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Science needs more research software engineers

nature.com

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Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#221

Post by the_only_law »

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 but am I going to get the job if all I have is garbage published in no name journals?

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#222

Post by the_only_law »

konschubert wrote: post #131
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.

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’m surprised they even let you in without one.

Everyone “scientific programmers” potion I’ve seen wants you to have a PhD and be a domain expert.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#223

Post by [deleted] »

icelancer wrote: post #109
altacc wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, I know someone who went back to academia after getting disillusioned with tech (academia > tech > academia). The key difference may be that they live in Europe, have no student loans and the pay disparity between a developer in bioscience and in tech is not as large as I imagine it is in the US. They are paid significantly more than the scientists they work alongside but not much less than they wer…

I did this as well, but started my own company. The key for a lot of people making the switch is to make the money in your first endeavor - in tech - then transition into a lower-paying but more pleasing industry, with the money buffer you built up making it possible. I've seen it a few times lately.

[deleted]

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#224

Post by myst1 »

busterarm wrote: post #157
altacc wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, I know someone who went back to academia after getting disillusioned with tech (academia > tech > academia). The key difference may be that they live in Europe, have no student loans and the pay disparity between a developer in bioscience and in tech is not as large as I imagine it is in the US. They are paid significantly more than the scientists they work alongside but not much less than they wer…

Salaries in Europe are catching up...

A lot of the smarter people I know have been recruited into Europe. People say "the salaries are so much lower lol", but the reality is, you often have employment laws that remove terrible occurrences as possibilities that are commonplace in America, you have access to healthcare, being a home owner is actually possible and if you don't want that renting is better overall. European culture is usually way less cut throat, and managers typically know their stuff, rather then failing upwards to half a million dollar salary's where using the word "digital" and being a brute is the main requirement.

Salary isn't everything. European engineering is a pretty different culture.

The way the us tries to prevent this is by crippling their people with student debt.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#225

Post by elementalest »

joshvm wrote: post #187
elementalest wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RSE's can and often absolutely should be involved at the PhD level. In my experience, collaboration between the scientist and engineer in the process of research iterations almost always produce better results. Each has insights the other may not, likely leading to better outcomes for the research, final product/tool and time taken. The scientist just wants to focus on their research and once they have a barely worki…

Yeah let me be clear. PhD students absolutely should get guidance from experienced engineers (so I was a bit over-zealous with "assist" in my parent post). But this should be more like understanding best practices, and they should feel free to ask questions and figure out how to write better code. There are initiatives to do this called Software Carpentry.[0] However, RSEs should not be writing code for students doin…

I don't think its about best practices, its about good design and communication. Even if we are just talking about PhD students, the majority of them are fresh graduates. They are no different than fresh grads in a company. Those grads work with experienced senior software engineers to guide them and provide design advice (not just best practices). Those engineers are often the ones writing the complex/difficult areas of code.

> RSEs should not be writing code for students doing PhD level projects in my opinion

So should a mechanical engineer PhD be designing and making all their own robot parts? Or should the shop engineer help them? The few mechanical engineer PhD's in robotics I know made a few early prototype test parts themselves with help from the shop engineer, but the shop engineer made and even helped design most of it, especially the final prototype.

> As you say, this is a great idea in principle. In reality I think that it's really difficult to make it work.

The point I'm making is that it does work and its proven to work very well (which is why the major industry labs do it). In my experience its Academia that doesn't like it. Anything which appears to take power/freedom away from scientists and gets in the road of their research is rejected. Though I think the core reason is (as other comments have mentioned), there is no incentive for Academia to make it work. The funny thing is that having a RSE working with them would actually help the scientists in the long run and allow them to focus more on the research because they wouldn't have to do everything themselves.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#226

Post by the_only_law »

pdimitar wrote: post #170

Responding to title only, and a little rant: No, scientists need to stop hand-waving away everything that's not their area as "trivial and not worth talking about" because yeah, I've heard that exact line from three separate individuals. When I shrugged it off and still produced tools for them that shaved off a literal 1-2h out of their day and giving them more time to do the actually creative things... they were so…

> A lot of scientists become severely tunnel-visioned, arrogant, conservative, downright disrespectful, and very hard to work with.

Tbf I can replace scientist with developer and it’s hold just as true.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#227

Post by [deleted] »

Nursie wrote: post #63
andi999 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any reference for that incident, i havent heard of it and am curious.

Here's the open letter criticising our entire profession for producing something as terrible as C++ and allowing scientists to get into trouble with it - http://blog.khinsen.net/posts/2020/05/18/an-open-letter-to-s... There are links back to other parts of the story in the text there. Effectively, they built a model that predicted some real worst-case stuff, and used that as the basis for advice they sent out to try…

[deleted]

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#228

Post by [deleted] »

myst1 wrote: post #217
krageon wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In the us, a few years ago, my program offered a stipend of 22,000 usd per year. Provided I taught a few classes, graded homework, tests, etc. While doing research and taking my own classes. That was very lucky, many programs do not offer stipends and require people to take out loans.

[deleted]

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#229

Post by myst1 »

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…

No there isn't good money in physics and chemistry or pure math. PhD chemists almost never make 6 figures even in high cost of living areas serving as a specialist. I made less as a senior scientist or a project manager in chemistry than I do as an entry level software engineer. I don't know how many physicists I've met who work minimum wage jobs, usually call centers, after their PhD/post doc (even finding a PhD is difficult, let alone completing one in 6 years).

FEM can offer money but you are competing against engineers who that's what they've done for years.

If you interviewed software engineers and data scientists right now I bet a third of them once were physical scientists/mathematicians who mostly regret their degrees or the fact they can't find survivable work using them.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#230

Post by sea-shunned »

exdsq wrote: post #134
Azrael3000 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This isn't completely true. My wife is a postdoc at a medical lab at Stanford and there's a big drive to push good software practices - containerisation, tests, documentation, etc... and a good friend who's a postdoc in medical imaging at Oxford runs training courses for their labs software (along with following all standard engineering practices you'd see at a company). This will be subjective of where you're workin…

I'll agree that there is increasing emphasis on reproducibility and _useable_ software in academia. Writing documentation, unit tests etc. is still not really rewarded properly, but at least within the current paradigm such efforts are often rewarded with more users (and therefore citations) which is rewarded. Soon, hopefully, it'll be recognised more directly.

Also, I'm currently a postdoc in medical imaging at UCL, super interested in learning a little more about the group in Oxford you mentioned if you're OK with sharing a link/group name? I may be able to guess but just want to check!

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