded or properly developed used for years on a system and eventually it gives out, forcing basically a rewrite. And state of the art can mean different things for differently scaled projects.
I've certainly had to resurrect research code written 10+ years before I got to it. It's usually not too hard as long as it's in C/C++/Fortran and doesn't have too many dependencies. Something like Matlab, on the other hand, is often a nightmare...
Re: Science needs more research software engineers
#96I don't think scientists want research software engineers. PIs typically like to assume any and every role on a project, including software design. They don't like handing things off and letting people build modern, best practices software. You start talking about source code control, package managers, a language used in industry that they've never even heard of and don't care enough to learn about, etc., and you jus…
> They call it "codes" They/We have probably been calling it that since before you were alive. I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes from the 60s or 70s. Every group of people has their own terminology for stuff. There is no right or wrong.
Yeah. Considering how much time we spend developing and using the damn things, we’ll call them the way we like, thank you very much. We don’t really need condescending software types to just come and explain to us how we’re saying it wrong. That is particularly rich, considering the tendency of CS people to cargo cult and borrow physical terms without understanding them.
Re: Science needs more research software engineers
#97The first thing I did for my PhD in experimental quantum computing was to rewrite the lab control equipment in Python. It was written in LabView and while it worked well it was an absolute mess of (literally) tangled spaghetti code. I designed and implemented one of the first MVC frameworks for quantum computing in Python. It had an interactive IDE where you could execute scripts and store snippets (e.g. for qubit calibration), an instrument manager that allowed initializing and managing all lab equipment (locally and over the network), a data manager that allowed capturing and exploring measurement data in real-time and instrument frontpanels that allowed interacting with instruments (e.g. microwave sources or waveform generators).
Initially my supervisors were very skeptical and thought I'd waste my time, as they did not see any value in software development. Having a programmable and well organized software framework was absolutely instrumental for my work though, and I think I couldn't have succeeded at my experiments (demonstrating quantum speed-up for a simple quantum algorithm) without it. Today the software is still in use in several labs and as far as I know they also hired a research software engineer to keep developing it.
Re: Science needs more research software engineers
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
While the academia has a lot of issues, software engineers should also adjust their expectations. First, if you choose to work for a non-profit, you should expect a huge pay cut. That's the way the society works. Or actually it's the opposite. If you work in a for-profit role, the society allows your employer to keep most of the value you create. If you create a lot of value, that gives you the leverage to negotiate…
> Third, many people in the industry fail to realize that you don't really work for your employer in the academia. You work to build a reputation for yourself, which makes you valuable to the employer. That feels like how it works outside of academia as well.
There is a huge difference: Universities don't do reseach, and they don't care about the research their employees do. If you switch jobs, your old employer doesn't hire anyone to continue your research. Instead, you usually take your project to your new job.
In the industry, your employer tends to own the projects you work on.
Re: Science needs more research software engineers
#99You need to be very good, knowledgeable, always willing to learn and research, hard working and you make 50% of what a guy who did a 3 months bootcamp makes for working at a Rails crud app.
Where do we sign up?
Re: Science needs more research software engineers
#100Need a software engineer? Hire me, then. My last employer was charging $150 an hour for my time, and I'd say most clients felt it was a fair deal, or a good one. I quit to do other important things with my brief time on earth, and now that I'm looking for a software dev role again, it seems I'm hardly worth a third of that.