It is not. Chemistry is just a special sub-field of manufacturing. Nearly all manufacturing uses chemistry in some way. But in general manufacturing has nowhere near margins of "tech".

if you are starting from the assumption that drug development and other such research chemistry is 'just a special subfield of manufacturing' then obviously you are not going to come to any sensible conclusions, and i am sure your errors are widespread

I suppose they think pharma is going to find their AI talent off the street and compete with MS, etc.

I agree! When I started my PhD I wanted to use software to help sift through the ocean of research papers and pair that with micro fluidics to create a way to quickly determine the validity of novel reactions. None of the professors were interested in working with me on something like that.

i didn't mean 'the idea that chemistry is not part of software'

'tech' is short for 'technology' in the oed's sense 1b, 'practical arts collectively', for which their first citation is from 01859, referring to, as it happens, chemistry; specifically, the formulation of varnishes for wood

https://archive.org/details/oed9barch/page/n548/mode/1up

possibly also the second half of their sense 1a, '... the scientific study of the practical or industrial arts,' for which i think the first citation is from bentham in 01802–12

obviously in the 19th century they weren't talking about software

your idea is good though

i hope you do it

> the idea that chemistry is not part of tech is a big part of the problem

How so?