5 ms·

I think your example of a biologist is a bit disingenuous. By 27 they've probably just wrapped up their PhD and were making a paltry stipend to work in a profes

I think your example of a biologist is a bit disingenuous. By 27 they've probably just wrapped up their PhD and were making a paltry stipend to work in a professor's research lab. If they're inclined to continue working for academia then it's not surprising that they won't break past 6 figures. You could just as easily pick people from different fields that are pursuing a career in academia and find that professors at the top-tier make a fraction of what their students make at top-tier companies. I also think the remark about "stability" was hand wavy. What is it about non-SWE STEM roles that make them so unstable compared to consulting or law?

thereisnospork 7y ago
> By 27 they've probably just wrapped up their PhD and were making a paltry stipend to work in a professor's research lab followed by 2-4 years at a postdoc, asked for in every job application for a 'biologist II' which has an average salary of ~77k (per indeed). This is for industry, not academia. So how am I am misrepresenting the fact that being a biologist takes over 7+ years of being grossly underpaid relative to a SWE at FAANG to wind up being a little less grossly underpaid than a SWE at FAANG?
- fizwhiz 7y ago
  Forgive me for I live in a bubble so I don't know a great deal about why someone would spend that many years in school to land a 77k job. I also don't know much about compensation structure (ex: is comp == salary or are there other components?) I do know a couple of friends that work at Genentech who comfortably pull in > 200k so there's that.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Biology is one of the lower paid STEM disciplines, and the toughest to break into professorships. Most biology majors are just premed anyways.
  - thereisnospork 7y ago
    > Forgive me for I live in a bubble so I don't know a great about why someone would spend that many years in school to land a 77k job. I also don't know much about compensation structure (ex: is comp == salary or are there other components?) comp pretty much == salary (plus benefits, like insurance, 4% 401k match, maybe small bonuses). My take is that the low salaries is primarily due to the appeal of the work - kids grow up wanting to be biologists, (chemists, physicists) so there is a labor oversupply. A strong secondary contributor is overhead - a scientist can easily cost 2x salary in overhead for equipment and reagents (very field dependent). To your point it is possible make decent money in big pharma, but they are essentially the FAANG of the bio/chemistry world and still come with 7y postgrad prereqs.
    - Fomite 7y ago
      There's also less room to move. It's much harder for someone whose been doing PCR for the past 6 years to go "You know what, screw this..." than there is for someone whose been working on the analysis of large datasets in say, physics. And, perceptional-wise, leaving for industry is often seen as a failure.
      - asdff 7y ago
        People doing PCR for 6 years are probably generating a pretty big dataset for analysis... Bioinformatics is an entire field. The lines between molecular biology, genetics, physics, chemistry, statistics, and computer science are getting very blurry these days. Plenty of bio phds get hired for data scientist roles in industry. No one is going to knock you for leaving for industry these days. Anyone who is a big deal enough in academia to have that kind of ego is already going to have started a company or three themselves on the side.
        Fomite 7y ago
        PCR doesn't necessarily generate large data sets. And as someone who works in the field, there's definitely a stigma against students not aiming for PI positions at R1 institutions. There's some practical reasons for that - students who go into industry are less useful for "empire building", but it's also cultural. I'm lucky enough to be in a field where this isn't as true, but I'm faculty in a multidisciplinary center, and the closer you get to pure biology, the worse it gets.
  - AlexCoventry 7y ago
    Idealism, altruism. I was in computational biology, which is slightly less penurious, but FWIW, I wanted to make a contribution to medicine.
  - oarabbus_ 7y ago
    Really? You don't understand why someone would want to become a PhD and make contributions driving a field forward? It's not something I want to do personally, but I find it odd that someone couldn't see _why_ someone would choose to do that. Additionally, positions in academia come with a great deal of prestige.

thereisnospork 7y ago

> By 27 they've probably just wrapped up their PhD and were making a paltry stipend to work in a professor's research lab followed by 2-4 years at a postdoc, asked for in every job application for a 'biologist II' which has an average salary of ~77k (per indeed). This is for industry, not academia. So how am I am misrepresenting the fact that being a biologist takes over 7+ years of being grossly underpaid relative to a SWE at FAANG to wind up being a little less grossly underpaid than a SWE at FAANG?

fizwhiz 7y ago
Forgive me for I live in a bubble so I don't know a great deal about why someone would spend that many years in school to land a 77k job. I also don't know much about compensation structure (ex: is comp == salary or are there other components?) I do know a couple of friends that work at Genentech who comfortably pull in > 200k so there's that.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Biology is one of the lower paid STEM disciplines, and the toughest to break into professorships. Most biology majors are just premed anyways.
- thereisnospork 7y ago
  > Forgive me for I live in a bubble so I don't know a great about why someone would spend that many years in school to land a 77k job. I also don't know much about compensation structure (ex: is comp == salary or are there other components?) comp pretty much == salary (plus benefits, like insurance, 4% 401k match, maybe small bonuses). My take is that the low salaries is primarily due to the appeal of the work - kids grow up wanting to be biologists, (chemists, physicists) so there is a labor oversupply. A strong secondary contributor is overhead - a scientist can easily cost 2x salary in overhead for equipment and reagents (very field dependent). To your point it is possible make decent money in big pharma, but they are essentially the FAANG of the bio/chemistry world and still come with 7y postgrad prereqs.
  - Fomite 7y ago
    There's also less room to move. It's much harder for someone whose been doing PCR for the past 6 years to go "You know what, screw this..." than there is for someone whose been working on the analysis of large datasets in say, physics. And, perceptional-wise, leaving for industry is often seen as a failure.
    - asdff 7y ago
      People doing PCR for 6 years are probably generating a pretty big dataset for analysis... Bioinformatics is an entire field. The lines between molecular biology, genetics, physics, chemistry, statistics, and computer science are getting very blurry these days. Plenty of bio phds get hired for data scientist roles in industry. No one is going to knock you for leaving for industry these days. Anyone who is a big deal enough in academia to have that kind of ego is already going to have started a company or three themselves on the side.
      - Fomite 7y ago
        PCR doesn't necessarily generate large data sets. And as someone who works in the field, there's definitely a stigma against students not aiming for PI positions at R1 institutions. There's some practical reasons for that - students who go into industry are less useful for "empire building", but it's also cultural. I'm lucky enough to be in a field where this isn't as true, but I'm faculty in a multidisciplinary center, and the closer you get to pure biology, the worse it gets.
- AlexCoventry 7y ago
  Idealism, altruism. I was in computational biology, which is slightly less penurious, but FWIW, I wanted to make a contribution to medicine.
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  Really? You don't understand why someone would want to become a PhD and make contributions driving a field forward? It's not something I want to do personally, but I find it odd that someone couldn't see _why_ someone would choose to do that. Additionally, positions in academia come with a great deal of prestige.