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Ive seen job listings for "scientific programmers" where what they're asking for is a scientist who happens to know a little programming.
by non-entity 6y ago
Ive seen job listings for "scientific programmers" where what they're asking for is a scientist who happens to know a little programming.
- detaro 6y agoYeah - who then likely doesn't have that much software experience, and worse, if they want to stay a scientist such a role is often a bad career move, because they help others get ahead with their research instead of publishing their own work. Even if they build some really great domain-specific software tool in that role, it often doesn't count as much. Or it's an informal thing done by some student as a side-gig. Which can be cool, but is not a stable long-term thing. I hope there's exceptions. EDIT: weirdest example I've seen was a lab looking for sysadmins with PhD preferred. I wonder if they had some funding source that only paid for "scientists" or what was going on there...
- mnw21cam 6y agoSimple answer for that. University pay scales tend to be fairly inflexible in terms of which grades you are eligible for without a PhD, if you are counted as academic staff. If you're non-academic staff (like the cleaner, the receptionist, and the central IT sysadmin) then you can be paid a fair wage based upon your experience, but if you are academic staff, then you have a hard ceiling without a PhD. An individual research group with a grant may only be able to hire academic staff, but they want a sysadmin, so in order to be able to pay them more than a pittance they would have to have a PhD.