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Science needs more research software engineers

nature.com

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Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#341

Post by photochemsyn »

kongolongo wrote: post #336
photochemsyn wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-exclusive licensing is the far better option. This prevents monopolization and ridiculous price increases. As far as clinical trials by exclusive license holders, those have a rather poor record of producing reliable results over the long term in many cases (Vioxx of course, there are many others). The trials should really be independently run, not controlled by the very corporations that have a vested interest i…

>As far as Covid-19 vaccines, there are actually many companies ready to go right to production if those patents are released to the public at this moment, and that would greatly increase supply, and that would benefit the whole world, instead of a handful of pharma CEOs and affiliated shareholders. That's just conspiracy. Many companies have not been enforcing any patents related to covid vaccines. The reason why th…

It's a valid issue and dismissing it as 'conspiracy' only weakens your argument. For example:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/03/covid-vaccine-...

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#342

Post by physicsguy »

milliams wrote: post #146

I think it's also worth clarifying that there are more than one style of RSE. The name came about to describe those researchers/postdocs working in research groups whose contribution was more to the software than to the writing of research papers. For them, the incentive structure wasn't there as they were being measured on papers written, not "research improved". By giving them the name RSE, it recognises that they…

Just wondering what you think about the progression routes for RSEs?

A big problem as I see it is that someone not in the first wave of RSEs (who are now mostly in leadership positions across the various research intensive Universities groups) basically gets stuck with no appreciable career growth. You can probably get to a permanent job in the 42-50k salary band as a “Senior RSE”, which seems to be used for people even without that much experience to try and bump up the salary, but beyond that it would be very difficult to jump to the band above without staying in the same role for ~5+ years and hoping that someone left. At that point you’re obviously at top of automatic increment band and don’t get a meaningful pay rise for a potentially number of years. I thought it was very unlikely that there would more jobs at that level because when bidding for time on grants, academics don’t want to pay someone external to their team more than they pay their own post docs, and heard comments to that effect from academics themselves. For centrally funded positions it’s even harder, having seen my old group lead battling to try and get even 32-40k positions approved.

So in my mind, there’s a big problem where someone ambitious could job hop into an easier and better paid job in industry. Why wait a really long time to get promoted when you could leave and get paid more than the top of the next salary band anyway?

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#343

Post by skohan »

haihaibye wrote: post #246
skohan wrote: post #135

I would actually love to contribute to scientific research. I work in industry, which is lucrative and impactful but not that satisfying, and I work on pet projects which are satisfying but not that impactful. I would happily contribute some of my time to scientific projects which are legitimately impactful and also challenging.

What areas of science are you interested in, and what languages/skillsets do you have? Maybe I can steer you towards some Github repos

I am interested in biology and especially neuroscience, and I have a pretty broad skill set. I have a background in graphics/GPGPU programming and enjoy building simulations.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#344

Post by nspattak »

Please do not hate me or hit me, I say these with an utter interest in the field.

I worked as a research engineer for a few years. They are really needed but unfortunately this will be a waste of time, effort and knowledge. The real problem with software development in science is that it is driven by the scientists who are (mostly) short sighted in their sw dev planning/schedule, they do not appreciate software debt.

And given their budgets and their focus in publishing, I understand their decisions.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#345

Post by noobermin »

jollybean wrote: post #323
photochemsyn wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fundamental: the patents produced by taxpayer-financed academic research have no business being exclusively licensed to some pharmaceutical corporation. As far as the cost of clinical trials being borne by those companies, well, let's get the FDA involved in the clinical trials. Then the competition can come in, i.e. whoever can produce pure preparations of those drugs at the lowest cost will win the most market shar…

No, if a Uni has developed some patents, and wants to 'exclusively license' them to a Pharma, that's probably a good application of that patent, they become much less worthwhile otherwise. It's a misunderstanding of the market to suggest that somehow 'the FDA will lead the trials'. This is about as likely as a manned mission to Venus, it won't happen, and it shouldn't happen for good reason (cost vastly outweighs the…

"companies didn't maximize their profit potential there" as said pharma companies enjoy the highest profits they ever have... The argument "well I didn't kill you" when you struck my face isn't a valid claim to mercy. I'm not one to go full pinko here, I'm just pointing out the obvious logical flaw.

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#346

Post by noobermin »

microtonal wrote: post #245
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).

The situation is a bit weird in The Netherlands. Some PhD students are paid employees (AiO), their gross salary is ~31000 to 40000 Euro per year (I think this is excluding vacation money, but including 13th month). Then there are PhDs that get a scholarship (bursaal), that is only around 24000-25000 gross per year. Not too long ago, there were only employee PhDs, but some universities really love the scholarship syst…

That is a pretty disappointing situation for a country that is known for being "progressive."

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#347

Post by kongolongo »

photochemsyn wrote: post #341
kongolongo wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As far as Covid-19 vaccines, there are actually many companies ready to go right to production if those patents are released to the public at this moment, and that would greatly increase supply, and that would benefit the whole world, instead of a handful of pharma CEOs and affiliated shareholders. That's just conspiracy. Many companies have not been enforcing any patents related to covid vaccines. The reason why th…

It's a valid issue and dismissing it as 'conspiracy' only weakens your argument. For example: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/03/covid-vaccine-...

It really is not. No where in that article does it even hint at patents being a primary limiting factor for the availability of vaccines in developing countries.

Of course not all companies are going to release their patents, but the fact there are several that already have, means its not the main problem. mRNA vaccines require extreme temperature controls during transportation and that incurs much more of a prohibitive cost in those countries than any amount of patent royalties do, even if there were no waived patents.

There are cases of huge shipments of vaccine donations going to developing countries that then go unused or underutilized because they do not have the resources to transport and distribute them effectively. Look at the COVAX initiative. The countries that failed to get vaccine rates up even with huge donations of vaccines lacked the infrastructure to distribute them whether it was the temperature controls or not having enough syringes.

"in Benin, only 267 shots were being given each day, a pace so slow that 110,000 of the program’s AstraZeneca doses expired...The vaccine pileup illustrates one of the most serious but largely unrecognized problems facing the immunization program as it tries to recover from months of missteps and disappointments: difficulty getting doses from airport tarmacs into people’s arms."[1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/world/europe/covax-covid-...

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#348

Post by tsj5 »

FlyingRobot wrote: post #19
tonto wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your premise is that it's not being sold right but maybe you just need more people to give their perspective. I might be considered a research software engineer in the US. In my job, I get paid (well) to develop open source software for data visualization, and I work remotely. I get to maintain existing tools and develop new ones. there is an interesting global community that asks questions daily, and I am constantly…

I'll offer another positive perspective. I've worked as a software engineer within the Department of Energy's National Laboratory System for 15 years, and I really enjoy it. Software is a major element of much of the laboratory's work, and in some cases such as mine software is the main product. We enjoy autonomy, lead projects as PIs, and develop mostly open source software. We are also hiring https://nrel.wd5.mywor…

Hi FlyingRobot --- I'd be interested in hearing more about your career path (and openings at NREL). What I've personally heard and experienced aligns with the overwhelmingly negative accounts elsewhere in the thread, which (I feel) have also correctly identified the misalignment of incentives that's responsible.

On the other hand, I've never worked in the national lab system. If you're still monitoring this thread, I'd appreciate it if you contacted me at the email in my profile!

Re: Science needs more research software engineers

#350

Post by mikebenfield »

pyb wrote: post #117
kergonath wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Always annoying to hear machine learning people speak of "tensors"...

I have an academic mathematics background and I'm perfectly OK with this.
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