
Biomedical superstars are signing on with Google - adenadel
http://www.nature.com/news/why-biomedical-superstars-are-signing-on-with-google-1.18600
======
cryoshon
I knew a person from my previous laboratory who left academia to work on some
secret GoogleX project. "Superstar" fits their bill, to be sure. Coldest
person I've ever met, but whatever. Exceptional scientist.

My hunch is that Google has a oncology/immunology platform which they're not
talking about but trying to actively develop in order to help fuel Calico's
pipeline and maybe sell off some other generated IP. There's almost certainly
a "big data" angle as well, potentially describing the polymorphisms in
majorhistocompatability (MHC) molecules between people. Having a large dataset
of this kind of information would provide a lot of predictive power for
infectious disease resistance and also disease progression.

Google is new to this space and enjoys young talent, so I can tell that their
approach will be to hire the people graduating from the top biomedical PhD
programs. This is a hiring market that they can easily dominate by offering
salaries of 50k-90k, though they may bump this range up to ensure loyalty.
Nobody else will offer a better game in town to fresh PhDs in the current
(extremely hostile benefits-wise) science employment environment. Google gets
in on the ground level, and the fresh PhDs avoid wasting 5 years on their
postdoc-ing. Once the platform is established using the young talent, Google
will spend a lot of money bringing in older mid-level people from prestigious
organizations to mainstream-ize development and provide more credibility.

~~~
aswanson
50-90k...wow. For people with so much promise to advance human welfare to be
worth less to society than an entry web dev salary in a decent market speaks
volumes.

~~~
cryoshon
Yep. I harp on this all the time: science is a bad career choice. There are an
abundance of smart, fastidious, and tireless people eager to take their shot
at the disciplines with the greatest potential to improve human life.

There is too much talent, too much willingness to self-sacrifice, too much
competition, and far too much enthusiasm. Many scientists (myself included)
wouldn't stop if they were limitlessly wealthy... and because of this fact, we
are not wealthy, and many have severe doubts about continuing onward because
of the poor quality of life.

~~~
copperx
I never considered this angle -- the overabundance of talent and willingness
to self-sacrifice. I thought the species was rare.

~~~
moonchrome
This is one of the reasons why gamedev jobs suck - especially lower level -
who doesn't want to write stuff like realtime 3D graphics - majority would do
it for free in their own time anyway.

~~~
copperx
> who doesn't want to write stuff like realtime 3D graphics

I love programming in my day job but I can't figure out if you're being
sarcastic.

It's like saying, who doesn't want to work in hard math problems while
extremely time constrained all day? There are people who would love it, but I
don't understand how can there be an overabundance of them.

~~~
moonchrome
What I'm trying to say is it's one of the more fun/rewarding fields so most of
the people who get in to it do it for fun - getting a job is just a way to get
paid while doing it. Unfortunately having a bunch of people willing to accept
bad terms just to get to do what they like brings down the employee side of
negotiation which is why I would never go in to game dev professionally - it's
waay easier to go in to web or enterprise and it has way more jobs, better
career path, better work environment, better pay. Game dev and stuff like
scientific computing is way more fun and challenging.

------
Kristine1975
>Nurtured by Google’s expertise in data analytics and engineering, the biology
team is expected to create miniaturized electronic devices and to use these
and other means to collect and analyse more health data, more continuously,
than is possible today.

I can't wait for the personalized ads...

~~~
mtgx
Personalized as in you'll "suddenly" feel the urge to buy that new 4K TV
you've always thought was too expensive before, as you pass by it.

