6 ms·

I'm surviving on consulting income for a wide variety of clients right now in this space, and let me tell you it's brutal and extremely difficult to get entry t

I'm surviving on consulting income for a wide variety of clients right now in this space, and let me tell you it's brutal and extremely difficult to get entry to this space for people that don't have a wide network and lots of industry experience. Academic experience typically doesn't count. In addition there's a severe "passion tax" for these sorts of jobs, the salary difference for a "Data Scientist, Computational Biology", and "Computational Biologist" is pretty big, and hiring is also brutal. I know a ton of extremely talented people who have been locked out of employment for a long time now. The high interest environment means that biotech investing has been hit extremely hard, as biotech is even higher risk than most software and AI spending (thanks for the correction, Schlagbohrer). Pharma companiees with big hits, like Lilly with GLP1 agonists, are hiring a bit as they try to move into the modern era of pharma with lots of AI tools, but it's still brutal.

Schlagbohrer 4mo ago
Did you mean to write, high interest rate environment?
doctorpangloss 4mo ago
I don't know if it's so much that talented people are being locked out, as much as it is that communities everywhere, not just industry, are requiring a level of people skills that academic people lack but nonetheless thrive without.
- wholinator2 4mo ago
  Academics do have a reputation that way, but only the 100% safe, tenured ones. The majority of academics are required to have a strong level of communication just to get their grants accepted. Imagine if, on top of working your normal job at maximum efficiency, you then had to make a presentation to the government every year about why you and everyone that depends upon you deserves to eat, while the government you make the presentation to becomes increasingly antagonistic and detached. There's quite a lot of people skills involved in surviving as an academic in today's environment. Imagine if you had to teach calculus to 150 random, uninterested teenagers (barely adults) every 12 weeks. There's some serious people skills involved in doing a good job at that (most people do actually try to teach well, I've known multiple people this year refused tenure based on rate-my-teacher ratings). It's a different set of skills for sure, but being an academic isn't as socially challenged as the zeitgeist appears to believe.
  - mothballed 4mo ago
    [dead]
  - doctorpangloss 4mo ago
    do you think communication skills and people skills are the same thing? i like academics, don't misunderstand me.
    - nfw2 4mo ago
      > do you think communication skills and people skills are the same thing? yes, or at least largely overlapping circles
      - doctorpangloss 4mo ago
        okay... here's another way of thinking about it: claude, gemini and chatgpt are very good at communicating. but, would you marry claude? would you want claude to be your boss? would you want claude to be your coworker? a lot of people are choosing claude to be their intern, which is something. what i am saying is, having people skills are the answers "yes" to all those questions. you can cynically call getting a job nepotism, or you can call it, well people like to work with their friends at the cost of measures of competency. and maybe, the core competency is being pleasant to work with or work for. another place people struggle with this is executive compensation. if i told every DoD employee they could get a 10x better boss for only $20/y, every single one would, which is $58m in executive compensation. but the DoD CAN'T do that, and its leadership is TERRIBLE, so... do you see?
        LoganDark 4mo ago
        > claude, gemini and chatgpt are very good at communicating There is no communication there. No concepts for them to communicate. It is just math.
        nfw2 4mo ago
- awesome_dude 4mo ago
  Academic's, FTR, have to have a huge amount of people skills. Their job isn't just to discover, it's to share. You cannot share (effectively) if you cannot communicate in a way that others can understand. Further the entire ecosystem that academics rely on to get what they need to do for their research (grants, and other funding, resources, and so on) necessitate them to convince people who control those, who do not necessarily understand the purpose of the work
thaumasiotes 4mo ago
> The high interest environment means that biotech investing has been hit extremely hard I don't think this reasoning can work. To the extent these things are directly related, the relationship would have to be: returns on investment are at an all-time high --> more investing than usual.
- anon84873628 4mo ago
  When interest rates are low, capital is willing to go to riskier enterprises like biotech in order to get a larger return compared to the alternatives. When interest rates are high, capital shifts to yield-generating, interest-bearing investments. They give higher returns with less risk. So basically the ROI of biotech becomes less competitive compared to alternatives. You have the same number of people/firms chasing a smaller supply of investment dollars.
  - thaumasiotes 4mo ago
    This doesn't work the way you imagine. Suppose the ROI of biotech becomes more competitive compared to alternatives, because there's an ongoing series of technological breakthroughs. The return on investing goes up (by assumption) and this means interest rates go up (by definition; they are the return on investing). Is this bad for biotech? Does it shift capital out of biotech? Obviously not.
    - klipt 4mo ago
      You're using "high interest rate" to mean "biotech has great returns right now". Everyone else is using it to mean "the Federal Reserve has set the interest rate high right now" Very different situations.
      - thaumasiotes 4mo ago
        The difference between those two situations can't be determined by observing the level of interest rates. That's my whole point.
caseysoftware 4mo ago
"Academic experience typically doesn't count." Why not?
- garciasn 4mo ago
  I can’t speak to this particular sector; however, I have found academics to lag 5-7y behind the realities of the business world I operate in. Business moves incredibly fast; academia, not so much.
  - totetsu 4mo ago
    If it’s constantly 5-7 years behind isn’t it moving at the same speed just with an offset?
    - npunt 4mo ago
      If it's a constant offset like you say, and given academia publishes and industry often doesn't, that might suggest it's dependent on the rate of advancement in academic research. Not in this field so I may be wildly off.
    - cbility 4mo ago
      only if they are always going in the same direction
  - jltsiren 4mo ago
    That may depend on the field. My experience (in bioinformatics method development) is that people in the industry can't afford to work on state-of-the-art problems. But once a problem has become established and it's important enough to be worth their time, they will eventually come up with a better solution due to their superior resources.
- mbreese 4mo ago
  Biotech and academia have very different standards for data quality and reproducibility. Most of the biotech people I know view academic research as an interesting first draft at best.
snailshare 4mo ago
There is some history to why it is as grim as it is right now (sunny skies will return, don't worry!). A lot of funding was around ~2019 from the VC people, and biomed PIs were getting their startups funded and hiring from the recent PhD cohorts. The horrible environment in STEM academic hiring needs no introduction, so the talent pool was rich. Early stage drug development and biotech is horrendously risky, so most don't make it past ~5-7 years. Now there are lots of people looking for a job, and the only surviving companies are the extremely hiring averse ones.

Schlagbohrer 4mo ago

Did you mean to write, high interest rate environment?

doctorpangloss 4mo ago

I don't know if it's so much that talented people are being locked out, as much as it is that communities everywhere, not just industry, are requiring a level of people skills that academic people lack but nonetheless thrive without.

wholinator2 4mo ago
Academics do have a reputation that way, but only the 100% safe, tenured ones. The majority of academics are required to have a strong level of communication just to get their grants accepted. Imagine if, on top of working your normal job at maximum efficiency, you then had to make a presentation to the government every year about why you and everyone that depends upon you deserves to eat, while the government you make the presentation to becomes increasingly antagonistic and detached. There's quite a lot of people skills involved in surviving as an academic in today's environment. Imagine if you had to teach calculus to 150 random, uninterested teenagers (barely adults) every 12 weeks. There's some serious people skills involved in doing a good job at that (most people do actually try to teach well, I've known multiple people this year refused tenure based on rate-my-teacher ratings). It's a different set of skills for sure, but being an academic isn't as socially challenged as the zeitgeist appears to believe.
- mothballed 4mo ago
  [dead]
- doctorpangloss 4mo ago
  do you think communication skills and people skills are the same thing? i like academics, don't misunderstand me.
  - nfw2 4mo ago
    > do you think communication skills and people skills are the same thing? yes, or at least largely overlapping circles
    - doctorpangloss 4mo ago
      okay... here's another way of thinking about it: claude, gemini and chatgpt are very good at communicating. but, would you marry claude? would you want claude to be your boss? would you want claude to be your coworker? a lot of people are choosing claude to be their intern, which is something. what i am saying is, having people skills are the answers "yes" to all those questions. you can cynically call getting a job nepotism, or you can call it, well people like to work with their friends at the cost of measures of competency. and maybe, the core competency is being pleasant to work with or work for. another place people struggle with this is executive compensation. if i told every DoD employee they could get a 10x better boss for only $20/y, every single one would, which is $58m in executive compensation. but the DoD CAN'T do that, and its leadership is TERRIBLE, so... do you see?
      - LoganDark 4mo ago
        > claude, gemini and chatgpt are very good at communicating There is no communication there. No concepts for them to communicate. It is just math.
        nfw2 4mo ago
awesome_dude 4mo ago
Academic's, FTR, have to have a huge amount of people skills. Their job isn't just to discover, it's to share. You cannot share (effectively) if you cannot communicate in a way that others can understand. Further the entire ecosystem that academics rely on to get what they need to do for their research (grants, and other funding, resources, and so on) necessitate them to convince people who control those, who do not necessarily understand the purpose of the work

thaumasiotes 4mo ago

> The high interest environment means that biotech investing has been hit extremely hard I don't think this reasoning can work. To the extent these things are directly related, the relationship would have to be: returns on investment are at an all-time high --> more investing than usual.

anon84873628 4mo ago
When interest rates are low, capital is willing to go to riskier enterprises like biotech in order to get a larger return compared to the alternatives. When interest rates are high, capital shifts to yield-generating, interest-bearing investments. They give higher returns with less risk. So basically the ROI of biotech becomes less competitive compared to alternatives. You have the same number of people/firms chasing a smaller supply of investment dollars.
- thaumasiotes 4mo ago
  This doesn't work the way you imagine. Suppose the ROI of biotech becomes more competitive compared to alternatives, because there's an ongoing series of technological breakthroughs. The return on investing goes up (by assumption) and this means interest rates go up (by definition; they are the return on investing). Is this bad for biotech? Does it shift capital out of biotech? Obviously not.
  - klipt 4mo ago
    You're using "high interest rate" to mean "biotech has great returns right now". Everyone else is using it to mean "the Federal Reserve has set the interest rate high right now" Very different situations.
    - thaumasiotes 4mo ago
      The difference between those two situations can't be determined by observing the level of interest rates. That's my whole point.

caseysoftware 4mo ago

"Academic experience typically doesn't count." Why not?

garciasn 4mo ago
I can’t speak to this particular sector; however, I have found academics to lag 5-7y behind the realities of the business world I operate in. Business moves incredibly fast; academia, not so much.
- totetsu 4mo ago
  If it’s constantly 5-7 years behind isn’t it moving at the same speed just with an offset?
  - npunt 4mo ago
    If it's a constant offset like you say, and given academia publishes and industry often doesn't, that might suggest it's dependent on the rate of advancement in academic research. Not in this field so I may be wildly off.
  - cbility 4mo ago
    only if they are always going in the same direction
- jltsiren 4mo ago
  That may depend on the field. My experience (in bioinformatics method development) is that people in the industry can't afford to work on state-of-the-art problems. But once a problem has become established and it's important enough to be worth their time, they will eventually come up with a better solution due to their superior resources.
mbreese 4mo ago
Biotech and academia have very different standards for data quality and reproducibility. Most of the biotech people I know view academic research as an interesting first draft at best.

snailshare 4mo ago

There is some history to why it is as grim as it is right now (sunny skies will return, don't worry!). A lot of funding was around ~2019 from the VC people, and biomed PIs were getting their startups funded and hiring from the recent PhD cohorts. The horrible environment in STEM academic hiring needs no introduction, so the talent pool was rich. Early stage drug development and biotech is horrendously risky, so most don't make it past ~5-7 years. Now there are lots of people looking for a job, and the only surviving companies are the extremely hiring averse ones.