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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

#131

Post by RhysU »

spekcular wrote: post #128
RhysU wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What, exactly, is the "meaningful mission" of modern tech-driven finance firms?

Suppose that such a firm accepts money from a state (or other) pension plan. Then part of the mission of that firm is to provide a stable retirement for every participant of that particular pension.

Know anyone on a state (or other) pension?

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#132

Post by bearmcbearsly »

cameronh90 wrote: post #76
plandis wrote: post #51

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…

At my company in the Bay Area, we get 30 days vacation plus 10 holidays. For the first few years, it was a bit less vacation.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#133

Post by GuB-42 »

bombcar wrote: post #124
GuB-42 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I could do that, I think. I know someone who does that. He worked in the US for some time and went back to France consulting for both French and American companies. Lots of time off and good pay (for France).

But... he is self employed, which means a significant part of his work includes sales and management. That's something I don't enjoy doing and I am very happy having a boss do it for me. He also has more tax and less employee protection and other advantages, which he compensates by having insurance, but that extra expense is to be considered when comparing income (it is still more than me in the end).

As I said, I am content with my life, even though I know I could make is "better" if I really wanted to. It is just an insight on a reason why many engineers prefer to stay despite the "low" pay.

Also worth noting that many French people dislike the very idea of working in the US. Sometimes because they don't like the culture or the sometimes misguided idea they have of it. Sometimes it is the language, or just moving and leaving their relatives behind. Canada, especially Quebec can be a "milder" alternative, I have several friends who went there, some stayed, others came back, I think the pay was higher there every time.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#134

Post by jhgb »

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 :)

You can be able to cook for yourself to survive but not be a great chef. So you might not have high engineering expectations from researchers either, as it's not their job.

Also, if you wanted to rewrite some scientific code relatively painlessly, perhaps D would be a vastly better choice than Java.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#135

Post by RhysU »

_ihaque wrote: post #129
RhysU wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 casu…

Agreed! Chasing comp for its own sake is unsatisfying. Pursue the vector aligned with what you like and with what pays well enough.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#136

Post by crazygringo »

> Innovation happens in fields where our ideas are limited by our means to pursue them.

Citation needed. I'm pretty sure innovation is happening in all fields.

> Software is no longer such a field, our brightest minds should be going elsewhere.

Citation needed. Pretty sure innovation is happening in software too.

This post is... utterly fact-free, and really just reality-free. It literally says nothing besides "biotech excites me". The author had no need to add a bunch of false generalizations on top of that.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#137

Post by ZephyrBlu »

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…

It's not black and white. I'm working remotely in New Zealand making more than 45k euros with 1 YOE and my company seems to care a lot about W/L balance.

I'm sure there are also office-based US companies with good pay and W/L balance.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#138

Post by spekcular »

RhysU wrote: post #131
spekcular wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What, exactly, is the "meaningful mission" of modern tech-driven finance firms? Suppose that such a firm accepts money from a state (or other) pension plan. Then part of the mission of that firm is to provide a stable retirement for every participant of that particular pension. Know anyone on a state (or other) pension?

Do most statistical arbitrage/high frequency trading/market making shops manage state pension money? I use these terms loosely – if you want me to be more precise I can just start naming individual firms.

Again, I take no issue with the firms that responsibly manage people's pensions, help the public access equity and bond markets, and so on. But those are not the firms that the people making demeaning comments about "Wall Street" are talking about. So I don't think that comment is responsive to the question I asked. Again, that question is, what is the "meaningful mission" of those other firms?

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#139

Post by anthuswilliams »

_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,…

I'm a software engineer at Recursion, and Imran is telling the truth. I was on my way to posting a comment just like this when I saw this.

If you're exploring the world of AI for drug discovery, IMO, it's important not to fall for the trap of companies that just do "AI on public available data". That's just the same "the fundamental problem of software is a lack of ideas" phenomenon the article was talking about. You want to meld software and data science skills with the fundamental work of whatever industry you want to be the vanguard of.

Seriously, if you're in the market, check out Recursion. My contact is in my bio also, and I'll answer any questions Imran can't (or won't :p).

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#140

Post by anthuswilliams »

junon wrote: post #92
_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,…

No remote positions :/ That's a shame. Would have loved to apply.

One problem you see a lot in biotech, is that "bio" and "tech" tend to form separate poles of the company, and there is little cross-contamination between the two. I[0] think being on site is an important counterweight to that phenomenon. I think it's what has made us successful so far.

We've been doing a lot of remote work during covid and I have definitely noticed the decline of water-cooler solidarity. We still do hire remote engineers and data scientists, but only in cases where they are the literal top of their field.

[0] Standard disclaimers: I work at Recursion, have drunk the Kool-Aid, etc etc

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