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Be in a field where tech is the limit

mathiaskirkbonde.substack.com

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Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#101

Post by conjectures »

fridif wrote: post #69
_Wintermute wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked as a post-doc at a pharma company in Europe, our research-based department was in need of a software engineer as our collection of crappy R/python scripts couldn't actually be linked up to any equipment or processes. HR asked what sort of salary range we were looking at, we suggested that we won't get any decent candidates for less than 70k EUR and were laughed out of the room and they decided on a 50k limit…

I don't understand, you guys have PhDs, why can't you write a script yourself? Porting it to java will speed it up a few x, and if it uses some silly library like pandas or numpy or spark then consider it a great time to rewrite it from scratch properly with no dependencies :)

This pattern leads to some feature incomplete rewrite being done slowly.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#102

Post by beaconstudios »

_Wintermute wrote: post #44
d3ntb3ev1l wrote: post #23

I worked in bio tech for 4 years. Amazing people and problems. Worst pay, top heavy salaries. When a phd makes 80k a year and a “ML/AI” data scientist is lucky to make 100k you won’t find any progress like software They need to cut the top heavy executive bloat, respect the mid tier with better pay

I worked as a post-doc at a pharma company in Europe, our research-based department was in need of a software engineer as our collection of crappy R/python scripts couldn't actually be linked up to any equipment or processes. HR asked what sort of salary range we were looking at, we suggested that we won't get any decent candidates for less than 70k EUR and were laughed out of the room and they decided on a 50k limit…

Is this in a big city? In the UK 50k GBP is a pretty normative rate for a mid tier developer in much of the country.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#103

Post by hogu »

harikb wrote: post #80
pvarangot wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend retired with more than 1M after four years in finance and living the life in NY, like he was not saving much. Most of his comp was commissions on what his algorithms or the stuff his team worked on was marking on the market. His base salary and comp were a little bit above Google, were he worked before switching to finance.

I take it that is not pure finance, but fin tech?

Algorithmic trading and quant finance count as pure finance in my book

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#104

Post by fancyfish »

Fields where tech is not at least seen as a key differentiator can be very frustrating. Expect to work in a culture where basic best practices aren’t used or even known. Expect decision makers not to understand how good software can speed up or empower research, and allocate resources accordingly. Expect salary and career growth to reflect that you are viewed as a commodity.

Your enjoyment of it hinges on whether you can be happy collecting a paycheck doing the bare minimum and satisfying your tech itch outside of work (FOSS, side hustles). For some, that is perfectly acceptable or even ideal, especially if you can get away with working fully remote.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#106

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

planet-and-halo wrote: post #57
_Wintermute wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked as a post-doc at a pharma company in Europe, our research-based department was in need of a software engineer as our collection of crappy R/python scripts couldn't actually be linked up to any equipment or processes. HR asked what sort of salary range we were looking at, we suggested that we won't get any decent candidates for less than 70k EUR and were laughed out of the room and they decided on a 50k limit…

This bums me out so much. I would love to work on medical research and I love data pipelines, so something like bioinformatics R/Python seems ideal to me, but I make significantly more than that as the manager of a software team in an enterprise environment so it's never going to happen unless I somehow get to the point where I don't have to care about money.

Honestly though, that trade-off seems quite fair to me. I mean, the big ah-hah I had after I spent about half a decade in software management roles is that the management track pays more because the jobs suck more. That is, the jobs themselves are actually quite undesirable for your average person. A job that is more rewarding naturally has more competition and thus pays less.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#107

Post by leetrout »

tschellenbach wrote: post #89

Hmm, the richest country in the world just failed to build an app where you can schedule appointments. Tech might be easy for some people, but there is still a lot of room for innovation in this field.

True of any group in any industry chasing the bottom dollar and/or managed by bureaucracy.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#108

Post by [deleted] »

_ihaque wrote: post #85

There are a lot of comments in this thread discussing biotech salaries. They're not universally true. Source: I'm the VP of data science at Recursion, a biotech company focused on drug discovery, so I manage or have visibility into hiring in the domains that most people on this site would likely be interested in. The biotech industry (which is made up of at least three rather different verticals: tools, diagnostics,…

[deleted]

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#109

Post by topkai22 »

sho_hn wrote: post #37
d3ntb3ev1l wrote: post #23

I worked in bio tech for 4 years. Amazing people and problems. Worst pay, top heavy salaries. When a phd makes 80k a year and a “ML/AI” data scientist is lucky to make 100k you won’t find any progress like software They need to cut the top heavy executive bloat, respect the mid tier with better pay

I'm always curious when I hear HN opine on salary levels. Now I understand that in SF / at certain FAANG locations you can expect to make far in excess of 80-100k, and that exerts a competitive pressure in the job market - while also being balanced to some extend by extreme CoL. But I always wonder just how small that bubble is and what the trade-offs really are. In essentially all of Central Europe except perhaps, s…

The US government data for software engineers says that the median wage across the us is $110k/year. Importantly though that doesn’t include bonuses or stock, which appear to be reasonably common even outside the tech hubs. I suspect the “real” number is closer to $115-120k one those are taken into account. Software engineers really do get paid very well across most of the US, it’s just most pronounced in the tech hubs.

https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151256.htm#st

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#110

Post by amirkdv »

d3ntb3ev1l wrote: post #23

I worked in bio tech for 4 years. Amazing people and problems. Worst pay, top heavy salaries. When a phd makes 80k a year and a “ML/AI” data scientist is lucky to make 100k you won’t find any progress like software They need to cut the top heavy executive bloat, respect the mid tier with better pay

The grievances shared in this thread re biotech salaries are certainly valid, no doubt. But the field is slowly going through a generational change. There are more and more companies that organize themselves around engineering (software or not) as their main mission. These workplaces then have to grapple with the fact that in order to attract engineering talent, the historical wage suppression of biotech needs to go.

Shameless plug: I'm CTO at Streamline Genomics, a Canadian biotech startup, and tech is our limit. We're remote-first and we're hiring for a bunch of positions: https://www.streamlinegenomics.com/careers

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