111–120 of 213 posts
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,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, even after any attempt to account for healthcare, pension and education the US will still look vastly better off. Unfortunately we don’t have figures on average individual consumption but by household Hong Kong consumes about $1,000 more a year than the US and the next closest is Switzerland, consuming about $10,000 a year less[1]. Generally the US pays better and at the top of any field you care to mention excep…
> except perhaps finance it pays far, far better. I hear this a lot, but I've never seen it. I know plenty of people in tech making the better part of $1 MM a year at FAANG, and a few who even breach that. Most people I know in finance never break $500k. So how much do people make in finance?
> Biotechnology sounds to me much like computing in the 60’s. One thing I've always wondered about biotech... I imagine there are many non-obvious correlations and interactions in medicine, which would be easily detected using nothing more advanced than Excel-spreadsheet level data analysis. Making up an example: people with a certain DNA trait/allele who also have a diet with a high amount of XYZ tend to not develop…
So... anyway you're right that this is a natural way to approach the question of understanding the genetic basis of disease and physiology. But it's been beaten to death and found to drive fewer insights than were hoped
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome-wide_association_study
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…
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.
"Software is simply the encoding of human thought, and as such has an almost unbounded design space" https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1385928617943838721
So presumably cdixon writes software for a living...
Also tangential: I find Balaji completely insufferable. His Twitter feed almost looks like that of a cult leader than of a CTO.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even with the higher cost of living in SF/NYC/Seattle, tech pay at FAANG is pretty high. Senior software positions are pretty much start at $300k/yr across all of those companies. Plus these companies generally have excellent healthcare plans and good vacation policies. At those income levels pretty much the only thing you’re really priced out of are nice single family homes, but I suspect that’s the same in Zurich.
What's a good vacation policy in SF? I'm tempted to move from London, but I currently get 28 days holiday a year + 8 public holidays + birthday + Xmas to NY (so about 40 days give or take). I know there's a lot of "unlimited" holiday policies - but would they really be okay if I took that kind of holiday? I earn a lot here in London, but moving to SF would be a significant bump. However, I very much value my time off…
There are also all sorts of special purpose leaves (jury duty, infant care, bereavement, etc...) that can become quite substantial.
All that being said I’ve almost never had a boss who cared about tracking my vacation too closely, and I’ve never felt pressured to not take time off when I want to, other than a half dozen critical weeks a year.
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…
On the plus side, the average level of engineers in Europe seems to be fairly high. On the negaive side, yeah, all the truly high talented people will leave because the salaries in Europe can be so laughably low. Trying to figure out how to move back to my home country now, but short of director level positions, there’s just nothing with a comparable salary range.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even with the higher cost of living in SF/NYC/Seattle, tech pay at FAANG is pretty high. Senior software positions are pretty much start at $300k/yr across all of those companies. Plus these companies generally have excellent healthcare plans and good vacation policies. At those income levels pretty much the only thing you’re really priced out of are nice single family homes, but I suspect that’s the same in Zurich.
What's a good vacation policy in SF? I'm tempted to move from London, but I currently get 28 days holiday a year + 8 public holidays + birthday + Xmas to NY (so about 40 days give or take). I know there's a lot of "unlimited" holiday policies - but would they really be okay if I took that kind of holiday? I earn a lot here in London, but moving to SF would be a significant bump. However, I very much value my time off…
Officially, though, I (just found out that I) have 20 discretionary days per year (plus American holidays).
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,…
I work in "Wall Street".
My firm sells things to those who want to buy them in a highly regulated marketplace with considerable governmental and self-regulatory oversight.
We do this on behalf of investors who entrust us to use their capital as fiduciaries for their, and their clients, best interests.
We solve challenging problems with cutting edge approaches involving non-trivial technical, statistical, and business considerations.
And we are not paid _poorly_ for our efforts.
Please stop pushing a strawman financial industry narrative that we've no meaningful mission to serve your industry's recruiting needs. I don't poo on biotech to source my hires.
(Of course none of this constitutes financial, or personal, advice.)
Computer science is nowhere near its maturity as a whole. It needs more people with ethics and empathy. We've seen what has happened without that factored in; we're living in it. Innovation as a goal sounds noble initially, but in my experience it's like chasing the wind. Faithfully doing what is already known to be good seems better for everyone. It might even be the quicker road to innovation.
As to your second point, we did have people with exceptional sense of social responsibility in software, but multiple factors, including easy/fast money, unspoken agendas, both co-opted and corrupted some, and drew in 'fresh blood' that was motivated purely by the new social cachet & easy fortunes of software work. (These are the ones Alan Kay would say are the 'pop artists' of 'pop software'.)
As to innovation and "limits", there are legion and everything from the hardware, OS, libraries, to languages are on the table for innovating, to say nothing of theoretical breakthroughs in pure comp-sci.
Software is the closest thing to magic we have in the modern world. The imaginal sky is the limit.