Re:The dual PhD problem of today’s startups
by distant_hat on Thursday August 20, 2020 @03:35AM
(#24220815)
The problem with finding jobs is that the work is far less translatable to other fields unless you take care to make things general which is not really encouraged in academia. As a Physics, Math, or computational PhD you can apply your skills to any domain with a few weeks of learning. You can't really apply PhD level mice work or yeast work to another domain that quickly.
And the pay is shit a PhD level biologist in a major Corp with you years experience will get paid as much or less than a recent grad at FAANG company
When I was in grad school I knew a bunch of grad students who worked on biotech/bioengineering experiments. They would have to take care of their experiments like they were pets, nurturing them and making sure they were well taken care of, because if they died on you, that's months of effort down the drain. Vacations had to be carefully planned, and people had to be delegated to keep those little critters alive.
Whereas folks running experiments with non-living things could actually work 9-6 and take vacations. Computational folks could run their experiments while sitting on a beach in Hawaii (with an LTE signal of course).
Bio is just a different beast.
The worse thing is? Many of these biotech graduates actually struggle to find well-paying jobs after, despite how hot the field seemingly is.