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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

#31

Post by beambot »

rawtxapp wrote: post #12
whateveracct wrote: post #2

i think going in a field where they'll pay you plenty without noticing you barely spend time working is the play the brightest don't spend their time & energy making others wealthy

Use your free time to build stuff, save the money to bootstrap and when your project gains traction, leave and build your own things so that you're not making someone else wealthy. The brightest absolutely do spend their time and energy making others wealthy (ex: I would consider most senior eng at FAANG to be bright and although they are definitely rich, they are not wealthy). I suspect that's because of the cycle o…

Or different people just have different value functions, and many of them don't care about "wealth maximization" when they're already comfortably in the 1%...

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#33

Post by sheer_audacity »

Sigh.

Speaking as someone who has spent the last six years of their career working on advanced physics in various technology sectors (including biotech) and then trying to make various 2D-xene materials work for semiconductors, I’ll tell you one thing:

They pay you shit and if you think you’re all treated badly in FAANG, hoooboy, at least nobody has nearly caused deaths in the lab through negligence!

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#35

Post by ilikehurdles »

wcerfgba wrote: post #3

I am interested to learn about fields where software engineers can help to bring about innovation and push those fields forward, providing some of the tech that is missing there. I would like to apply my skills in a transdisciplinary manner and work on projects that are not just B2B SaaS products. One option is research software engineering, where SWEs team up with researchers to produce better code for models and si…

Drugs/medicine (both research and manufacturing). The pockets of potential pharma clients are immensely deep while the fields are largely dominated by haphazard taped-together tools consisting of paper, excel, and visualbasic, handled by outsourced contractors and constrained IT departments. If you can shave off some time to get drugs to market using modern technology you will enjoy financial success.

I imagine that technology in any kind of manufacturing or mining field is going to be similar or predominately dominated by one or two big players that haven’t faced an innovative competitor in decades.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#37

Post by sho_hn »

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, say, Zurich, 80k-110k is a highly-salaried engineer (and affords an upper-middleclass lifestyle with good healthcare, pension, free college education, etc.), and I understand also in many areas of the US that are just fine to live in.

It just sounds like completely different systems / way to run the numbers to me, not at all apples to apples.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#38

Post by giantg2 »

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…

$80k-100k would afford a great lifestyle in much of the US, geographically speaking. The problem is that those jobs are concentrated in areas with a higher COL. We also have to pay for things like medical insurance in the US. I know software salaries are lower in the EU (in general), I assume it's the same for biotech too.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#39

Post by elliekelly »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #35
wcerfgba wrote: post #3

I am interested to learn about fields where software engineers can help to bring about innovation and push those fields forward, providing some of the tech that is missing there. I would like to apply my skills in a transdisciplinary manner and work on projects that are not just B2B SaaS products. One option is research software engineering, where SWEs team up with researchers to produce better code for models and si…

Drugs/medicine (both research and manufacturing). The pockets of potential pharma clients are immensely deep while the fields are largely dominated by haphazard taped-together tools consisting of paper, excel, and visualbasic, handled by outsourced contractors and constrained IT departments. If you can shave off some time to get drugs to market using modern technology you will enjoy financial success. I imagine that…

> the fields are largely dominated by haphazard taped-together tools consisting of paper, excel, and visualbasic, handled by outsourced contractors and constrained IT departments.

Ditto for Wall Street. The “innovation” tends to sit on top of woefully outdated systems rather than replace them.

Re: Be in a field where tech is the limit

#40

Post by sho_hn »

theodric wrote: post #26
ArtWomb wrote: post #19

"Software is simply the encoding of human thought, and as such has an almost unbounded design space" https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1385928617943838721

This reminds me of Harry Mulisch congratulating authors for being very, very smart in _De ontdekking van de hemel_

I don't know the context of the quote, but I don't think it's necessarily elitist.

I have a lot of non-programmer friends who sometimes say that programming must be very dry and boring. My shiny go-to example to convince them otherwise is a nice desktop planetarium app, which you can't develop without first learning how the solar system works. Once you do you can write that down in code - an executable, computing form of knowledge, a living document that allows you to tinker, refine, share, reproduce. Software truly is pretty neat as a human societal tool with a wide range of applications.

It should be for everyone. The other thing I tell them: If you've ever been in bed in the morning and planned out your steps for how to get that cup of coffee you need, designing an efficient bed-to-coffee algorithm, you've already been a a programmer.

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