7 ms·

I knew a person from my previous laboratory who left academia to work on some secret GoogleX project. "Superstar" fits their bill, to be sure. Coldest person I'

I knew a person from my previous laboratory who left academia to work on some secret GoogleX project. "Superstar" fits their bill, to be sure. Coldest person I've ever met, but whatever. Exceptional scientist. My hunch is that Google has a oncology/immunology platform which they're not talking about but trying to actively develop in order to help fuel Calico's pipeline and maybe sell off some other generated IP. There's almost certainly a "big data" angle as well, potentially describing the polymorphisms in majorhistocompatability (MHC) molecules between people. Having a large dataset of this kind of information would provide a lot of predictive power for infectious disease resistance and also disease progression. Google is new to this space and enjoys young talent, so I can tell that their approach will be to hire the people graduating from the top biomedical PhD programs. This is a hiring market that they can easily dominate by offering salaries of 50k-90k, though they may bump this range up to ensure loyalty. Nobody else will offer a better game in town to fresh PhDs in the current (extremely hostile benefits-wise) science employment environment. Google gets in on the ground level, and the fresh PhDs avoid wasting 5 years on their postdoc-ing. Once the platform is established using the young talent, Google will spend a lot of money bringing in older mid-level people from prestigious organizations to mainstream-ize development and provide more credibility.

samstave 11y ago
Recall the article in {Wired?} from a few years ago where either Larry or Sergei had discovered they were genetically predisposed to some disease and had committed to finding a cure to it... Perhaps this is the evolution of that effort...
devilsdounut 11y ago
Not sure 50k-90k for PhDs from top programs is really the case anymore. Companies hiring for data-science type jobs have always been pulling from the pool of quantitative PhDs, and as a result the pharma/genomics companies have been forced to raise salaries. Pure bench scientists would potentially have that kind of range, but anything quantitative is going to be much higher. This being said, there is a huge gap between those purely experimental scientists and the quantitative ones who have many non-science options.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Just going off of Novartis as a reference. I'd certainly agree with what you said regarding quantitative vs experimental scientist salaries, though.
- adenadel 11y ago
  I think that the comparison is towards the alternative path in academia. For example, I completed a master's degree and got an internship doing bioinformatics as part of the degree. My pay during the internship was more than one of my instructors (who had a PhD in CS and was a postdoc in a biology lab doing genomic research).
rch 11y ago
I was in a research environment that shared proceeds on commercialized IP, such that the biggest share of royalties would go to the institution, then the lab, then the individual. That's much different than working for a corporation that will own everything outright.
- petra 11y ago
  But realistically , isn't it just a lottery , with slim chances ?
  - rch 11y ago
    Well you know the track record of the lab and the area of research going in, so it's definitely not purely a matter of chance.
    - petra 11y ago
      But even if you choose a successful lab, what are the chances to get rich of royalties ? higher than 5% ?
petra 11y ago
>> There's almost certainly a "big data" angle as well, Also i wouldn't be surprised they have(or are investing in) specialized search engines for innovations. Something that scans tons of research papers and finds interesting things. Maybe something like this: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/520461/software-mines-science-papers-to-make-new-discoveries/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/520461/software-mines-s...
- cryoshon 11y ago
  A Watson-like artificial intelligence for aggregating research trends is a near certainty; I bet that they are shooting for an even higher target, perhaps incorporating suggested experiments to clarify areas of theoretical or practical uncertainty.
  - petra 11y ago
    I don't think it's just aggregating research trends - but actually reading the literature - and connecting various things to discover hidden knowledge and hidden connections between things. But sure, they would definitely be looking into automated discovery engine that including both intelligence and experimentation.
aswanson 11y ago
50-90k...wow. For people with so much promise to advance human welfare to be worth less to society than an entry web dev salary in a decent market speaks volumes.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Yep. I harp on this all the time: science is a bad career choice. There are an abundance of smart, fastidious, and tireless people eager to take their shot at the disciplines with the greatest potential to improve human life. There is too much talent, too much willingness to self-sacrifice, too much competition, and far too much enthusiasm. Many scientists (myself included) wouldn't stop if they were limitlessly wealthy... and because of this fact, we are not wealthy, and many have severe doubts about continuing onward because of the poor quality of life.
  - aswanson 11y ago
    Don't give up the faith man. Do whatever you have to do to eat, but folks like you are the only long-term hope the species has.
  - copperx 11y ago
    I never considered this angle -- the overabundance of talent and willingness to self-sacrifice. I thought the species was rare.
    - moonchrome 11y ago
      This is one of the reasons why gamedev jobs suck - especially lower level - who doesn't want to write stuff like realtime 3D graphics - majority would do it for free in their own time anyway.
      - cryoshon 11y ago
        Yes, the same phenomenon exactly. Even the end profits generated by labor of the game devs don't get redistributed back to them, as this isn't necessary to keep them producing games. Passion begets paupers.
bbgm 11y ago
My starting salary at a startup after my PhD was quite a bit higher than $50K in 2000. Even in academia, which pays pitifully, $50K isn't going to cut it anymore.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Depends on where you're at and with what company. All of my experience is from the Boston/Cambridge scene, which has a huge glut of labor despite being a hotbed for universities and companies alike. Novartis pays their fresh PhDs 70-90k DOE, as does my current startup; formerly at my lab in academia postdocs started at 35-50k.
  - bbgm 11y ago
    That's pretty much my understanding as well. It has gone up in the last 15 years but not much.
goatcurious 11y ago
> This is a hiring market that they can easily dominate by offering salaries of 50k-90k Yes. Most of academia pays as per NIH guidelines -- http://www.niaid.nih.gov/researchfunding/paybud/pages/salarystip.aspx http://www.niaid.nih.gov/researchfunding/paybud/pages/salary... Even 60K will get them a PhD with 5 years of experience anyday
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Great link, I didn't even know such a salary cap existed. I guess that explains a lot of it. For reference, PhD plus 7 years experience is a total of 12-14 years experience, depending on how long the PhD took.
- klipt 11y ago
  Yeah but think of the cost of living difference. I'd much rather make 40k doing a post-doc at Carnegie Mellon in cheap-ass Pittsburgh than make 50k in the Bay Area. The rent difference alone is going to be way more than 10k.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
frisco 11y ago
Google is paying a lot more than $50k - $90k for new PhD grads. I've had a couple offers declined - at what I thought was market or above market! - to Google Life Sciences in the last six months: recent PhDs, engineering bents, $180k - $250k+. True story. $50k - $90k would be "competitive" based on academic salaries, but some companies are paying a lot more. What the tech companies moving into LS are paying is way out of line with what the "native" LS companies are paying, too. It seems to be a little random if GLS wants you or not, but if they want you they really want you. From my own experience and that of friends working in science-based startups, Google salaries are a major impediment right now for hiring. We're still able to get great people, but it certainly slows things down.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Depends on the grad, I assume, but I'm not too surprised at the range you're reporting. The 200k+ salaries are probably very rare, considering most new biomedical PhDs would jump at 100k. I'm guessing that the higher salaries are for people who are experts in (did their dissertation on) extremely narrow subfields of subfields which Google has an intense (but probably only capricious) interest in-- they want THAT person because they're one of a dozen on earth who specialized on that particular thing. This would drive the salaries up quite a bit, but only as blips. From the outside, this would also explain the "seemingly random" criteria used to select people-- it's not random, just very focused on an otherwise obscure/esoteric item.
  - frisco 11y ago
    Way more common than you think it is. It's less that their biomedical experience is valued particularly highly as it is that they're on the engineering pay scale now, and Google is paying very high prices for good engineers at the moment. Uber is too. New undergrads are ~$130k + bonus, PhDs are routinely $170k + options. A few years of experience brings this up pretty fast. Facebook is also paying new undergrads $120k - $140k. It's just that PhDs are basically considered engineers now. Edit: Worth clarifying is that the cases I know of first-hand for this got their PhDs in "bioengineering" or something similar, not a traditional biology or chemistry.
niekmaas 11y ago
"My hunch is that Google has a oncology/immunology platform" As an MD, soon to have a PhD in oncology immunology, I always wonder what project Google could be working on in this area. After all they are a company and most probably try to develop products that will yield a return in the future. So why would someone chose to work for a Google firm that has no real track record in the Life Sciences versus the many life-science companies that already have amazing logistics/experience in place (Novartis, Biogen, Takeda to name just a few in Cambridge, MA). Outside "data-science" projects like genomics, or very technical project like lab-on-a-chip devices, I wouldn't see a big advantage moving to the bay area. However, I guess offering huge salaries always helps convincing people to join your company. And the winters in the Mountain View are probably warmer than the Boston area.
- CardenB 11y ago
  Keep in mind that Google is hiring some of these people to their Cambridge office. I was just there (interning) over the summer, and a PHD intern was working on a project in this area
- noname123 11y ago
  They have a collaboration with the Broad where they want to run their analysis pipeline on Google's compute cluster. https://cloud.google.com/genomics/gatk?hl=en https://cloud.google.com/genomics/gatk?hl=en They also have a project with Novartis (I think not with NIBR however) to do glucose testing via contact lenses. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/05/us-novartis-ceo-idUSKCN0R50E920150905 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/05/us-novartis-ceo-id... If I have to guess, I don't think Google plan to build a HTS facility for drugs R&D or a huge lab foot-print to do wet-lab work. They probably want to leverage their existing compute/engineering infrastructure to get involved in the next phase of informatics needs in health care and life science (e.g., cloud storage and compute needs for clinical genome sequencing, analysis workflows like 23andMe for academia/industry/clinical).
siculars 11y ago
Note Google's investment in Flatiron Health [0], they are in the oncology tech space. [0] http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/07/google-ventures-leads-130m-series-b-in-cancer-data-startup-flatiron-health/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/07/google-ventures-leads-130m-...
iskander 11y ago
>There's almost certainly a "big data" angle as well, potentially describing the polymorphisms in majorhistocompatability (MHC) molecules between people. Where's the big data angle on MHC polymorphisms? Aren't they mostly succinctly summarized by HLA type (which is an awfully small piece of data, even if catalogued for every human alive)?

samstave 11y ago

Recall the article in {Wired?} from a few years ago where either Larry or Sergei had discovered they were genetically predisposed to some disease and had committed to finding a cure to it... Perhaps this is the evolution of that effort...

devilsdounut 11y ago

Not sure 50k-90k for PhDs from top programs is really the case anymore. Companies hiring for data-science type jobs have always been pulling from the pool of quantitative PhDs, and as a result the pharma/genomics companies have been forced to raise salaries. Pure bench scientists would potentially have that kind of range, but anything quantitative is going to be much higher. This being said, there is a huge gap between those purely experimental scientists and the quantitative ones who have many non-science options.

cryoshon 11y ago
Just going off of Novartis as a reference. I'd certainly agree with what you said regarding quantitative vs experimental scientist salaries, though.
adenadel 11y ago
I think that the comparison is towards the alternative path in academia. For example, I completed a master's degree and got an internship doing bioinformatics as part of the degree. My pay during the internship was more than one of my instructors (who had a PhD in CS and was a postdoc in a biology lab doing genomic research).

rch 11y ago

I was in a research environment that shared proceeds on commercialized IP, such that the biggest share of royalties would go to the institution, then the lab, then the individual. That's much different than working for a corporation that will own everything outright.

petra 11y ago
But realistically , isn't it just a lottery , with slim chances ?
- rch 11y ago
  Well you know the track record of the lab and the area of research going in, so it's definitely not purely a matter of chance.
  - petra 11y ago
    But even if you choose a successful lab, what are the chances to get rich of royalties ? higher than 5% ?

petra 11y ago

>> There's almost certainly a "big data" angle as well, Also i wouldn't be surprised they have(or are investing in) specialized search engines for innovations. Something that scans tons of research papers and finds interesting things. Maybe something like this: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/520461/software-mines-science-papers-to-make-new-discoveries/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/520461/software-mines-s...

cryoshon 11y ago
A Watson-like artificial intelligence for aggregating research trends is a near certainty; I bet that they are shooting for an even higher target, perhaps incorporating suggested experiments to clarify areas of theoretical or practical uncertainty.
- petra 11y ago
  I don't think it's just aggregating research trends - but actually reading the literature - and connecting various things to discover hidden knowledge and hidden connections between things. But sure, they would definitely be looking into automated discovery engine that including both intelligence and experimentation.

aswanson 11y ago

50-90k...wow. For people with so much promise to advance human welfare to be worth less to society than an entry web dev salary in a decent market speaks volumes.

cryoshon 11y ago
Yep. I harp on this all the time: science is a bad career choice. There are an abundance of smart, fastidious, and tireless people eager to take their shot at the disciplines with the greatest potential to improve human life. There is too much talent, too much willingness to self-sacrifice, too much competition, and far too much enthusiasm. Many scientists (myself included) wouldn't stop if they were limitlessly wealthy... and because of this fact, we are not wealthy, and many have severe doubts about continuing onward because of the poor quality of life.
- aswanson 11y ago
  Don't give up the faith man. Do whatever you have to do to eat, but folks like you are the only long-term hope the species has.
- copperx 11y ago
  I never considered this angle -- the overabundance of talent and willingness to self-sacrifice. I thought the species was rare.
  - moonchrome 11y ago
    This is one of the reasons why gamedev jobs suck - especially lower level - who doesn't want to write stuff like realtime 3D graphics - majority would do it for free in their own time anyway.
    - cryoshon 11y ago
      Yes, the same phenomenon exactly. Even the end profits generated by labor of the game devs don't get redistributed back to them, as this isn't necessary to keep them producing games. Passion begets paupers.

bbgm 11y ago

My starting salary at a startup after my PhD was quite a bit higher than $50K in 2000. Even in academia, which pays pitifully, $50K isn't going to cut it anymore.

cryoshon 11y ago
Depends on where you're at and with what company. All of my experience is from the Boston/Cambridge scene, which has a huge glut of labor despite being a hotbed for universities and companies alike. Novartis pays their fresh PhDs 70-90k DOE, as does my current startup; formerly at my lab in academia postdocs started at 35-50k.
- bbgm 11y ago
  That's pretty much my understanding as well. It has gone up in the last 15 years but not much.

goatcurious 11y ago

> This is a hiring market that they can easily dominate by offering salaries of 50k-90k Yes. Most of academia pays as per NIH guidelines -- http://www.niaid.nih.gov/researchfunding/paybud/pages/salarystip.aspx http://www.niaid.nih.gov/researchfunding/paybud/pages/salary... Even 60K will get them a PhD with 5 years of experience anyday

cryoshon 11y ago
Great link, I didn't even know such a salary cap existed. I guess that explains a lot of it. For reference, PhD plus 7 years experience is a total of 12-14 years experience, depending on how long the PhD took.
klipt 11y ago
Yeah but think of the cost of living difference. I'd much rather make 40k doing a post-doc at Carnegie Mellon in cheap-ass Pittsburgh than make 50k in the Bay Area. The rent difference alone is going to be way more than 10k.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

frisco 11y ago

Google is paying a lot more than $50k - $90k for new PhD grads. I've had a couple offers declined - at what I thought was market or above market! - to Google Life Sciences in the last six months: recent PhDs, engineering bents, $180k - $250k+. True story. $50k - $90k would be "competitive" based on academic salaries, but some companies are paying a lot more. What the tech companies moving into LS are paying is way out of line with what the "native" LS companies are paying, too. It seems to be a little random if GLS wants you or not, but if they want you they really want you. From my own experience and that of friends working in science-based startups, Google salaries are a major impediment right now for hiring. We're still able to get great people, but it certainly slows things down.

cryoshon 11y ago
Depends on the grad, I assume, but I'm not too surprised at the range you're reporting. The 200k+ salaries are probably very rare, considering most new biomedical PhDs would jump at 100k. I'm guessing that the higher salaries are for people who are experts in (did their dissertation on) extremely narrow subfields of subfields which Google has an intense (but probably only capricious) interest in-- they want THAT person because they're one of a dozen on earth who specialized on that particular thing. This would drive the salaries up quite a bit, but only as blips. From the outside, this would also explain the "seemingly random" criteria used to select people-- it's not random, just very focused on an otherwise obscure/esoteric item.
- frisco 11y ago
  Way more common than you think it is. It's less that their biomedical experience is valued particularly highly as it is that they're on the engineering pay scale now, and Google is paying very high prices for good engineers at the moment. Uber is too. New undergrads are ~$130k + bonus, PhDs are routinely $170k + options. A few years of experience brings this up pretty fast. Facebook is also paying new undergrads $120k - $140k. It's just that PhDs are basically considered engineers now. Edit: Worth clarifying is that the cases I know of first-hand for this got their PhDs in "bioengineering" or something similar, not a traditional biology or chemistry.

niekmaas 11y ago

"My hunch is that Google has a oncology/immunology platform" As an MD, soon to have a PhD in oncology immunology, I always wonder what project Google could be working on in this area. After all they are a company and most probably try to develop products that will yield a return in the future. So why would someone chose to work for a Google firm that has no real track record in the Life Sciences versus the many life-science companies that already have amazing logistics/experience in place (Novartis, Biogen, Takeda to name just a few in Cambridge, MA). Outside "data-science" projects like genomics, or very technical project like lab-on-a-chip devices, I wouldn't see a big advantage moving to the bay area. However, I guess offering huge salaries always helps convincing people to join your company. And the winters in the Mountain View are probably warmer than the Boston area.

CardenB 11y ago
Keep in mind that Google is hiring some of these people to their Cambridge office. I was just there (interning) over the summer, and a PHD intern was working on a project in this area
noname123 11y ago
They have a collaboration with the Broad where they want to run their analysis pipeline on Google's compute cluster. https://cloud.google.com/genomics/gatk?hl=en https://cloud.google.com/genomics/gatk?hl=en They also have a project with Novartis (I think not with NIBR however) to do glucose testing via contact lenses. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/05/us-novartis-ceo-idUSKCN0R50E920150905 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/05/us-novartis-ceo-id... If I have to guess, I don't think Google plan to build a HTS facility for drugs R&D or a huge lab foot-print to do wet-lab work. They probably want to leverage their existing compute/engineering infrastructure to get involved in the next phase of informatics needs in health care and life science (e.g., cloud storage and compute needs for clinical genome sequencing, analysis workflows like 23andMe for academia/industry/clinical).

siculars 11y ago

Note Google's investment in Flatiron Health [0], they are in the oncology tech space. [0] http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/07/google-ventures-leads-130m-series-b-in-cancer-data-startup-flatiron-health/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/07/google-ventures-leads-130m-...

iskander 11y ago

>There's almost certainly a "big data" angle as well, potentially describing the polymorphisms in majorhistocompatability (MHC) molecules between people. Where's the big data angle on MHC polymorphisms? Aren't they mostly succinctly summarized by HLA type (which is an awfully small piece of data, even if catalogued for every human alive)?