[michaelhoffman]

I assume these are separate requirements. I have not seen any doctoral-level positions advertised for a salary of $30,000. The minimum NIH salary for postdoctoral trainees is more than that.

It's only delusional if they can't find people to fill the jobs. The idea that, as an outsider, you know what requirements they should use in their hiring process better than they do is perhaps more delusional.

[FreeKill]

I'm not an outsider and the 30K was a bit of an exaggeration, and I apologize for that. The point I was trying to make was that if you look in as an outsider, you would see the requirements being extremely daunting compared to what you might see elsewhere with a pay scale that is very low and unappealing to anyone who might match it. Unless, of course, you just finished your degree in some biological discipline where the jobs are scarce. They are absolutely delusional (and so am I, most likely) because in most cases what they really need to solve the problems they have, is the same type of person most companies would need in a similar situation, a quality software engineer with experience building quality applications that are both extensible and maintainable.

I worked in bioinformatics for more than 10 years before I moved on, and In my experience they do have a lot of trouble finding people to fill positions, especially outside of massive government funded groups like the NIH. This often results in passing on competent software engineers with a B.Sc. that don't meet the requirements in favor of PHD level biology graduates who have taken a year or so of undergrad computer science courses. In my experience, this leads to many of the problems discussed (and exaggerated) by the OP. While some of these people are smart and produce good work, much of the time they produce poor quality software that gets the job done, but as inefficiently as possible and they leave a code base that is virtually unusable. Overall, I mostly just wanted say that it's a mindset they REALLY need to get past for the long term success of the industry.

[kevin_rubyhouse]

If 30k is the inaccurate number, what's the accurate one? I'm curious as to what the realistic requirements are from your experience with the field.

[FreeKill]

I've seen a lot of job listings, at very large companies and academics for the 45-50 range. Keep in mind, these are jobs requiring a PHD, 10 years of experience, and a dozen or so technologies.

It's not really the money that's skewed, it's their idea about the person they need for the job. They don't need someone with that background (most of the time), they just need a junior level software engineer in which case the pay scale may not be too bad. There's a problem in realizing this, however, when the standards for your own field (molecular biology for example) are extremely high, so you expect it of all others as well...

[puredemo]

50k-60k starting out.

[michaelhoffman]

The field of bioinformatics will be fine even if there aren't any changes. We'll just continue to muddle through as we have. I'll agree that things would be much better if software quality were to improve, but changing that will require a change in incentives. Namely, journals or funding agencies will have to start requiring quality software.

[leont]

Check the Sanger Institute's job page (https://jobs.sanger.ac.uk/wd/plsql/wd_portal.show_page?p_web...). They offer «£29,750 to £37,525» for a "senior bioinformatician", for example.

[Devilboy]

He's exaggerating about the 30k of course but it's true that these positions don't pay very well compared to what experienced programmers can get elsewhere.