xxSparkleSxx

Bioinformatics scientist here.

1) There are lots of brilliant people in the field, but it is also the degree that dumb people who want a science degree or are "pre-med" get. It tremendously lowers the value of my undergrad degree. If you look at high-paying jobs (finance, investing, etc), you'll often find people who say they occasionally hire in a bright scientist who wants to switch industries. They typically hire physics and chemistry majors and are much less likely to hire someone with a biology degree.

2)The computational biologists/bioinformaticians/etc in this field are pretty variable in their CS skills and a good deal of the top performers leave the field because pay is really, really terrible. (ie my compensationv is 65K, high COL area, MS required, 1 year of direct experience under my belt, plus an additional 4 years of experience in the wider biotech industry - trust me I think my life is a joke too).

Mine did for most of it, still a rip-off. But at the same time I got a much better job out of it, just didn't actually need the degree to do the job.

While I think it's ridiculous for women to have to dress a certain way, we also have to understand that sex sells and it's not illegal to use sexualized images to sell products.

News is a product like any other. If the way anchors look and dress are correlated with the number of viewers and the station's bottom line, what are we supposed to do in a capitalist society? Pretend there is no value in aesthetics or provocative imagery?

I bet if programmers dressing provocatively was positively correlated with increased profits, we'd see some low-key encouragement on programmer attire.

I still think it's bullshit for women, but I can see a case for wanting sexy people in front of a camera. If looks didn't factor into anchors careers in any way whatsoever (for both men and women), I am willing to bet over half of current news anchors would never have become anchors in the first place.

However, I do think if stations want their anchors to be glorified models then they need to be upfront about it from the get-go so all people are aware of the requirements and stipulations of the careers/jobs they are pursuing.

Apple's entire music ecosystem is garbage and it makes me very sad.

So she completely disagrees with sociology as an academic discipline?

That's just all sorts of crazy/anti-intellectualism

I did a masters an Johns Hopkins and completed it all online. It's a similar style program where you can do it all online, on campus, or as a combination.

Still cost me slightly over 40k even though Innever stepped foot on campus.

It's a total rip-off, but only in the sense that I couldn't get a decent paying job without a masters (work in biotech).

So you can never use the phrase "backed up by studies", then?

I've long had this thought about charity itself, it seems that a lot of charity is propping up bits and pieces of capitalism so we don't look at the root causes of why we "need" charity in the first place.

On one hand it's great that children around the US can have life saving surgery because so many donated to their cause, on the other hand would we all be better off donating to a lobbying cause for single-payer healthcare?

If we could get that passed, every child in the US could have life saving surgery if needed and it wouldn't be a matter of whether or not their community is charitable enough.

but I only allow my close friends to follow me on Instagram...

And your vague replies are meant to paint him in a corner and shut down all discourse on this subject. So...

But what if that person is black? And they don't want to work with you because your black?

Or insert trait here_____ Woman Gay Right-wing Omnivore Muslim

It makes points that children can be upset about, adults need to learn to have discussions. Even on topics that they think are sensitive.

If they can't do that, maybe they shouldn't even have a "grown-up" job.

And to throw my 2cents in here too, I'm a biological scientist and agree with the overall theme of what the guy wrote (though there are a handful of smaller points within the manifesto that I take issue with).

Focus on the pipeline, k-12, getting girls excited about tech.

Then in a decade you'll have a much wider pool of talent to select from and can just take the best while appeasing diversity advocates.

The same could be done for racial minorities.

So much respect lost for google. If you're gonna be bigoted and fire people that don't have the same views as you, fine.

But at least own up to what you are.

What would be a better comparison is someone in the NFL saying racial diversity is stupid, black people tend to be better at sports. Stop trying to bring in Japanese and Chinese men to meet a quota.

The QB is gonna get sacked (and possibly injured) because you are using metrics that don't apply to the job to judge fitness for the job.

If a doctor misdiangosis someone based on an outside errant lab test, what happens?

I think the situations would be viewed identically. I don't know the exact processes, but lots of documentation would go into it and if the lab that gave the errant lab test has a history of poor results, they may get investigated and closed down.

If this was a one-off error, that will get chalked up to a one-off error. Even if the patient dies.

>If an employer names a range, all applicants would be demoralized if they don't reach its upper end. Probably expecting to reach that pay-grade sooner or later, somewhere else if need be.

I don't know how much I believe this. It sounds like common-sense, but when I think about it and my own experiences this has not been the case. When last interviewing for a job, I took the lowest pay of the three offers I had. Company is small and cash-strapped and I happily signed on knowing I'm "worth more."

Further, they were looking for a more experienced dev than I, but they were lucky to afford me. Had they said, we have 10k more we were prepared to offer someone more experienced but you are not at that level. I can't see my disposition changing towards the company one iota.

Transparency makes me trust a company more, not less. I don't think I would feel more demoralized by a company for being honest with me. Additionally, how many people have walked away from salary negotiations wondering if they should have pushed for more?

On average I can't see changing the way this works being anymore demoralizing for the employee. In fact I think (on average) it would be less demoralizing and instill greater loyalty and good-will in employees.

Caveat: It's only a no-win situation because workers will waste their time sending resumes, interviewing, etc before learning the salary range.

Spitballing, but I have read that when an industry begins to be dominated by women the average wages decrease and when they are dominated by men the average wages increase. This could be due to women being less likely to negotiate salary which has an effect not only on themselves but on every other worker in the industry.

So a woman in a female-dominated industry may suffer not only from their own negotiation tactics but also the negotiation tactics of most of the workers in the industry

As someone that works in the biotechnology industry, I can see a lot of corollaries. Scientists love being martyrs and there is a strong culture of "don't care about your pay - only care about the work." I could see how women could be more susceptible to this line of reasoning and/or taught to care more about "passion" than their bottom line (compared to men).

Again, lots of spitballing. Probably way off.

yep, and as a pleb I don't know if I should hold onto my ethics or say fuck it and follow in their footsteps.

Which industries do you think are MORE meritocratic than tech?

Tech's not perfect, but I think they do it better than most (all?).

I'm of the opinion that we will have to use technology to restructure the fundamental ways businesses work.

Whether that means every person is their own business or we try some other type of union to give workers more leverage when negotiating or we crowd-fund the resources to start a competitor to shitty company A and have all the workers walk down to a new building and start company B with 95% of the same people but better deals all-around.

Lots of ideas, very few potential solutions. I don't think the wealthy are ever going to change the game to make it easier for us plebs, so we've gotta figure out a way to play the game and beat them at it.

First job out of college Inhad something to prove and worked my ass off. What I did was extremely measurable and I was easily doing 2x the work compared to the department average. Every single day.

1.5% raise the first year, made a huge fuss the second year and asked for a large raise (because my numbers of were insane) and only managed a 4% raise (promotion included).

I've been at a new job for about a year and have worked hard as always, but the things I am doing are much, much harder to measure. It's much more difficult for me to actually prove how much value I am providing. However, it's looking like I will be getting a ~15% raise shortly.

If a company wants you to stick around, they'll be proactive and show it. At least that's what I've taken from this...and I don't want to be anywhere I'm not wanted.

If you enjoy nursing, after a couple years of experience you can go on to get your NP (and I believe work full-time/half-time while you are doing it - and/or get it paid for by a hospital).

NP's can bring in 150K outside bay area and often have better schedules/flexibility than physicians.

> It pays better and is perhaps more fun than manual labour and cleaning jobs.

No offense, but these are not really great comparisons for someone with the aptitude of a programmer. I don't really understand the point you are trying to make with that statement.

OP could go to an accelerated nursing program for a year, not sit behind a desk, help people, be mentally stimulated, and make six figures (at least in the bay area).

Plus tons of other career options.

Yea, but they use reusable shopping bags and drive a Tesla. So obvs. they care about people and the environment.

> What would have really helped was if staff weren't selfishly spending 5-10 minutes sitting on the toilet browsing the internet or playing games on their phones.

Consequence of open offices? People need their alone time, this one's Amazon's fault too.

That's fucking awful. Would love to see the state step in and take children from families where parents are working more than 40 hours a week.

Seems like leaving your child to their own devices is much more irresponsible than parents with low-IQ. After all, dumb parents being present are better than no parents.

I worked under a lot of physicians and I have a deal of respect for most of them, but yea I agree also.

I was in an administrative heavy medical lab and most attempts to streamline processes were met with a lot of backlash from the doctors. My director was told by several of them that he was "undermining and ruining medicine."

I just walk around the office park I'm in at least once a day. No objective except to listen to music and stretch my legs.

Noticed a lot of my pants were getting tighter 6 months ago and after several months of daily walks things are back to normal.