5 ms·

I've worked at a few DOE sites albeit as a consultant not an FTE, Fermi, Los Alamos and a couple others. You are correct that the work is interesting and a lik

I've worked at a few DOE sites albeit as a consultant not an FTE, Fermi, Los Alamos and a couple others. You are correct that the work is interesting and a like academic atmosphere, it was the academic atmosphere part that I found off putting. Where I worked there was very much a hierarchy and if you didn't have a PHD your opinion didn't matter much, you just did what you were told. Having a couple of decades of experience and being brought in to spin them up on their system and being talked down to on a daily basis like I was a Sophomore in college was really annoying -that said I'm a consultant so I get paid to be annoyed by the people who hire me. Aside from that I liked working there, the tech was cool, as far as the moral issues I don't ask nor do I want to know about what I'm working on -I don't have a need to know.

neilv 4y ago
Sounds similar to what I mentioned in comments a couple months ago, about science organizations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33673259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33673259 (I'm not familiar with DoE sites. And I actually had a good experience (other than the pay), as a high-end federal consultant doing challenging technical work, reporting to operations research PhDs at the Director level, who respected what I could do. Where I've seen and heard of problems is other places.)
randcraw 4y ago
Having worked in R&D at a big pharma for 17 years and in university HPC groups for 10, I echo these comments. I've found that corporate R&D is essentially investigative (rather than production driven), and as an IC computational scientist (or data scientist) you will move from project to project over the years, usually working solo 95% of the time. You will have some opportunity to propose projects, especially in partnership with scientists (in pharma, those are chemists or biologists or work to improve manufacturing). But without a PhD, advancement along the technical track will be limited. If you're not embedded in a science R&D group, you will be lumped in with general IT staff where tech support, database management, or software development of products are prized by management, but tackling individual R&D questions is not (though it is tolerated by IT brass since they know investigation is critical to finding & improving drugs). I found the same limitations when I worked in R&D-based military contracting (or for US gov't FFRDCs for various agencies). There it's more important to develop a strong relationship with the gov't client, irrespective of the academic degree you have.
11101010001100 4y ago
But you DO need to know, right? At some point there is a line?
LeanderK 4y ago
> as far as the moral issues I don't ask nor do I want to know about what I'm working on -I don't have a need to know. I guess that's also a solution but you know that you contributed something, right? I believe that even if you ignore it the effect of your actions is your responsibility, even if somebody else told you to do it. And I don't even condemn it per so I just find the ambiguity puzzling.
- screwturner68 4y ago
  What I do is pretty low on the stack so it could be almost anything, I just assume it will be used for good.

neilv 4y ago

Sounds similar to what I mentioned in comments a couple months ago, about science organizations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33673259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33673259 (I'm not familiar with DoE sites. And I actually had a good experience (other than the pay), as a high-end federal consultant doing challenging technical work, reporting to operations research PhDs at the Director level, who respected what I could do. Where I've seen and heard of problems is other places.)

randcraw 4y ago

Having worked in R&D at a big pharma for 17 years and in university HPC groups for 10, I echo these comments. I've found that corporate R&D is essentially investigative (rather than production driven), and as an IC computational scientist (or data scientist) you will move from project to project over the years, usually working solo 95% of the time. You will have some opportunity to propose projects, especially in partnership with scientists (in pharma, those are chemists or biologists or work to improve manufacturing). But without a PhD, advancement along the technical track will be limited. If you're not embedded in a science R&D group, you will be lumped in with general IT staff where tech support, database management, or software development of products are prized by management, but tackling individual R&D questions is not (though it is tolerated by IT brass since they know investigation is critical to finding & improving drugs). I found the same limitations when I worked in R&D-based military contracting (or for US gov't FFRDCs for various agencies). There it's more important to develop a strong relationship with the gov't client, irrespective of the academic degree you have.

11101010001100 4y ago

But you DO need to know, right? At some point there is a line?

LeanderK 4y ago

> as far as the moral issues I don't ask nor do I want to know about what I'm working on -I don't have a need to know. I guess that's also a solution but you know that you contributed something, right? I believe that even if you ignore it the effect of your actions is your responsibility, even if somebody else told you to do it. And I don't even condemn it per so I just find the ambiguity puzzling.

screwturner68 4y ago
What I do is pretty low on the stack so it could be almost anything, I just assume it will be used for good.