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Part of the reason behind this is that it's really, really hard to hire good programmers in academia -- salaries are difficult to put into grants and equipment

Part of the reason behind this is that it's really, really hard to hire good programmers in academia -- salaries are difficult to put into grants and equipment is easier. It may well be the case that an übernerd could get your algo a significant runtime improvement, but sometimes you're massively unlikely to actually be able to get an übernerd. On the other hand, saying "I and doing big science, give me time on this cluster" is often more of a positive thing to write.

ta988 5y ago
And at the same time we give indecent salaries to PIs, Deans and basketball coaches. We waste large amount of money on inefficient processes and we take 5 years to develop projects that would have taken 6 months with a good dev and in the end would have cost less in maintenance and improvement. I needed to hire devs for a project, it was impossible to do.
pinewurst 5y ago
What I've seen is that low-salaried ops people are viewed as a substitute for capital expenditure in this environment. It strongly discourages purchasing software and even non-white box hardware. "Just have IT cobble together something open source", is the message from administration and PIs. The result is ramshackle, inefficient systems running on low bidder hardware from often dubious "HPC" resellers.