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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

#121

Post by IdiocyInAction »

barry-cotter wrote: post #52
sho_hn wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

US households are slightly bigger than European households (2.6 vs 2.2-2.3), but yeah, the US is on average much richer than most wealthier European states. A good comparison is states to countries - Germany is about the level of Alabama and UK is like Mississippi I think.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#122

Post by lowdanie »

2bitencryption wrote: post #43

> 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…

As other commenters have mentioned, it is common practice to use such an approach to find genes that are associated with a disease (GWAS).

But finding a correlated gene is only the first step. One issue is that a single protein can participate in hundreds of seemingly unrelated chemical reactions throughout the body depending on the cell type and environment. So simply tweaking the genes expression will have many unintended consequences.

For instance, each cell is constantly maintaining a baffling complex balance between growing and dying. Any external perturbation has a good chance of either killing the cell or causing cancer.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#123

Post by GuB-42 »

Aeolun wrote: post #78
_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…

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.

Just to let you know. I am a French developer, making around ~45k€. While I won't pretend to be "truly high talented", I am convinced that by moving to the US and I could double that. But... I don't want to.

I live in Southern France, which is a nice place (with good food). I have enough money to do almost whatever I want and have savings. I have 7 to 8 weeks/year of paid leave, which I can use pretty much when I want to. Health/unemployment insurance is included. Granted, I have no kids (by choice), but what more could I want? More money for what? Luxuries I won't even enjoy because I would be overworked?

I like the US and its people, and I understand that my way of life is not everyone's, but that's to give you some perspective on why some very talented European may want to stay in Europe despite the "low" pay.

A friend of mine, a mother of one, was almost begged by Google to work for them, with I suppose, the kind of pay a PhD in natural language processing can expect. She refused, instead preferring a much lower pay but with an incredible work/life balance.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#124

Post by bombcar »

GuB-42 wrote: post #123
Aeolun wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just to let you know. I am a French developer, making around ~45k€. While I won't pretend to be "truly high talented", I am convinced that by moving to the US and I could double that. But... I don't want to. I live in Southern France, which is a nice place (with good food). I have enough money to do almost whatever I want and have savings. I have 7 to 8 weeks/year of paid leave, which I can use pretty much when I wan…

Finding a way to consult for some US companies could get you your €45k a year for half a year's worth of work; and you could start small during those weeks of paid leave. Location arbitrage.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#125

Post by kmonsen »

GuB-42 wrote: post #123
Aeolun wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just to let you know. I am a French developer, making around ~45k€. While I won't pretend to be "truly high talented", I am convinced that by moving to the US and I could double that. But... I don't want to. I live in Southern France, which is a nice place (with good food). I have enough money to do almost whatever I want and have savings. I have 7 to 8 weeks/year of paid leave, which I can use pretty much when I wan…

Not double, easy 10x for a decent senior engineer at a top 10 software company.

I am sure you are making the best trade off and respect that, but use the real values. Double is for a fresh grad in top US markets.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#126

Post by Negitivefrags »

whateveracct wrote: post #20
nicbou wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That also has its disadvantages. Being stuck in an office with little work, but little else in the way of entertainment slowly burns you out. Having next to no work for two months wasn't as pleasant as I thought it would be. Fields where you don't make other people wealthy aren't so rosy either. They bring their own drama to the table.

The trick there is to work remotely. You can just build software, make art, do your own side-business 8hrs/day while hitting the employer's bar of "I'll keep paying this guy" and keep that income flowing.

And you have zero moral qualms about this behavior at all?

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#127

Post by planet-and-halo »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #106
planet-and-halo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that's part of it, but I suspect it has more to do commercial enterprises being more competitive due to their greater resources.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#128

Post by spekcular »

RhysU wrote: post #119
_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,…

Man, I am so sick of my industry being a punching bag. 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 inv…

What, exactly, is the "meaningful mission" of modern tech-driven finance firms? As you note, you are paid well for helping (typically wealthy) investors make a lot of money, and this is a challenging thing to do. But nothing in your post tells me why that's meaningful.

I understand the point of places like Fidelity or Charles Schwab, that offer the general public effective, low-cost investment vehicles. It's hard to deny that's a meaningful, socially beneficial thing to do. But when people punch at "Wall Street," they usually have in mind places like G-Research, whose only real purpose seems to be making an already rich owner richer.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#129

Post by _ihaque »

RhysU wrote: post #119
_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,…

Man, I am so sick of my industry being a punching bag. 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 inv…

Sorry @RhysU! My intention wasn't to poo on financial careers. A lot of* what happens in finance is in fact useful and certainly technically interesting.

My point was that _if_ one's primary goal is to get the highest comp possible, it's probably better to go into finance than biotech. No bones about that; we don't pay as well. But that does not mean that biotech universally pays _badly_ for technical skills, as casual readers might assume based on reading this thread. My point was that if someone is both technically-minded and interested in the mission in biotech, it's worth taking a closer look, especially at the wave of companies from the last ten years bringing tech and biotech together.

* Not everything, I'm sure, but neither is everything in biotech!

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#130

Post by dragon96 »

amirkdv wrote: post #110
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.…

Can you share more about some of the technical problems Streamline works on?
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