4 ms·
it's an oversupply relative to demand: - lots of washout MDs - lots of students who wanted to postpone adulthood by getting a PhD (master's are just not respe
by dnautics 6y ago
it's an oversupply relative to demand:
- lots of washout MDs
- lots of students who wanted to postpone adulthood by getting a PhD (master's are just not respected anymore)
- lots of PhDs who couldn't hack the academic game or got disillusioned by it and are used to low salaries because postdocs exploit the high-stakes attempt to get social cachet of professorships.
- few jobs. Biology is a capital-intensive endeavour, so each dollar of VC can do marginally less.
- it's hard to tell the wheat from the chaff in the labor market (and there's probably a market of lab lemons, too), so a superstar's earning potential is necessarily hamstrung
- jonas21 6y ago> Biology is a capital-intensive endeavour Or, looking at it another way, software is a uniquely capital-light endeavor. Many people who have been in the industry for a few years have enough savings that they could just quit their job and try whatever crazy idea they have without any external funding. You can't do that in biology, or most other fields for that matter. Part of the reason software companies pay such high salaries is to make this option less attractive.