6 ms·

NIH should build more institutes in cheaper areas (eg not NoVa). It’s a win win since it will help revitalize poorer areas of America and save on costs. It wil

NIH should build more institutes in cheaper areas (eg not NoVa). It’s a win win since it will help revitalize poorer areas of America and save on costs. It will also tilt more senators/congresspeople to vote for NIH funding, similar to military base funding

Retric 3y ago
Military personnel move where you tell them, manufacturing jobs can train people up just about anywhere, but research isn’t so simple. It’s a real chicken and egg problem around local talent. Bethesda/Rockville/Baltimore has several different organizations doing medical research which makes the attractive locations for researchers to live. Locate in say Boise Idaho and positions are open for longer and you will need to compromise more in terms of talent. On top of this there’s a huge pool of government contractors which again provides significant advantages.
- rflrob 3y ago
  I think the biomedical academic job market is tight enough that you could fairly easily attract a strong class of researchers to nearly any second tier city. Maybe not the best of the best of the best (at first), but there’s enough bright people doing 6+ year post docs that you’ll recruit junior faculty in a flash. Credentials: did my PhD and postdoc at R1 institutions, before going to greener pastures in industry.
  - robwwilliams 3y ago
    There is no best-of-the-best at this stage. Only those who seem hyper bright. Success in biomedical research is much more about other factors—persistence and inquisitiveness being two that are crucial.
  - selimthegrim 3y ago
    That’s interesting, because Tulane seems to be having a lot of trouble with this.
- michaelt 3y ago
  Los Alamos National Lab is a 12,700 person [1] government research facility in a town of 13,200 population [2]. Median household income $98k, highest millionaire concentration of any US city, highest percentage of people with doctorate degrees in the nation. Nearest IKEA store? 500 miles away. A government lab can get scientists to relocate their families to the middle of nowhere. All it takes is a budget of $3.92 billion or $300k per job. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos_National_Laboratory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos_National_Laboratory [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos,_New_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos,_New_Mexico
  - kkylin 3y ago
    By all accounts it's very hard for grad students and postdocs at LANL (much less locals) to find affordable short-term housing near LANL due to (1) the very small amount of housing available and (2) enough people leaving the lab but continuing to live there while taking up remote work in tech. This is despite LANL paying relatively well (as you noted) to try to keep talent from moving into other industries (tech, finance). Not to say that government investment can't make people move, but it creates problems too, not least for locals. Source: mainly anecdotal, from talking to people at LANL at various career stages on a recent visit.
    - ecshafer 3y ago
      That sounds like an issue with local zoning, otherwise the market would fix that issue.
      - jfoutz 3y ago
        I haven't been there in a while, but last I recall, they sort of ran out of land. It's very hilly, the airport basically ends at a cliff. A lot of the land is government controlled and fenced off to provide buffer for secure areas. A lot of land around that is national park/BLM land, and not accessible. So you've got like, white rock, espanola or Santa Fe to commute in from. I did know a guy who had a light plane and would commute from the east side of Albuquerque to Los alamos by plane. So, sort of like local zoning, but more like DC. an act of congress to free up some of that land, not as straightforward as visiting some city council meetings.
- robwwilliams 3y ago
  Disagree. We have FedEx and Zoom now. My own intimate research community is now 8+ time zones—16 hours if you count where our RNA samples are sequenced.
  - tomjakubowski 3y ago
    How often are you grabbing a coffee or lunch (over Zoom) with randomish subsets of that community?
- petsfed 3y ago
  Boise (and elsewhere in Idaho) is thriving when it comes to materials research and agricultural research, because of the combined influence of Micron and Simplot. So its ultimately a question of what kind of industry you want to talk about. But the issue still remains: if your industry relies on your workforce moving every 5 years or so, and does not itself involve travel, then you have a structural problem.
alistairSH 3y ago
NIH isn't in NoVA. It's across the river in Bethesda, MD. The problem with opening remote locations is attracting people. Montgomery County, MD (where Bethesda is located) and the broader DC metro region has lots of biotech, medical, and software opportunities.
- ghaff 3y ago
  And it's an even bigger issue once professional specialists have partners and families. Even elite schools in relatively remote from major population center areas have long had some trouble attracting faculty whose partners may well be inevitably underemployed if they move to the small town/city where the school is.
  - robwwilliams 3y ago
    Disagree again. Here are some towns and smaller cities that more than rival DC. Ann Arbor, Davis, Durham, Urbana, Princeton, New Haven, Memphis, Madison, Portland, Eugene, Nashville, Kansas City…
    - svnt 3y ago
      The data for much of this list of cities has changed substantially in the past two to three years. Many of these are now unaffordable for someone on $45k/year, and they do not have the employment robustness of the larger metros.
  - dekhn 3y ago
    this is called "the two body problem" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-body_problem_(career) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-body_problem_(career) in reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-body_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-body_problem and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem
    - ghaff 3y ago
      I didn't know it had a name. But having been associated with both Dartmouth and Cornell, I've definitely heard complaints about the issue.
uncletaco 3y ago
I work for a national lab and in my experience it will take a lot for someone to give up a place like the Eastbay for East Tennessee. If the national lab were near Nashville that might be different. Los Alamos has to give software developers a sizeable bonus each year just to keep them from flying to greener pasteurs in a less remote location. I know I left partly because my wife had such a hard time finding work and the remoteness made the area too expensive for what we were getting out of it socially and careerwise.
- pnpnp 3y ago
  I've thought about this a lot, so thanks for getting the neurons firing again. In my case, I worked for some agencies and had an absolute blast. In this phase of my life, I'm living somewhere else & would fight tooth and nail to stay here. I wonder if it would be worth it from a talent perspective to create more, larger, and strategically placed SCIFs (Sensitive compartmented information facility) around the country so that there was less of a physical requirement for information workers to commute every day. Some of the jobs I worked were a blast with really great and interesting people. I do miss it, but would never move back to the physical locations required.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- robwwilliams 3y ago
  ORNL region is gorgeous and there are plenty of jobs and relatively inexpensive housing.
  - petsfed 3y ago
    Its gorgeous for some. My own experiences in the Ozarks made it a non-starter for me. Its hard to calculate the exact impact it had on me, but I do wonder if I would've worked harder in grad school if I wasn't actively dreading actually getting the most prestigious research positions in my field (I was studying material science of optical and electronic materials at the time). Granted, a lot of academia is repeating "just keep going, the end is in sight" until you die, but it is frustrating that it has to be that way.
robwwilliams 3y ago
Bravo for this start at unionizing. Important step forward—-finally. I made $13,500 as a postdoc at Yale (New Haven CT) from 1983 to 1985. $75/month went back to Yale for family health. Even the rent was $525/month. That scales to roughly $38,070 per year today. And my pay as a grad student at UC Davis was $325/month for my last three years. No taxes—whoopee. Talk about delayed gratification. Agreed: NIEHS is in North Carolina. NIA is in Baltimore. More of this please. And yes, this does engender strong local and state support. ORNL in Tennessee is a case in point. East Tennessee has Oak Ridge National Labs and the region around Knoxville is gorgeous. So why not move the National Eye Institute (NEI) and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) there ;-) in this Zoom day-and-age.
6DM 3y ago
Until we normalize working for a company until we’re ready to retire, I don’t even see that as an option. What am I gonna do 3-4 years later? That’s why I won’t leave the city, because I know when it’s time to look again there are plenty of jobs close by and I won’t have to uproot the whole family.

Retric 3y ago

Military personnel move where you tell them, manufacturing jobs can train people up just about anywhere, but research isn’t so simple. It’s a real chicken and egg problem around local talent. Bethesda/Rockville/Baltimore has several different organizations doing medical research which makes the attractive locations for researchers to live. Locate in say Boise Idaho and positions are open for longer and you will need to compromise more in terms of talent. On top of this there’s a huge pool of government contractors which again provides significant advantages.

rflrob 3y ago
I think the biomedical academic job market is tight enough that you could fairly easily attract a strong class of researchers to nearly any second tier city. Maybe not the best of the best of the best (at first), but there’s enough bright people doing 6+ year post docs that you’ll recruit junior faculty in a flash. Credentials: did my PhD and postdoc at R1 institutions, before going to greener pastures in industry.
- robwwilliams 3y ago
  There is no best-of-the-best at this stage. Only those who seem hyper bright. Success in biomedical research is much more about other factors—persistence and inquisitiveness being two that are crucial.
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  That’s interesting, because Tulane seems to be having a lot of trouble with this.
michaelt 3y ago
Los Alamos National Lab is a 12,700 person [1] government research facility in a town of 13,200 population [2]. Median household income $98k, highest millionaire concentration of any US city, highest percentage of people with doctorate degrees in the nation. Nearest IKEA store? 500 miles away. A government lab can get scientists to relocate their families to the middle of nowhere. All it takes is a budget of $3.92 billion or $300k per job. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos_National_Laboratory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos_National_Laboratory [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos,_New_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos,_New_Mexico
- kkylin 3y ago
  By all accounts it's very hard for grad students and postdocs at LANL (much less locals) to find affordable short-term housing near LANL due to (1) the very small amount of housing available and (2) enough people leaving the lab but continuing to live there while taking up remote work in tech. This is despite LANL paying relatively well (as you noted) to try to keep talent from moving into other industries (tech, finance). Not to say that government investment can't make people move, but it creates problems too, not least for locals. Source: mainly anecdotal, from talking to people at LANL at various career stages on a recent visit.
  - ecshafer 3y ago
    That sounds like an issue with local zoning, otherwise the market would fix that issue.
    - jfoutz 3y ago
      I haven't been there in a while, but last I recall, they sort of ran out of land. It's very hilly, the airport basically ends at a cliff. A lot of the land is government controlled and fenced off to provide buffer for secure areas. A lot of land around that is national park/BLM land, and not accessible. So you've got like, white rock, espanola or Santa Fe to commute in from. I did know a guy who had a light plane and would commute from the east side of Albuquerque to Los alamos by plane. So, sort of like local zoning, but more like DC. an act of congress to free up some of that land, not as straightforward as visiting some city council meetings.
robwwilliams 3y ago
Disagree. We have FedEx and Zoom now. My own intimate research community is now 8+ time zones—16 hours if you count where our RNA samples are sequenced.
- tomjakubowski 3y ago
  How often are you grabbing a coffee or lunch (over Zoom) with randomish subsets of that community?
petsfed 3y ago
Boise (and elsewhere in Idaho) is thriving when it comes to materials research and agricultural research, because of the combined influence of Micron and Simplot. So its ultimately a question of what kind of industry you want to talk about. But the issue still remains: if your industry relies on your workforce moving every 5 years or so, and does not itself involve travel, then you have a structural problem.

alistairSH 3y ago

NIH isn't in NoVA. It's across the river in Bethesda, MD. The problem with opening remote locations is attracting people. Montgomery County, MD (where Bethesda is located) and the broader DC metro region has lots of biotech, medical, and software opportunities.

ghaff 3y ago
And it's an even bigger issue once professional specialists have partners and families. Even elite schools in relatively remote from major population center areas have long had some trouble attracting faculty whose partners may well be inevitably underemployed if they move to the small town/city where the school is.
- robwwilliams 3y ago
  Disagree again. Here are some towns and smaller cities that more than rival DC. Ann Arbor, Davis, Durham, Urbana, Princeton, New Haven, Memphis, Madison, Portland, Eugene, Nashville, Kansas City…
  - svnt 3y ago
    The data for much of this list of cities has changed substantially in the past two to three years. Many of these are now unaffordable for someone on $45k/year, and they do not have the employment robustness of the larger metros.
- dekhn 3y ago
  this is called "the two body problem" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-body_problem_(career) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-body_problem_(career) in reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-body_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-body_problem and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem
  - ghaff 3y ago
    I didn't know it had a name. But having been associated with both Dartmouth and Cornell, I've definitely heard complaints about the issue.

uncletaco 3y ago

I work for a national lab and in my experience it will take a lot for someone to give up a place like the Eastbay for East Tennessee. If the national lab were near Nashville that might be different. Los Alamos has to give software developers a sizeable bonus each year just to keep them from flying to greener pasteurs in a less remote location. I know I left partly because my wife had such a hard time finding work and the remoteness made the area too expensive for what we were getting out of it socially and careerwise.

pnpnp 3y ago
I've thought about this a lot, so thanks for getting the neurons firing again. In my case, I worked for some agencies and had an absolute blast. In this phase of my life, I'm living somewhere else & would fight tooth and nail to stay here. I wonder if it would be worth it from a talent perspective to create more, larger, and strategically placed SCIFs (Sensitive compartmented information facility) around the country so that there was less of a physical requirement for information workers to commute every day. Some of the jobs I worked were a blast with really great and interesting people. I do miss it, but would never move back to the physical locations required.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
robwwilliams 3y ago
ORNL region is gorgeous and there are plenty of jobs and relatively inexpensive housing.
- petsfed 3y ago
  Its gorgeous for some. My own experiences in the Ozarks made it a non-starter for me. Its hard to calculate the exact impact it had on me, but I do wonder if I would've worked harder in grad school if I wasn't actively dreading actually getting the most prestigious research positions in my field (I was studying material science of optical and electronic materials at the time). Granted, a lot of academia is repeating "just keep going, the end is in sight" until you die, but it is frustrating that it has to be that way.

robwwilliams 3y ago

Bravo for this start at unionizing. Important step forward—-finally. I made $13,500 as a postdoc at Yale (New Haven CT) from 1983 to 1985. $75/month went back to Yale for family health. Even the rent was $525/month. That scales to roughly $38,070 per year today. And my pay as a grad student at UC Davis was $325/month for my last three years. No taxes—whoopee. Talk about delayed gratification. Agreed: NIEHS is in North Carolina. NIA is in Baltimore. More of this please. And yes, this does engender strong local and state support. ORNL in Tennessee is a case in point. East Tennessee has Oak Ridge National Labs and the region around Knoxville is gorgeous. So why not move the National Eye Institute (NEI) and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) there ;-) in this Zoom day-and-age.

6DM 3y ago

Until we normalize working for a company until we’re ready to retire, I don’t even see that as an option. What am I gonna do 3-4 years later? That’s why I won’t leave the city, because I know when it’s time to look again there are plenty of jobs close by and I won’t have to uproot the whole family.