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A waste for society? No. A waste for the people doing it who are never going to be appropriately compensated for the value of their failure to society? Yes. Th

A waste for society? No. A waste for the people doing it who are never going to be appropriately compensated for the value of their failure to society? Yes. The churn that arises as a consequence of the fact that we don't know how to reward failure (or even merely punish it less) is the real waste.

cowsandmilk 8y ago
???? I assure you, Mark Murcko (and others at Relay) are paid competitively to similar people in pharma.
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  > Mark Murcko He's on the admin / capital side of the equation and will do fine, I'm sure. > paid competitively That's not an endorsement and hardly an excuse. Unless things have changed dramatically in the last year or two, pay for computational / structural biologists is 1/2 to 1/3 of what a person with the same skills gets for helping build Uber for Poodles, which is in turn 1/2 to 1/3 of what a person with the same skills gets at AppleGooFaceZon or on Wall St. The field, like many scientific fields, runs on passion, naivete, and green cards, and is quite abusive to the people doing the actual work, even though it showers adjacent concerns with money. If science didn't suffer from such a severe value capture problem, scientists could win a seat at the table, but it does, so practicing scientists get shut out and the money goes instead to capital/risk, showmen (often "graduated" scientists themselves), lawyers, etc.
vthallam 8y ago
> A waste for the people doing it who are never going to be appropriately compensated for the value of their failure to society? Yes. Judging by their profiles, I don't think they care if they end up being a failure with this Venture.
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  Yes, but if the scientific value capture problem were solved then science could scale appropriately rather than beg for charity. I was (and would be) much more valuable to society as a structural biologist than I am as a software engineer, but the market disagrees so vehemently that it's cost prohibitive for me to fight it, and the result is that we all lose. The reason why it disagrees is not hard to understand and not particularly difficult to categorize as a market failure rather than a "hard truth." I can't really think of a good way to actually address the problem, though, so mostly this just amounts to venting.

cowsandmilk 8y ago

???? I assure you, Mark Murcko (and others at Relay) are paid competitively to similar people in pharma.

jjoonathan 8y ago
> Mark Murcko He's on the admin / capital side of the equation and will do fine, I'm sure. > paid competitively That's not an endorsement and hardly an excuse. Unless things have changed dramatically in the last year or two, pay for computational / structural biologists is 1/2 to 1/3 of what a person with the same skills gets for helping build Uber for Poodles, which is in turn 1/2 to 1/3 of what a person with the same skills gets at AppleGooFaceZon or on Wall St. The field, like many scientific fields, runs on passion, naivete, and green cards, and is quite abusive to the people doing the actual work, even though it showers adjacent concerns with money. If science didn't suffer from such a severe value capture problem, scientists could win a seat at the table, but it does, so practicing scientists get shut out and the money goes instead to capital/risk, showmen (often "graduated" scientists themselves), lawyers, etc.

vthallam 8y ago

> A waste for the people doing it who are never going to be appropriately compensated for the value of their failure to society? Yes. Judging by their profiles, I don't think they care if they end up being a failure with this Venture.

jjoonathan 8y ago
Yes, but if the scientific value capture problem were solved then science could scale appropriately rather than beg for charity. I was (and would be) much more valuable to society as a structural biologist than I am as a software engineer, but the market disagrees so vehemently that it's cost prohibitive for me to fight it, and the result is that we all lose. The reason why it disagrees is not hard to understand and not particularly difficult to categorize as a market failure rather than a "hard truth." I can't really think of a good way to actually address the problem, though, so mostly this just amounts to venting.