[ambiate]

This is my dream job. Yet, offering a 65-75k salary for what is essentially a penta-glob of DBA/ops/programming/testing/manager positions is really weak.

Using most of the tools, its very akin to a scan the barcode at a cash register job and look at the results. It is when the scanner beeps in error, that the experience you pay for comes into play. Not to mention, the cost of living in Houston isn't exactly cheap.

[p4wnc6]

This same wage-to-skill disparity for academic-related jobs occurs all over. 75k is actually higher than I would expect for this role in Houston -- some similar jobs in major cities along the East Coast offer about the same pay. Many of these jobs are also contracted for 1-year periods and are contingent on an adviser or project leader continuing to get certain funding from a sponsor organization.

So the pay is usually low, the cost of living is usually high, the nature of the job doesn't provide much job security, and they demand a huge amount of experience and a willingness to work across many other arbitrary areas (e.g. you're hired because of knowledge of sequencing techniques, but really you'll spend time putting out fires in some legacy Ruby on Rails system that sponsors use for some legacy interactive website or something).

These jobs are often the worst of all worlds. It's hard to see how they are able to attract qualified candidates, and likely they aren't. Most likely is that they end up compromising as much as possible on the skill and quality of the person hired, so that they don't have to compete with a higher wage or more stable permanent employment, and so, at least in an IT capacity, you have to be worried before even applying about why your potential colleagues were willing to agree to these particular trade-offs.

It's very sad and disenfranchising because these kinds of jobs used to represent a way to earn a living without needing to engage with traditional corporate bureaucracy. But until these sorts of academic roles begin offering competitive wages and stable, permanent employment, it's probably better to not even dwell on it. If your eyes scan over something matching "academic ... lab", just move on.

[dikdik]

It's bioinformatics. Pretty typical, frankly with only requiring a BS it seems like a good deal (though not a ton of people have a BS in bioinfo).

I have similar degree and looking at a lot of jobs in Bay Area, those mostly require MS/PhD and are paying between 70-100k. It seems a lot of these positions want a hardcore programmer who also has a really great scientific background, but pay is lower than a great programmer with no scientific background would get in any other industry.