4 ms·

More money is not what is needed here--we already pour tons of money into cancer research. What's needed are new ideas. If you really want to fight cancer, skip

More money is not what is needed here--we already pour tons of money into cancer research. What's needed are new ideas. If you really want to fight cancer, skip the startup and go to graduate school. Computational and mathematical approaches to understanding and fighting cancer are still in their infancy. There is a lot of scope for smart, motivated people to do good. There are a zillion[0] talented young programmers who have figured out that the VC-istan game is rigged (I like to believe that I helped with that) and who would readily work on machine learning for cancer research at a market salary. [0] Zillion probably means "tens of thousands", but that's a lot. A good programmer costs $125k to hire and is worth $1-2M to the economy. Thousands of programmers = major muscle. Tap that piece of A! (A meaning "awesomeness potential".) $100-150k, machine learning, saving lives? Shit, you'll be turning people away. If it's government-funded it doesn't have to be in a high-COL area where 100-150k, while respectable, isn't raise-a-family money. But you could do this out in a place like Minneapolis where people can raise a family on that and (bear with me, here) therefore actually find programmers with more than 10 years (!) of technical experience who want to stay on real work (!!) instead of becoming useless executives (like VC-istan's VeePees of BizDevolution) because they can actually raise kids on what they make (!!!). It's about the people. But the nature of the real world is that it takes money to hire people. So, indirectly, it is about the money. We should spend less money on pointless, illegal wars and more on the disease that's actually (if we don't fucking do something) going to kill a large portion of the people reading this.

altertoad 14y ago
what do ya mean rigged
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  If you're on your first VC-funded startup, you'll probably get torn up by liquidation preferences and dilution for executive hires (that you had no say in; they were VC injections) and various other things, and not get very rich. You could end up worse off than an employee (because they get to take real salaries; you're hosed if your equity gets zeroed). You'll have to play a second time (capitalizing on your reputation, having joined Those Who Have Completed An Exit) to get what you came to the game for. It's like the record industry: you make money on your second album, because the record company has leverage to screw you on the first one. If you're a manager or executive-level hire, you're probably never going to get the investor contact you were promised and, if you do, you probably won't be allowed to say much, so the networking you were promised won't happen. If you're an engineer, you're probably not going to get the "leadership" (executive) position you were promised. It'll be given to some external asshat when the company goes in to "scaling"/social-climbing mode and starts hiring "real X's" (i.e. not the fools who worked for 90 hours per week and 50% of market salaries, judged not to be good enough for prime time). Only a tiny percentage of VC-funded startups have a real engineering culture (pre-apocalyptic Google) where you can do well as an engineer without becoming a manager. If that's what you want, your odds are better (not great, but better) at a place like Google. Most VC-funded startups grow too fast to keep a decent culture, and the executive positions often get handed out by VC to their underachieving friends who couldn't make it on their own. That's what I mean by "rigged".
droithomme 14y ago
Salaries in the life sciences are no where near where you think they are. Lots of people with biology degrees are making less than theatre majors. Even if you have the more elaborate title of "biochemist", salaries are around $45k, not the $125k you are expecting to earn. http://www1.salary.com/Biochemist-I-Salary.html http://www1.salary.com/Biochemist-I-Salary.html Starting salaries are around $35k. If you are working for a non-profit foundation (ie: cancer research), expect to earn $25k. http://www.biospace.com/news_story.aspx?NewsEntityId=166364 http://www.biospace.com/news_story.aspx?NewsEntityId=166364
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  See, that's my exact point. I didn't say that they make $125k (that's about average for a half-decent VC-istan programmer) because I knew scientific salaries to be low (I'm surprised to hear that they're that low) and they shouldn't be. Those salaries should be at least 3 times higher. You should make more working on scientific research that helps everyone than you'd make ($100-150k for typical programmers) writing yet another ad exchange. It's not true that you "can't get good people" with low salaries. The sciences are full of great people making low salaries. You just can't get very many of them. We need good people in the sciences and a much larger number, which means that society needs to start paying scientists what they're actually worth.
  - vwinsyee 14y ago
    Heh, I really wish salaries in science were at least 3 times higher. Most of my colleagues, including those with many years of experience, have salaries in the 30-40K range, so that average starting salary of 35K seems about right or even slightly high. By the way, this is in Los Angeles, where the cost of living is relatively high. Incidentally, the more highly trained postdocs might even have worse salaries and potentially the worst prospects because the number of available faculty positions have seemed to decrease over the years. Programmer/analysts do make more, but not nearly as much as they would in VC-istan. The median starting salary for a programmer/analyst at my institution is 50K. Senior programmer/analysts can make as much as a median 116K, but I almost never see people employed at that level despite their capability. More importantly, at least in life science research at a public institution, there's really no guarantee that you'll be kept on past the duration of the grant you're funded from, unless your PI is famous and your lab's rich. Even so, the recent cascade of NIH and NSF cuts are putting pressure on all labs. Along those lines -- the job insecurity's the worst for junior staff, so I don't really see any good reason for recent grads to continue in public research. Most of my former grad school classmates are now in private pharma or biotech. I'm personally looking to move from life science to the SF tech scene as soon as I graduate this year. Edit: clarity

altertoad 14y ago

what do ya mean rigged

michaelochurch 14y ago
If you're on your first VC-funded startup, you'll probably get torn up by liquidation preferences and dilution for executive hires (that you had no say in; they were VC injections) and various other things, and not get very rich. You could end up worse off than an employee (because they get to take real salaries; you're hosed if your equity gets zeroed). You'll have to play a second time (capitalizing on your reputation, having joined Those Who Have Completed An Exit) to get what you came to the game for. It's like the record industry: you make money on your second album, because the record company has leverage to screw you on the first one. If you're a manager or executive-level hire, you're probably never going to get the investor contact you were promised and, if you do, you probably won't be allowed to say much, so the networking you were promised won't happen. If you're an engineer, you're probably not going to get the "leadership" (executive) position you were promised. It'll be given to some external asshat when the company goes in to "scaling"/social-climbing mode and starts hiring "real X's" (i.e. not the fools who worked for 90 hours per week and 50% of market salaries, judged not to be good enough for prime time). Only a tiny percentage of VC-funded startups have a real engineering culture (pre-apocalyptic Google) where you can do well as an engineer without becoming a manager. If that's what you want, your odds are better (not great, but better) at a place like Google. Most VC-funded startups grow too fast to keep a decent culture, and the executive positions often get handed out by VC to their underachieving friends who couldn't make it on their own. That's what I mean by "rigged".

droithomme 14y ago

Salaries in the life sciences are no where near where you think they are. Lots of people with biology degrees are making less than theatre majors. Even if you have the more elaborate title of "biochemist", salaries are around $45k, not the $125k you are expecting to earn. http://www1.salary.com/Biochemist-I-Salary.html http://www1.salary.com/Biochemist-I-Salary.html Starting salaries are around $35k. If you are working for a non-profit foundation (ie: cancer research), expect to earn $25k. http://www.biospace.com/news_story.aspx?NewsEntityId=166364 http://www.biospace.com/news_story.aspx?NewsEntityId=166364

michaelochurch 14y ago
See, that's my exact point. I didn't say that they make $125k (that's about average for a half-decent VC-istan programmer) because I knew scientific salaries to be low (I'm surprised to hear that they're that low) and they shouldn't be. Those salaries should be at least 3 times higher. You should make more working on scientific research that helps everyone than you'd make ($100-150k for typical programmers) writing yet another ad exchange. It's not true that you "can't get good people" with low salaries. The sciences are full of great people making low salaries. You just can't get very many of them. We need good people in the sciences and a much larger number, which means that society needs to start paying scientists what they're actually worth.
- vwinsyee 14y ago
  Heh, I really wish salaries in science were at least 3 times higher. Most of my colleagues, including those with many years of experience, have salaries in the 30-40K range, so that average starting salary of 35K seems about right or even slightly high. By the way, this is in Los Angeles, where the cost of living is relatively high. Incidentally, the more highly trained postdocs might even have worse salaries and potentially the worst prospects because the number of available faculty positions have seemed to decrease over the years. Programmer/analysts do make more, but not nearly as much as they would in VC-istan. The median starting salary for a programmer/analyst at my institution is 50K. Senior programmer/analysts can make as much as a median 116K, but I almost never see people employed at that level despite their capability. More importantly, at least in life science research at a public institution, there's really no guarantee that you'll be kept on past the duration of the grant you're funded from, unless your PI is famous and your lab's rich. Even so, the recent cascade of NIH and NSF cuts are putting pressure on all labs. Along those lines -- the job insecurity's the worst for junior staff, so I don't really see any good reason for recent grads to continue in public research. Most of my former grad school classmates are now in private pharma or biotech. I'm personally looking to move from life science to the SF tech scene as soon as I graduate this year. Edit: clarity