Really glad to see this, but it reminds me of the earlier HN post that said engineers don't go into genomics because it doesn't pay and requires a lot of investment in learning biology.
I worked in genomics, left this year because you’re underpaid and often disregarded “IT-help” that assists wildly over-educated and underpaid people driving the actual research in 95% of cases.
Thats why you stay though, the people are interesting and the work is meaningful and you directly see the fruits of your labors whilst contributing to a codebase that is by default open source.
People aren’t anymore interesting than anywhere else.
Work is no more meaningful than anywhere else. It’s a big “selling point” for the industry, but it’s just a way to get people to get paid less (yay you’re making the world better than all those garbage people serving coffee or healing sick people or keeping your lights on or optimizing the routes of the goods you have delivered). If you want sustainable systems, trying to be a martyr and work for less only screws this up long term.
Code-base is not open-source. It’s biotech R&D, there is zero culture of sharing outside your organization within industry. You can present high-level things at conferences and such, but you’ll have to rip the raw data out of their dead hands…not happening.
I’ve been in too many conversations about building software to serve larger groups in this industry. It can happen, but it can’t currently and nobody wants it. Confident someone will find a solution, but everyone wants their own home-grown solutions in their own walled-gardens that no one has access to.
Data and the things it can/can’t tell you are held tightly in these companies. I was at a pharma a couple years ago where researchers were explicitly told they COULD NOT test certain compounds in a certain way because they did not want a trace of this data to exist while they were trying to push compounds through the FDA.
On I assumed we were talking about being a software eng in academia. It's a spiritually rewarding experience, with none of the blackholes you've described at pharma
If you want some personal motivation to get into genomics, you can get your whole genome sequenced for a few hundred bucks and play around with the raw files yourself. I used Dante Labs[1] and they are great. You can even ask them to delete your data and samples!
and you will learn almost nothing from sequencing and studying your own genome
at best you waste your time, at worst you will find all kinds of things that are not there
it is the Silicon Valley hacker mentality that thinks the life is some sort of computer where you can fiddle with parameters
learn some biology first, then you can marvel at it and realize just how absurdly simplistic is to think you can read anything out of some random letter
I wanted to play around with BAM files and it is much more engaging to play around with my own BAM file versus downloading one from a website.
It is also about data ownership. The value of a fully sequenced genome is limited, sure, but I still want that value without having to give my genomic data to 23andMe.
Working with genomics technology is too far away from the money to become rich from. There are too many middlemen in-between technology and application.
But it's a fun subject, and as the technology develops, middle layers will disappear and then the money from expertise will become better.
The number of people that are both capable software developers and has a good understanding of cellular biology are quite few and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future.
In biotech, the end goal is a physical product or a service performed by a doctor or another highly paid professional. Those don't scale as well as software. The ratio of users to developers is also low. You are likely developing software for many niche tasks, which does not scale either.
And if you are considering roles in the academia, your productivity is not going to be high enough to justify a competitive salary. Productivity, in monetary terms, is defined by the amount of money you can bring in. Either directly on indirectly. In the academia, that usually means grants. You may be able to argue successfully to a funding agency that one software engineer is worth two postdocs, but not four.
The people studying yeast metabolism in grad school were always the ones with the best beer (especially the ones that created mutant strains). I think the two might be related.
One of my gateways into Making was during grad school when my housemate brewed beer. He wanted to make a counterflow wort chiller, went to Home Depot, bought some parts, assembled the whole thing, and it worked perfectly. I was completely blown away you could make "scientific" apparatus from Home Depot. And immensely jealous.
Heh. That reminds me of the time in grad school where I needed a liquid disposal system for an arraying robot. We had this great ($$$) robot, but the liquid waste needed to be manually emptied every few hours. It was non-toxic and just went down a sink.
A quick trip to Lowe’s to get PVC fittings and pipes, and I suddenly made my own scientific equipment and saved me some time!
IIRC we passed the wort through PVC, and the cold water through copper tubing wrapped around the PVC. PVC is generally food safe and we cleaned it, IIRC, with IPA (isopropyl alcohol, not india pale ale).
I got a real imposter syndrome from the whole project and my housemate went on to be a famous microscopist (but later rage-quit to leave for industry). I build microscopes using 3d printers and other easily sourced bits. But Home Depot is a terrible place to source materials. They are the lowest quality.
There are a lot of starry eyed individuals who are ready to “sacrifice” stable welll paid career to “make a difference” by working on fields like biology.
It's not quite the same because the helpdesk person is probably paying a sizeable chunk of their salary on tuition. Presumably working in science would scratch that itch for you, so number to compare against is whatever you'd make elsewhere, minus what you spend on tuituon, minus however much it's worth to you to be able to focus on the science and not have to balance your time with some unrelated job.
Comments
Really glad to see this, but it reminds me of the earlier HN post that said engineers don't go into genomics because it doesn't pay and requires a lot of investment in learning biology.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33671264
^Most recent discussion I’ve seen.
I worked in genomics, left this year because you’re underpaid and often disregarded “IT-help” that assists wildly over-educated and underpaid people driving the actual research in 95% of cases.
Thats why you stay though, the people are interesting and the work is meaningful and you directly see the fruits of your labors whilst contributing to a codebase that is by default open source.
People aren’t anymore interesting than anywhere else.
Work is no more meaningful than anywhere else. It’s a big “selling point” for the industry, but it’s just a way to get people to get paid less (yay you’re making the world better than all those garbage people serving coffee or healing sick people or keeping your lights on or optimizing the routes of the goods you have delivered). If you want sustainable systems, trying to be a martyr and work for less only screws this up long term.
Code-base is not open-source. It’s biotech R&D, there is zero culture of sharing outside your organization within industry. You can present high-level things at conferences and such, but you’ll have to rip the raw data out of their dead hands…not happening.
I’ve been in too many conversations about building software to serve larger groups in this industry. It can happen, but it can’t currently and nobody wants it. Confident someone will find a solution, but everyone wants their own home-grown solutions in their own walled-gardens that no one has access to.
Data and the things it can/can’t tell you are held tightly in these companies. I was at a pharma a couple years ago where researchers were explicitly told they COULD NOT test certain compounds in a certain way because they did not want a trace of this data to exist while they were trying to push compounds through the FDA.
On I assumed we were talking about being a software eng in academia. It's a spiritually rewarding experience, with none of the blackholes you've described at pharma
If you want some personal motivation to get into genomics, you can get your whole genome sequenced for a few hundred bucks and play around with the raw files yourself. I used Dante Labs[1] and they are great. You can even ask them to delete your data and samples!
[1] – https://dantelabs.com/
and you will learn almost nothing from sequencing and studying your own genome
at best you waste your time, at worst you will find all kinds of things that are not there
it is the Silicon Valley hacker mentality that thinks the life is some sort of computer where you can fiddle with parameters
learn some biology first, then you can marvel at it and realize just how absurdly simplistic is to think you can read anything out of some random letter
I am not out here reading SNPs like tarot cards.
I wanted to play around with BAM files and it is much more engaging to play around with my own BAM file versus downloading one from a website.
It is also about data ownership. The value of a fully sequenced genome is limited, sure, but I still want that value without having to give my genomic data to 23andMe.
But Dante labs sure will!
Working with genomics technology is too far away from the money to become rich from. There are too many middlemen in-between technology and application.
But it's a fun subject, and as the technology develops, middle layers will disappear and then the money from expertise will become better.
The number of people that are both capable software developers and has a good understanding of cellular biology are quite few and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future.
I don't think middlemen are the issue.
In biotech, the end goal is a physical product or a service performed by a doctor or another highly paid professional. Those don't scale as well as software. The ratio of users to developers is also low. You are likely developing software for many niche tasks, which does not scale either.
And if you are considering roles in the academia, your productivity is not going to be high enough to justify a competitive salary. Productivity, in monetary terms, is defined by the amount of money you can bring in. Either directly on indirectly. In the academia, that usually means grants. You may be able to argue successfully to a funding agency that one software engineer is worth two postdocs, but not four.
The reason why San Diego has such a craft brew scene is that it has a lot of underpaid microbiologists.
The people studying yeast metabolism in grad school were always the ones with the best beer (especially the ones that created mutant strains). I think the two might be related.
One of my gateways into Making was during grad school when my housemate brewed beer. He wanted to make a counterflow wort chiller, went to Home Depot, bought some parts, assembled the whole thing, and it worked perfectly. I was completely blown away you could make "scientific" apparatus from Home Depot. And immensely jealous.
Heh. That reminds me of the time in grad school where I needed a liquid disposal system for an arraying robot. We had this great ($$$) robot, but the liquid waste needed to be manually emptied every few hours. It was non-toxic and just went down a sink.
A quick trip to Lowe’s to get PVC fittings and pipes, and I suddenly made my own scientific equipment and saved me some time!
What kind of materials are food grade there? Sound like a fun project
IIRC we passed the wort through PVC, and the cold water through copper tubing wrapped around the PVC. PVC is generally food safe and we cleaned it, IIRC, with IPA (isopropyl alcohol, not india pale ale).
I got a real imposter syndrome from the whole project and my housemate went on to be a famous microscopist (but later rage-quit to leave for industry). I build microscopes using 3d printers and other easily sourced bits. But Home Depot is a terrible place to source materials. They are the lowest quality.
Most of the plumbing stuff will be, because it's also used for plumbing (for water that people will drink).
There are a lot of starry eyed individuals who are ready to “sacrifice” stable welll paid career to “make a difference” by working on fields like biology.
Then there are also engineers from XKCD 1831 https://xkcd.com/1831
You basically end up with the salary of a helpdesk person at a university.
It's not quite the same because the helpdesk person is probably paying a sizeable chunk of their salary on tuition. Presumably working in science would scratch that itch for you, so number to compare against is whatever you'd make elsewhere, minus what you spend on tuituon, minus however much it's worth to you to be able to focus on the science and not have to balance your time with some unrelated job.