[analog31]

A grad student faces an existential career risk for every day they spend on anything other than finishing their degree. That's because events beyond their control can throw them out onto the street. This includes loss of funding, loss of their faculty advisor, health issues, visa problems, and so forth.

They may also be the only qualified programmer in their group. A lot of research, while officially housed in some specific department, is quite multidisciplinary.

I work in an R&D group in industry, and our team invited a software engineer to join our group and teach us better practices.