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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

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.
      - asdff 7y ago
        There might be a stigma in certain places that are becoming isolated from the field, but I would be flabbergasted to hear of any stigma in biology existing on the west or east costs where biotech is, where professors are regularly collaborating directly with biotech companies, where professors are regularly founding their own biotech startups, where graduate programs are offering internship opportunites with private companies, where graduate programs are regularly hosting symposiums with industry representatives, and where departments regularly see the majority of their graduating classes go into industry rather than academia. I think this worldview is two decades out of date.
- asdff 7y ago
  to your last point, top companies hire before PhDs even defend all the time. In fact it's nice when that happens because then you can go to your committee with the job offer and they will pass you without too much fuss or revisions, sometimes a year early. Post docs are pretty optional in the industry these days, and the prerequisites on job applications for phd science positions are going to be a bit fast and loose. The trick is to angle your skillset to the industry skill set, network network network, even collaborations with the company directly can happen when you are a grad student. When you show up to the interview and are recommended by the people you networked with and understand their technology since you've been all over it in grad school and have some papers published to prove it, suddenly you are the top candidate in the pile. It's not impossible to do this if you angle your grad career from the start, and go to a school in an area with a lot of these companies and other good research schools nearby.
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.

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.
    - asdff 7y ago
      There might be a stigma in certain places that are becoming isolated from the field, but I would be flabbergasted to hear of any stigma in biology existing on the west or east costs where biotech is, where professors are regularly collaborating directly with biotech companies, where professors are regularly founding their own biotech startups, where graduate programs are offering internship opportunites with private companies, where graduate programs are regularly hosting symposiums with industry representatives, and where departments regularly see the majority of their graduating classes go into industry rather than academia. I think this worldview is two decades out of date.
asdff 7y ago
to your last point, top companies hire before PhDs even defend all the time. In fact it's nice when that happens because then you can go to your committee with the job offer and they will pass you without too much fuss or revisions, sometimes a year early. Post docs are pretty optional in the industry these days, and the prerequisites on job applications for phd science positions are going to be a bit fast and loose. The trick is to angle your skillset to the industry skill set, network network network, even collaborations with the company directly can happen when you are a grad student. When you show up to the interview and are recommended by the people you networked with and understand their technology since you've been all over it in grad school and have some papers published to prove it, suddenly you are the top candidate in the pile. It's not impossible to do this if you angle your grad career from the start, and go to a school in an area with a lot of these companies and other good research schools nearby.

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.