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Science needs more research software engineers

nature.com

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Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#201

Post by zahllos »

exdsq wrote: post #133
konschubert wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about the letters P, H and D? As in, if you don't have a PhD they don't see you as a peer?

I've honestly yet to meet a research software engineer without a PhD because of the academic bias you will get in, well, academia.

Ok well I can fix that. Hi, I'm a research software engineer and I don't have a PhD.

I'm in Europe. My salary is definitely better than the PhD students' salaries, and I have a proper adult pension as that's a legal requirement here. My salary is approximately equal to what a graduate might earn 1-2 years after graduating in the local market, so doesn't match my actual experience, but I accepted the post for pandemic-induced reasons. Certainly the salary does not, nor will ever, compare to levels.fyi/FAANG type jobs or a large corp in country.

However it is true that my position officially is very much a curiosity. We don't have a defined RSE type role, so the slot I fit in is "staying on to help out on project after graduating". My job is a fixed term contract that can only be renewed a certain number of times and I'm approaching that limit soon. There isn't any viable track to joining the ranks of researchers - I would have to do a masters first, and this ironically would require doing an internship, in spite of the fact I have more actual industry (non-university) experience than the entire lab combined.

I'm also not sure if my lab head bent the rules or not on hiring me - it might be the case that I am supposed to have a PhD or at least a masters.

I would agree with top level post in most points. It is interesting work, but I don't "belong" anywhere in "the system". This might change in 10-20 years. Artefact evaluation is very much becoming a thing in systems research, because being able to reproduce other people's work is quite important, and very occasionally you will stumble upon papers whose claims are, ah, more expansive than the associated github project can fulfil. As more research relies on software that graduate students are simply ill-equipped to write (by virtue of having no experience in anything and by being taught by professors most of whom no experience writing production code) the role of an RSE might become more important in time, but like anything it'll be a slow change.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#202

Post by krageon »

evandijk70 wrote: post #184
noobermin wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the Netherlands, 30k is the starting salary for a PhD student. 30k for a tenure track position sounds insane to me.

I have spoken to quite a few that made minimum wage (which is not even close to 30k).

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#203

Post by Hendrikto »

Azrael3000 wrote: post #54
ethanwillis wrote: post #2

Well, 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."

There is simply no incentive for science to do proper software engineering. It does not directly produce papers or money, so nobody does it. I've seen it several times in my own career in several countries. PhDs having their own version of the code, incompatible with the one of the Postdoc sitting opposite of them. Each slaving away at their niche project but nobody there to bring it all together. This particular uni…

The goal of research scientists is rarely to produce a finished and polished product. Instead, they aim to prove some concept/algorithm/technique/etc.

They are almost always time and resource strapped, so it becomes a near necessity to deprioritize factors like readability and maintainability.

Still, many RSEs could immensely benefit from applying basic best practices.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#204

Post by yodsanklai »

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…

> But I would work may unpaid extra hours at home

I think that's incorrect. You would work the number of hours you wish to work (considering you produce reasonable value, but the bar is low). Research engineer (or researcher for that matter) in a public French research center is a civil servant position. They are difficult to get but you don't get fired unless something is blatantly wrong.

Source: I worked 10+ years in such a position. I work now for a FAANG and the pressure is considerably higher. Evaluations every 6 months, lot of peer pressure (engineers are on average better and more ambitious than those in academia and you need to keep up - some of them seem to work 24/7), extremely stressful oncalls. Gross salary is 5 times my previous salary and has the potential to increase much more.

Of course, this is certainly not representative of all cases, but most of the time, there's a price to pay for a higher salary. Another thing to think about is ageism: as a research engineer in academia, you're all set until retirement. In software industry, it's getting hard after 50.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#205

Post by myst1 »

They should probably pay them the going wage for software engineers too. I used to work in science, the salary's are often half of what entry level swe positions are, and require an PhDs/post docs...

People wonder why r&d in the us is in a slump... Well it's mostly because choosing a natural science for a profession is punishment compared to software.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#206

Post by yodsanklai »

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?

For context, you have 7 weeks holiday, you can't get fired, your working hours are quite flexible. In France, medical expense, education is free. And outside of Paris and a few other big cities, rents are rather affordable. So all things considered, it's not a bad deal (which is why they do attract good candidates). And a typical SWE position in private sector in France would be $50-60K (of course there's variance there, but in academia, there are also ways to make extra money)

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#207

Post by ehnto »

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…

The university doesn't operate in a vacuum, and the rest of the economy doesn't really care about the fairness of internal pay structures at the universities. The engineers aren't telling you it's fair that they get paid more than a professor, they're just relaying the reality of the market, and the university still gets it's labor from the market.

This does play well into my argument that if software salaries in general came down then the rest of the world could utilize software development more broadly across industries, rather than concentrating so much talent into one inflated industry niche (the tech industry is that niche).

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#209

Post by qfwfq_ »

I wonder whether this just creates another "underclass" of scientific laborers... I think we need tool-builders as academics. The only thing that academics recognize intellectually are peers. The rise of RSEs is a kind of intellectual outsourcing... implementation of your science should be part-in-parcel to its creation, not deferred to second-class non-academic "technicians." The friends and former students I've talked to who've entered RSE careers have largely been treated as second-class citizens in a research environment that they are integral to!

I think, like many things, the buck stops with academia itself, its metrics, demands, and incentives. We need more research engineering/science about science academics within compute-intensive science departments themselves. Things like JoSS [1] or Scientific Data [2] are awesome first steps at addressing this.

[1]: https://joss.theoj.org/

[2]: https://www.nature.com/sdata/

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#210

Post by ehnto »

epse wrote: post #185
euroderf wrote: post #183

Having a Ph.D sounds like an ANTI-qualification for this kind of position. A PhD would be a diversion from the kind of practical experience that would make a software developer with a sci/tech background & scientific interests useful in an environment full of smart people who possibly can't code worth a damn. More important than having one's own PhD laser-focus would be an ability to communicate with a variety of peo…

Possibly, but at least some experience in academia is terribly helpful, speaking from experience. There's a lot of particuliarities in funding, organisation, terminology, special stacks, ... You can certainly learn them "on the job", but if you already know them, even better

I found this to be true. I was totally blow away by just how different of a world academia was, and how differently it operated. Software as a cost centre was a very unique experience on it's own, and software practices melded with institutional processes was genuinely shocking to me. Being able to take that stuff on the chin and still want to work there is probably not something you'll get from people who've been enjoying a cruisey experience in industry.
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