If you enjoy programming, don't work for fields or companies that view you as a cost center, it's a drag.
Consider working on genomics
121–130 of 299 posts
Re: Consider working on genomics
#122The author completely neglects the downsides: - The compensation absolutely do not match the workload and education required. - The sheer number of disreputable PIs and their unrealistic goals for software. - The data is likely questionable and often underpowered. - Institutional politics. everywhere. - Marketing ("Curing Cancer"). The role is actually just juggling various bioinformatics file formats.
> just juggling various bioinformatics file formats Your other points are spot on. This one I want to address specifically. The file formats. Academics love their incredibly over-engineered file formats. MARC. SGML. DICOM. HL7. RDF. Those are just the ones I know. Universally, they try to cover every corner case that anyone could ever imagine. Academics absolutely love their ontologies. Just implementing one of them…
> Just implementing one of them is a nightmare. Going from one to another is an exercise in the philosophies of ontologies.
Good thing there are lots of competing implementations! It would be a shame if these files were actually portable.
Re: Consider working on genomics
#123The author completely neglects the downsides: - The compensation absolutely do not match the workload and education required. - The sheer number of disreputable PIs and their unrealistic goals for software. - The data is likely questionable and often underpowered. - Institutional politics. everywhere. - Marketing ("Curing Cancer"). The role is actually just juggling various bioinformatics file formats.
- Marketing ("Curing Cancer")
Nothing like putting that boilerplate pablum on research grant proposals. Either that or something about green energy. Some PIs just want to play with ligands, man.
Re: Consider working on genomics
#12420 years ago I got interested in "bioinformatics." I loved learning something about molecular biology, after all those years of hearing about DNA and not understanding it. And "Molecular Biology of the Cell" is, hands down, the greatest textbook ever written. That said: a lot of the comments are spot on. You're working in a field where the hard scientists and business people rule and you're a helper. Maybe they're gr…
I wish more fields would just start adopting the product/engineer partnership that Software companies have perfected. Engineers are very good at what they do. Product people are very good at what they do. They need each other to build things. Sure, engineers might know enough about product to get by and product people might know enough about coding to get by, but the reason it works is because each one is an expert in what they do and are equal.
Its no different in finance, healthcare, genomics etc. I'd love to work in a setting where I'm paired with an SME product manager in a domain I have no clue about and they respect my work and I respect theirs and we are partners.
This is one of the biggest factors that made software/internet companies explode. They respected people who build software. They didn't need to. A bunch of MBAs could have easily just decided that the best way to run the company was to treat the people building the product as a cost center. Many did. I think that's probably one of the reason for the lack of innovation and down fall in many old tech companies like HP/IBM.
The ones that treated SWEs properly and valued them accordingly, did very well.
Re: Consider working on genomics
#125Yes, Genomics may be important, but are there really that many jobs for software developers? (same could be said for many other important fields - I recently saw an article about how software engineers should move to green energy - but who is going to pay them?)
There are a lot more positions for people with advanced mathematics and/or science backgrounds with strong programming chops than there are typical software positions. But they do exist.
Re: Consider working on genomics
#126Simply put, I can get a better paid gig just developing for the web, without understanding any complicated domain (what the developers do is the complexity).
Working in research in general doesn't seem to pay that well or the well paid jobs are few and far.
Maybe it's a sector ready to be disrupted by a startup with quality developers; but I still have to see disruption based on improving code quality. It's a tangential aspect as well and doesn't impact much the actual business.
Re: Consider working on genomics
#127Anecdata, but I did a master’s in bioinformatics a few years ago, and as part of that I spent about a year in a human genomics lab. I fully agree that the software used is really bad in general, but what is worse is the level of IT literacy among the PhD’s and post-docs from the biology side. (Also statistics, I guess a lot of p-hacking is the result of authors simply being clueless…) After finishing my thesis, I was…
Honestly, I think people like you are the right kind of people to start private enterprises and bring along professional software engineers to help you build something incredible in the space.
Re: Consider working on genomics
#128Hard no. Initial code would still be developed by SME, who: - Don't understand most programming abstractions - Don't see the advantage of a clean codebase - Would rather go back to their code spaghetti mess, than help figure out why some corner cases behave differently in a fresh codebase - Would still submit changes to their code spaghetti mess and expect you to apply them to the cleaned codebase I did what the auth…
I understand your point and you are completely right, but on their perspective your experience from multiple aspects of codebase is still valuable contribution and making a difference isnt it.
Re: Consider working on genomics
#129Several of the job boards linked don't have any job listings, most don't provide a salary range, several require advanced degrees, and none specify whether remote work is possible. If I can get a better salary and working conditions at some crappy no-name startup, why would I choose to work at an organization that respects my craft so little they haven't bothered to maintain their software for a decade?
In general salaries would be lower than what you can get in a standard software role. Some of the ones on that list allow remote work, others are more limited. The tradeoff is that you're working towards the betterment of humanity. Whether or not that's worth the tradeoff for you is a personal decision.
> you're working towards the betterment of humanity
If only this was actually true.
In reality, you're being taken advantage of and it's very manipulative and deceptive to make this claim.
Re: Consider working on genomics
#130I quit several years of a dream job in Apple engineering to work on genomics in mid 2016; the small company i joined tanked in 6 months. I think the problems impacting this space include vague customer needs. Caveat emptor, so to speak.