5 ms·

You can't pay a staff scientist $20k a year like you can a graduate student. The article mentions that. I don't see the situation changing unless the supply of

by krapht 9y ago

You can't pay a staff scientist $20k a year like you can a graduate student. The article mentions that. I don't see the situation changing unless the supply of graduate student labor dries up. Hell, if I could hire grad-school quality new cs grads for 20k, I'd put up with the necessary mentoring and supervision they'd need.

dekhn 9y ago
A staff scientist at a National Lab is going to make $100K or more (cost-adjusted for the region; Berkeley likely pays more than Argonne, since the former is near SV, while the latter is an hour+ outside Chicago). A grad student is never a replacement for a staff scientist. Grad students aren't particularly useful until 4-5 years into a 7 year program, and then they're out in a couple years, so they can't do complex, long-running research.
- arcanus 9y ago
  The labs don't employ many life scientists compared to physics and engineering doctorates. The article is focused on biology. Not that we don't generally need more staff scientists, but the national labs are probably the best gig along those lines available, and due to their mission, they are very focused on CS/Engineering /Physics In my limited experience, the life sciences are much more depressed in terms of wages.
  - dekhn 9y ago
    I was a staff scientists at a national lab (titled "Computer Scientist", but at the time, I was a biologist that used computers). We had plenty of people in LS (there are several divisions dedicated to biology). It grew a ton over the past few decades (true for all the labs). There is a modest difference in pay between a Staff Scientist in the Life Sciences Division and a Computer Scientist (doing life sciences) in the Computational division, but that's mainly explained by the fact that we had to compete with Silicon Valley to hire. Also, both CS and life sciences aren't hard funded like physics is (at least at LBL, dunno about others). I suppose what I'm saying supports you, in that I had to specifically be titled CS to get the higher salary. I would agree that in general, life sciences wages are depressed, but then, there are far more people in life sciences than CS, but much more demand for CS, and CS people bring in more dollars/hour (in terms of company revenue in the case of a biotech vs. a SV computer company). You can't fix that without making structural changes.
  - sndean 9y ago
    I'm a life scientist (I guess?) at a national lab. And yeah, even the biology is very focused toward CS/Eng/Physics. There's lots of unusual (at least relative to academia) collaborations, like biologists working with plasma physicists, deep learning researchers, material scientists, etc. Everyone here is paid equally, and pretty well (again, relative to academia).
Fomite 9y ago
Beyond that, there's just fewer ways to pay for staff scientists. There's no RA/TA lines available for them. There's no "training grant" for staff scientists, etc.
s0rce 9y ago
I think this is the core of the problem. Tons of people (even some who don't seem particularly qualified) are admitted to graduate science programs because they rely on the cheap labour to do research. These graduates, including the very talented ones, often have great difficulty finding permanent positions in Science (myself included). Unless there is a paradigm shift I can't see this changing either. Look at Medicine, as fas as I know the AMA controls the number of doctors that get educated, they aren't relying on cheap student/postdoc labor. In the end more of them gets jobs as doctors (unlike the large fraction of PhD scientists who leave academia/science entirely) and usually command substantially higher salaries that what PhDs make with similar amount of time spent in school.

by krapht 9y ago

dekhn 9y ago

A staff scientist at a National Lab is going to make $100K or more (cost-adjusted for the region; Berkeley likely pays more than Argonne, since the former is near SV, while the latter is an hour+ outside Chicago). A grad student is never a replacement for a staff scientist. Grad students aren't particularly useful until 4-5 years into a 7 year program, and then they're out in a couple years, so they can't do complex, long-running research.

arcanus 9y ago
The labs don't employ many life scientists compared to physics and engineering doctorates. The article is focused on biology. Not that we don't generally need more staff scientists, but the national labs are probably the best gig along those lines available, and due to their mission, they are very focused on CS/Engineering /Physics In my limited experience, the life sciences are much more depressed in terms of wages.
- dekhn 9y ago
  I was a staff scientists at a national lab (titled "Computer Scientist", but at the time, I was a biologist that used computers). We had plenty of people in LS (there are several divisions dedicated to biology). It grew a ton over the past few decades (true for all the labs). There is a modest difference in pay between a Staff Scientist in the Life Sciences Division and a Computer Scientist (doing life sciences) in the Computational division, but that's mainly explained by the fact that we had to compete with Silicon Valley to hire. Also, both CS and life sciences aren't hard funded like physics is (at least at LBL, dunno about others). I suppose what I'm saying supports you, in that I had to specifically be titled CS to get the higher salary. I would agree that in general, life sciences wages are depressed, but then, there are far more people in life sciences than CS, but much more demand for CS, and CS people bring in more dollars/hour (in terms of company revenue in the case of a biotech vs. a SV computer company). You can't fix that without making structural changes.
- sndean 9y ago
  I'm a life scientist (I guess?) at a national lab. And yeah, even the biology is very focused toward CS/Eng/Physics. There's lots of unusual (at least relative to academia) collaborations, like biologists working with plasma physicists, deep learning researchers, material scientists, etc. Everyone here is paid equally, and pretty well (again, relative to academia).

Fomite 9y ago

Beyond that, there's just fewer ways to pay for staff scientists. There's no RA/TA lines available for them. There's no "training grant" for staff scientists, etc.

s0rce 9y ago

I think this is the core of the problem. Tons of people (even some who don't seem particularly qualified) are admitted to graduate science programs because they rely on the cheap labour to do research. These graduates, including the very talented ones, often have great difficulty finding permanent positions in Science (myself included). Unless there is a paradigm shift I can't see this changing either. Look at Medicine, as fas as I know the AMA controls the number of doctors that get educated, they aren't relying on cheap student/postdoc labor. In the end more of them gets jobs as doctors (unlike the large fraction of PhD scientists who leave academia/science entirely) and usually command substantially higher salaries that what PhDs make with similar amount of time spent in school.