3 ms·

This is a very romantic view of life sciences. Speaking as a guy who made the pivot to research in life sciences (as a "data scientist") from "full stack softw

This is a very romantic view of life sciences. Speaking as a guy who made the pivot to research in life sciences (as a "data scientist") from "full stack software engineer", yes the data and mission is very sexy to a nerdy guy like myself, applying deep learning algorithms to spatial or epigenetic sequencing data of cancer cells to figure out the secret markers or mechanism of cancer cell mestasis or human immune response. The realistic or unromantic view is you are a cog in the life science industrial complex where you are underpaid and under-appreciated; research often takes years and unclear if you are making progress or scamming the taxpayers like a humanities professor in women's studies (yes even STEM sometimes feels like that); and in computing, unlike tech, you are not the center of attention, most wet lab scientists treat you more like a resource, a grad student they need to make their pvalue or figure panel pop nicely versus a "full stack software engineer" - And if you don't like it, hundreds of thousands of post-doc's or grad students are waiting to take your place for their shot - not in pursing their passion but for a visa in America. The real value I learned from my pivot from pivoting away from tech and pivoting into Biology is ironically how to gamble. I joined a Discord/Slack sub-channel for #options-trading, #sports-betting and #poker during my studies for a Masters in data science with other degenerate students who loved gambling, and how to identify, automate and size +EV plays in gambling or derivatives trading. I make more than 2-3x what I make in W-2 from my capital gains and W2-G than my W-2 for past the 6 years. But that is not put shade on biological sciences and rather giving credit to Biology for teaching me how to analyze data and gamble.

doctorpangloss 1mo ago
> or scamming the taxpayers like a humanities professor in women's studies (yes even STEM sometimes feels like that); one thing's for sure, there are certain spaces for people who lack people skills, and that seems to be associated with "STEM" skills
- noname123 1mo ago
  Yes for me, it's mutually beneficial and gives me a quick way to polarize, filter out people I don't want waste time associating with (and vice versa too - people who are institutionalist, professional managerial class (PMCs); thank you for making my point!)
  - ThrowawayR2 1mo ago
    Just nitpicking but I'd like to point out "professional-managerial class" means the class consisting of both people who are college educated professionals (i.e. most people on Hacker News reading this) _lumped together_ with people whose career is management, not just career management alone. Putting down the PMC is putting down ourselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional%E2%80%93managerial_class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional%E2%80%93manageria...
- __MatrixMan__ 1mo ago
  I suspect that the money taxpayers used to spend on humanities professors in women's studies is a pittance compared to the money they're now wasting because grab-em-by-the-***** regime never took one of those classes. Ignoring half of your population comes at the price of social unrest, which it turns out is very expensive. This applies just as well to biology.
  - noname123 1mo ago
    My original point is to make a point that biology or academia in general is very romantic to outsiders - but it's not a very +EV play unless (1) you are already very independently wealth, or (2) you are really really into the subject and know what you're signing up for (the long odds, hours and politics). 99% of the people will take this as a pessimistic view and stop there but 1% will actually pursue option (2). RE: your political point, I submit to you many institutions are very left-leaning and "Woke-1" was defeated by its emphasis on shaming tactics and identity politics - which ironically brought upon the identity politics of the right and the current "regimen's" backlash on defunding DEI initiatives, which hurts ironically the sciences most due to its outsized reliance from NIH/NSF/DARPA etc. And I welcome actually "Woke-2.0" where DSA is actually focused on kitchen table issues such as grocery and health insurance cost; and anticipate that our political pendulum will swing to the left at the next cycle.
    - watwut 1mo ago
      [flagged]
      - noname123 1mo ago
        Appreciate your comment and opinion, I can't say I agree but I really do respect the honesty and where you are coming from! I'm not sure who is the next DSA candidate versus the Democratic establishment or Republican candidate (e.g., Francesca Hong v. Dave Crowley, or Abu Sayed v. Mike Rogers). But I encourage you to go to the "machine" (Polymarket, Kalshi) to take position and express your opinion!
- gopher_space 1mo ago
  "STEM major actively dismissive of other disciplines" has been a candidate category and major red flag everywhere I've worked. Especially the places full of STEM majors.
le-mark 1mo ago
> The real value I learned from my pivot from pivoting away from tech and pivoting into Biology is ironically how to gamble Lol that took a turn, I was expecting a link to a how to course at the end; or some nfl week one picks!
mettamage 1mo ago
Where can I learn what you learn to make +EV plays? I did some poker back in the day, it was fun :) One of my favorite books was The Mathematics of Poker
- tux3 1mo ago
  You should buy my ebook on how to get rich quick by selling ebooks, it has excellent EV and guarantees returns that beats the market.
  - UpsideDownRide 1mo ago
    To be precise It has excellent mEV for you.
stanford_labrat 1mo ago
hilarious. i also made a pivot to life sciences from a hard math field and my experience was the exact same. i make more money trading options and have way more fun! in a way - it is "real" science in a way whereas the modern Life Science Industrial Complex is anything but that.
- noname123 1mo ago
  Thanks labrat! I appreciate your comment - when you made a living "shaving" p-values, shrinking fat tails and crafting a narrative in the life science industrial complex, maybe it's easy to make the switch to exposing bad risk/reward payoffs in the manic and /r/wallstreetbets-driven options and binary options casinos??? Best of luck to you!
fHr 1mo ago
everyone's a genius in a bull market
ggregoryarms 1mo ago
You managed to blame feminists and immigrants in one paragraph, impressive. I'm sorry to hear about your experiences tho.
- noname123 1mo ago
  I think it says more how you read things and where we are coming from - I meant int'l students earn my respect for being cleared eyed and pursue both their economic and academic interest. For the feminists professors, I'm actually shading the sciences by saying that a lot of times, the so-called tangible and much well-funded science departments produce just as little tangible value as the intangible humanities. But don't get me wrong, I also understand your comment - hope you get social capital up so one day you can stake it in the future to help an immigrant or a feminist stranger for real.
  - BenFranklin100 1mo ago
    Your post sounds like it is made by a disgruntled misanthrope. I lead teams of biologists and data scientists and both are part of a vast team, each of us playing our bit part, myself included. If your desire is to be the center of attention, you are in the wrong field. And lay off the immigrants. Jeez.
    - noname123 1mo ago
      My post may come off disgruntled (point taken). But my point is to completely dispel any romantic notion for someone who is young and want to make the switch into life science research, if they learn all of these ugly things and still want to do it - then they made the right decision and I've done my job. Kindness imho is not being polite and then taking advantage of people's passion/enthusiasm later (nobody so far has disputed the -EV nature of the field itself just my tone) - it is doing right by people from the jump, not serving the institution or my interest in it. And I'm not sayin you're wrong either or that you are not dedicated (by default I presume everybody is in the research), just sharing my perspective, hope you have a good one.
BigTTYGothGF 1mo ago
> humanities professor in women's studies Better a thousand women's studies departments than one business school.
- Fomite 1mo ago
  One of the things that struck me the most, watching keynote presentations from the absolute best-of-the-best in my field (infectious diseases) was how often those presentations, which were often reflections on the path of ones career, involved a liberal arts education.
  - jll29 1mo ago
    Donald Michie, a trained classicist specialising on old Greek, was drafted to Bletchley Park and became a codebreaker (and Alan Turing's chess partner "because we were both not very good at it compared to the others" [personal comm.]). After WW II., he became a professor of veterenary sciences at the University of Edinburgh, and eventually he founded the department of artificial intelligence there. He is the editor of the first book series on machine learning (1950s). In his lifetime, Michie published impactful papers in genetics, biology, statistics and computer science -- and classical philology. A liberal arts education and a science education are not mutually exclusive, but complementary.
- watwut 1mo ago
  Trader/gambler complains about humanities professors scamming word by studying about women's issues.
smrtinsert 1mo ago
The life sciences are diverse and multi gender. What a sad state of affairs this causes a crisis for modern techies.
arcticfox 1mo ago
Wild comment - first of all, the author's point is that biology should be taught better, not that it's an amazing career on the ground as it is today. Second of all, I like how you called out the degeneracy of gambling, I can't think of any bigger contrast between the author's goals and actual application of talent. Bravo on your W-2G, society is proud.
1vuio0pswjnm7 1mo ago
"... and in computing, unlike tech, you are not the center of attention, most wet lab scientists treat you more like a resource, a grad student they need to make their pvalue or figure panel pop nicely versus a "full stack software engineer"" It's always been this way and I'm pleased to hear it hasn't changed Despite Silicon Valley marketing and hype
interludead 1mo ago
The unexpected conclusion here seems to be that biology taught you enough statistics to leave biology financially behind. That is interesting, although six profitable years of gambling may also encourage a rather romantic view of gambling

doctorpangloss 1mo ago

> or scamming the taxpayers like a humanities professor in women's studies (yes even STEM sometimes feels like that); one thing's for sure, there are certain spaces for people who lack people skills, and that seems to be associated with "STEM" skills

noname123 1mo ago
Yes for me, it's mutually beneficial and gives me a quick way to polarize, filter out people I don't want waste time associating with (and vice versa too - people who are institutionalist, professional managerial class (PMCs); thank you for making my point!)
- ThrowawayR2 1mo ago
  Just nitpicking but I'd like to point out "professional-managerial class" means the class consisting of both people who are college educated professionals (i.e. most people on Hacker News reading this) _lumped together_ with people whose career is management, not just career management alone. Putting down the PMC is putting down ourselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional%E2%80%93managerial_class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional%E2%80%93manageria...
__MatrixMan__ 1mo ago
I suspect that the money taxpayers used to spend on humanities professors in women's studies is a pittance compared to the money they're now wasting because grab-em-by-the-***** regime never took one of those classes. Ignoring half of your population comes at the price of social unrest, which it turns out is very expensive. This applies just as well to biology.
- noname123 1mo ago
  My original point is to make a point that biology or academia in general is very romantic to outsiders - but it's not a very +EV play unless (1) you are already very independently wealth, or (2) you are really really into the subject and know what you're signing up for (the long odds, hours and politics). 99% of the people will take this as a pessimistic view and stop there but 1% will actually pursue option (2). RE: your political point, I submit to you many institutions are very left-leaning and "Woke-1" was defeated by its emphasis on shaming tactics and identity politics - which ironically brought upon the identity politics of the right and the current "regimen's" backlash on defunding DEI initiatives, which hurts ironically the sciences most due to its outsized reliance from NIH/NSF/DARPA etc. And I welcome actually "Woke-2.0" where DSA is actually focused on kitchen table issues such as grocery and health insurance cost; and anticipate that our political pendulum will swing to the left at the next cycle.
  - watwut 1mo ago
    [flagged]
    - noname123 1mo ago
      Appreciate your comment and opinion, I can't say I agree but I really do respect the honesty and where you are coming from! I'm not sure who is the next DSA candidate versus the Democratic establishment or Republican candidate (e.g., Francesca Hong v. Dave Crowley, or Abu Sayed v. Mike Rogers). But I encourage you to go to the "machine" (Polymarket, Kalshi) to take position and express your opinion!
gopher_space 1mo ago
"STEM major actively dismissive of other disciplines" has been a candidate category and major red flag everywhere I've worked. Especially the places full of STEM majors.

le-mark 1mo ago

> The real value I learned from my pivot from pivoting away from tech and pivoting into Biology is ironically how to gamble Lol that took a turn, I was expecting a link to a how to course at the end; or some nfl week one picks!

mettamage 1mo ago

Where can I learn what you learn to make +EV plays? I did some poker back in the day, it was fun :) One of my favorite books was The Mathematics of Poker

tux3 1mo ago
You should buy my ebook on how to get rich quick by selling ebooks, it has excellent EV and guarantees returns that beats the market.
- UpsideDownRide 1mo ago
  To be precise It has excellent mEV for you.

stanford_labrat 1mo ago

hilarious. i also made a pivot to life sciences from a hard math field and my experience was the exact same. i make more money trading options and have way more fun! in a way - it is "real" science in a way whereas the modern Life Science Industrial Complex is anything but that.

noname123 1mo ago
Thanks labrat! I appreciate your comment - when you made a living "shaving" p-values, shrinking fat tails and crafting a narrative in the life science industrial complex, maybe it's easy to make the switch to exposing bad risk/reward payoffs in the manic and /r/wallstreetbets-driven options and binary options casinos??? Best of luck to you!

fHr 1mo ago

everyone's a genius in a bull market

ggregoryarms 1mo ago

You managed to blame feminists and immigrants in one paragraph, impressive. I'm sorry to hear about your experiences tho.

noname123 1mo ago
I think it says more how you read things and where we are coming from - I meant int'l students earn my respect for being cleared eyed and pursue both their economic and academic interest. For the feminists professors, I'm actually shading the sciences by saying that a lot of times, the so-called tangible and much well-funded science departments produce just as little tangible value as the intangible humanities. But don't get me wrong, I also understand your comment - hope you get social capital up so one day you can stake it in the future to help an immigrant or a feminist stranger for real.
- BenFranklin100 1mo ago
  Your post sounds like it is made by a disgruntled misanthrope. I lead teams of biologists and data scientists and both are part of a vast team, each of us playing our bit part, myself included. If your desire is to be the center of attention, you are in the wrong field. And lay off the immigrants. Jeez.
  - noname123 1mo ago
    My post may come off disgruntled (point taken). But my point is to completely dispel any romantic notion for someone who is young and want to make the switch into life science research, if they learn all of these ugly things and still want to do it - then they made the right decision and I've done my job. Kindness imho is not being polite and then taking advantage of people's passion/enthusiasm later (nobody so far has disputed the -EV nature of the field itself just my tone) - it is doing right by people from the jump, not serving the institution or my interest in it. And I'm not sayin you're wrong either or that you are not dedicated (by default I presume everybody is in the research), just sharing my perspective, hope you have a good one.

BigTTYGothGF 1mo ago

> humanities professor in women's studies Better a thousand women's studies departments than one business school.

Fomite 1mo ago
One of the things that struck me the most, watching keynote presentations from the absolute best-of-the-best in my field (infectious diseases) was how often those presentations, which were often reflections on the path of ones career, involved a liberal arts education.
- jll29 1mo ago
  Donald Michie, a trained classicist specialising on old Greek, was drafted to Bletchley Park and became a codebreaker (and Alan Turing's chess partner "because we were both not very good at it compared to the others" [personal comm.]). After WW II., he became a professor of veterenary sciences at the University of Edinburgh, and eventually he founded the department of artificial intelligence there. He is the editor of the first book series on machine learning (1950s). In his lifetime, Michie published impactful papers in genetics, biology, statistics and computer science -- and classical philology. A liberal arts education and a science education are not mutually exclusive, but complementary.
watwut 1mo ago
Trader/gambler complains about humanities professors scamming word by studying about women's issues.

smrtinsert 1mo ago

The life sciences are diverse and multi gender. What a sad state of affairs this causes a crisis for modern techies.

arcticfox 1mo ago

Wild comment - first of all, the author's point is that biology should be taught better, not that it's an amazing career on the ground as it is today. Second of all, I like how you called out the degeneracy of gambling, I can't think of any bigger contrast between the author's goals and actual application of talent. Bravo on your W-2G, society is proud.

1vuio0pswjnm7 1mo ago

"... and in computing, unlike tech, you are not the center of attention, most wet lab scientists treat you more like a resource, a grad student they need to make their pvalue or figure panel pop nicely versus a "full stack software engineer"" It's always been this way and I'm pleased to hear it hasn't changed Despite Silicon Valley marketing and hype

interludead 1mo ago

The unexpected conclusion here seems to be that biology taught you enough statistics to leave biology financially behind. That is interesting, although six profitable years of gambling may also encourage a rather romantic view of gambling