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Science needs more research software engineers

nature.com

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Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#171

Post by rsfern »

bmitc wrote: post #90
sseagull wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I have never heard or read anyone, beside physicists, say codes for software code. It doesn't even make sense. Where have you seen that used?

It’s used fairly often in the US national lab community (Not just among physicists).

I think the point is that the physicists were among the very early adopters of computing systems. I’m not sure about the history of the term “code” used this way, but it might literally predate compiled software since Ulam and von Neumann invented the Monte Carlo method in 1948 during the Manhattan Project.

Personally I think it just sounds outdated now, but it’s pretty common to hear people call their software “a hydrodynamics code” or “a molecular dynamics code”

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#172

Post by siva7 »

yiyus wrote: post #145
throwmamatrain wrote: post #60

This 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…

This. I have worked for almost 15 years in academic research, but in very close collaboration with the steel industry. The code we write can help steel companies to save millions when developing new products. This is quite complex software, which combines materials science, mechanical engineering and advanced mathematical concepts while requiring high performance and reliability. I found a nice position for a tenure…

seriously? in what kind of alternative reality does academia live to offer 30k?

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#173

Post by sampo »

DrewADesign wrote: post #168
sbt wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't have enough letters after your name to matter, and you will likely be a pet instead of a peer. This is an underrated point. This is the case for programmers in finance as well, and requires a hefty salary premium to put up with.

It certainly echoes my experience having just left a professional dev job in academia after an 11 year stretch. Anybody without academic credentials relevant to the subject matter is "the help" no matter how much you contribute, and it's flat-out demoralizing. I worked on a tech-heavy project large enough to get an NYT feature article covering its launch. For it, I collaborated heavily on the service design and logis…

> no individual accomplishment was close to technically innovative enough to warrant a novel white paper

There are so many academic journals, from scammy, to bad (yet honest), to average, to good, to the top. You can publish almost anything, if you select an appropriate, less prestigious journal.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#174

Post by noobermin »

throwmamatrain wrote: post #60

This 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…

Since this thread is turning into a yet another complaints about academia thread:

One of the serious downsides of working in academia is you are basically doing the industry's work for them for less pay and they will one day turn around, pat you on the back, then sell your work for millions of dollars. It gets worse honestly the closer you are to applied fields. There, you already straddle the line between what your more "pure" (and less well paid) peers think is "science" and actually making things that will in fact make people's lives better, so you have less room to be idealistic about why you are doing what you're doing, that is, whether it is for "moving the needle" or "adding to the corpus of humanity's knowledge" or whether you really are just doing someone else's work for them they aren't willing to fund given the risks. And given that the latter is basically closer to what you're doing and your closer to the place where you'll see your work enable someone else's riches, it's hard not to want to jump ship and just become one of those people on the other side but make money hands over fist.

It's an upsetting situation honestly.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#176

Post by DrewADesign »

sampo wrote: post #173
DrewADesign wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly echoes my experience having just left a professional dev job in academia after an 11 year stretch. Anybody without academic credentials relevant to the subject matter is "the help" no matter how much you contribute, and it's flat-out demoralizing. I worked on a tech-heavy project large enough to get an NYT feature article covering its launch. For it, I collaborated heavily on the service design and logis…

> no individual accomplishment was close to technically innovative enough to warrant a novel white paper There are so many academic journals, from scammy, to bad (yet honest), to average, to good, to the top. You can publish almost anything, if you select an appropriate, less prestigious journal.

Yeah— wouldn't have helped in this situation. I was a professional and (deliberately) not in an academic career path, and at this very prestige-conscious institution, publishing in a scuzzy journal probably would have made me look worse.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#177

Post by willis936 »

rob_c wrote: post #152
throwmamatrain wrote: post #60

This 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…

> at least in bioscience... BINGO! that field is notoriously horrible and interacts extremely badly with a 'when not discovered here, not important' syndrome. Biology is brutal toward bio-physicists, mathematicians as well as people who code who they are forced to work with rather than seek out to help them. I still hold up as an example nonsense discussions around p-values in bio vs actual work going on in statistic…

The reproducabilty crisis in chemistry is just as bad, if not worse, than biology. Anyone with a pen can reproduce a math proof. If you work on a big project (physics experiment) where every paper has a dozen eyes on it you can't slip crap work by your peers because that's their livelihood on the line. In between you have bio/chem fields where each project is too expensive to trivially reproduce but still small enough to have only one career on the line for each project.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#178

Post by joshuaissac »

cycomanic wrote: post #125
tgbugs wrote: post #118

For this to work academic science would have to start paying significantly more, which many labs simply cannot do, and other labs will refuse to do. My PI flat out said when we were trying to hire a python developer that they simply could not be paid 2x more than anyone else because it would cause major issues with team cohesion. 2x is the bare minimum to even get close to market rate for a full time developer who wo…

Yes I don't understand the complaints about the salary a software engineer would be paid in academia. A software engineer straight out of undergraduate, typically earns as much (and often more) than a full professor at the university, who is >20 years after their undergraduate. Should they pay the software engineer more than everyone else, even though they don't even work on the core mission (i.e. the science)? What…

> Should they pay the software engineer more than everyone else, even though they don't even work on the core mission (i.e. the science)?

They do not have to pay the software engineer anything if they can find one who is happy with getting nothing.

Salary is always going to be a factor in who they can attract, especially when their competitors can offer much better compensation. If they are satisfied with the software engineers they are currently getting, then they can keep doing what they are doing now.

What the professor gets paid matters very little compared to what the candidate can get at a competitor.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#179

Post by srg0 »

The principal incentive of science is publish or perish. Novelty trumps replication of the previous results (see replication crisis). Use of the citation metrics to evaluate performance in science is similar to relying on likes in the social media to measure importance. The number of citations matter more than the effort (cost) of producing the result. This environment favors those who can deliver something that's good enough, and then move on (and publish often).

Software engineering is a continuous effort. Maintenance often requires more time and resources than the original development. It's more like curating a library or a database. Their product is perceived to stay the same. Incremental improvements do not advance the career of the maintainer at all. Researchers who sink their time into software development mostly hurt their academic careers. Even if they publish a paper about ResearchTool 1.0.0, they won't be able to publish another one about ResearchTool 1.0.1 and another one about ResearchTool 1.0.2. Meanwhile, their peers will probably publish "A", "B", and "C".

Science needs a career path which does not depend on the number of publications.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#180

Post by noobermin »

siva7 wrote: post #172
yiyus wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I have worked for almost 15 years in academic research, but in very close collaboration with the steel industry. The code we write can help steel companies to save millions when developing new products. This is quite complex software, which combines materials science, mechanical engineering and advanced mathematical concepts while requiring high performance and reliability. I found a nice position for a tenure…

seriously? in what kind of alternative reality does academia live to offer 30k?

European countries have lower salaries in general? Although their social safety nets are better.

Also, assistant professors (or the equivalent there) generally make less but do probably make more once they get tenure. I'm assuming they meant the tenure-track position itself is ~30K USD, but making tenure usually does mean a pay increase.

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