
Ask HN: Is a Master's Degree in Bioinformatics a Foolish Idea? - bglazer
I&#x27;m considering a Master&#x27;s degree in bioinformatics. It seems like a fascinating field. Biology is infinitely complex and interesting, and next generation sequencing is creating massive amounts of data. I know its cliche, but I want to work on life saving drugs or curing cancer.<p>But, I&#x27;m becoming more and more convinced that this would be a foolish decision for my career. There are a few reasons:<p>1. Most jobs seem to require a PhD. I don&#x27;t want to waste 2 years on a master&#x27;s degree that is only valuable as a stepping stone to a PhD.<p>2. The pay seems ridiculously low. I work as a data scientist now, and the prospect of spending 2 years studying, only to make way less money than I do now is unappealing.<p>3. Oversupply of bioinformaticians. I have the impression from reading online that there is an oversupply of people with bioinformatics masters degrees. I can&#x27;t tell how true this is.<p>4. Lack of respect and long term career options. Again, from reading online, I get the impression that traditional biologists don&#x27;t respect bioinformatics and there are limited paths to leadership for bioinformaticians. The words &quot;code monkeys&quot; and &quot;technicians&quot; get thrown around a lot.<p>Given the hype around the field, I just can&#x27;t understand how the working conditions could be so bad.
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dikdik
I'm a bioinformatics scientist with an MS.

1) There are a lot of jobs for people with an MS, the hardest part is getting
the initial experience though.

2)Pay seems to be all over the place, I make 65k in an expensive city right
now. I have had a lot of recruiters contact me with offers that are close to
double what I make currently, but they want a couple years of experience
first. However, I also see a lot of jobs that require experience that are
paying the same or less than what I make now.

3)I don't think there is that much of an oversupply yet, but since a lot of
biotechs don't want to pay decent wages and can't get bioinfo. people with
what they're offering, they often just grab a bench scientist that has a
little bit of coding experience.

4)Yes, there is much less respect from bench scientists and they look at you
as a tool to accomplish what they want to accomplish.

Working conditions only seem so bad because of where you are coming from. The
conditions are very typical for biotech, if not slightly better (low pay, not
a lot of freedom, requires extensive education). I've actually been looking
for a good analysis on biotech wages compared to other industries for awhile -
so if anyone has one, feel free to pass along.

I came from the bio side, so I got my MS in bioinformatics specifically
because it is so interdisciplinary. I doubt I will stay in this industry for
the entirety of my working career, likely will move over to health-tech or try
my hand at a start-up focusing on services for bioinformatics.

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mrits
Insane. 15 years ago I got my first job in Austin making 70k/year as comp sci
4th year dropout. At that time I could have bought a house just about anywhere
in the city with that salary.

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dikdik
Wow, that is extremely depressing for me

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taway_1212
This is a general rule in life. If you're flexible to take the jobs that are
currently in the highest demand (such a pedestrian web-dev or backend Java
jobs), you'll make a lot of money. However, if you add a hard constraint to
your search - say you want to work with biology-related stuff or in video
games - your salary will depend on how profitable that specific industry is at
the momement, and how many people have the same dream. In practice, usually it
means making way less money. In other words - if you optimize for anything
else than money, don't expect a lot of it.

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sjg007
1\. Yes (but _applied_ physics, stats, CS or engineering is more valuable) 2\.
Yes and no.. if you are not quantitative then yes. 3\. Yep quite a few that
are more bio than quantitative. 4\. This is individual really. Many places
have Directors of Bioinformatics. In my experience these people are usually
statistically trained or algorithmically trained people. Good at math.

So pick the angle you want. Bioinformatics can be statistics, algorithms, big
data, genetics etc...

From a CS perspective, almost everything is a graph and then you have
sequences as well. From a stats perspective everything is a noisy data from
some model and from a engineering point of view it is signal processing.

Otherwise you are just creating perl/python scripts to munge data into other
people's pipelines. That you want to avoid. I think a PhD is really the only
way to get around it.

Look at the big tools in the industry and the background of the people who
created them.

Lastly you still need a biologist or someone with a bio background to design
the experiments and interpret them!!

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b_emery
I'm in science, though not bioinformatics - I know people who are. Cant
comment on the oversupply or not, but the positions I know about are primarily
funded through short-term grants, which means low-ish pay and minimal job
security. I know a few people who have gone the otherway, from bioinformatics
to data science.

You might want to look at the career path of this guy:

[http://scrippsscholars.ucsd.edu/gsugihara/biocv](http://scrippsscholars.ucsd.edu/gsugihara/biocv)

Basically, math phd, stint at large finance house, and now works as a
researcher essentially self-funding his work.

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ginger_beer_m
I did an Msc in Bioinformatics before continuing to a PhD in CS. I'd say that
your assessment is largely correct. In general, I'd advise anyone to go into a
CS masters. You can always jump to a bioinformatics job without much
difficulty, but the opposite move isn't always true. The other replies have
also noted that there's a lot of bioinformaticians who are basically
scripters. Their jobs consist of running ad-hoc analysis scripts for other
people. It's okay but not the most rewarding in terms of job satisfactions,
because of point (4) in your post. The other posted who mentioned that the
source of funding often comes from short-term grants is also correct in my
experience. This means your job tend to be low-paid and last only as long as
the grant duration. Altogether I must say, if you're happy in data science
stuff, stay where you are. I'm making the move out from bioinformatics as
well.

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porejide
I'm working towards a phd in genomics right now, primarily doing
bioinformatics. Here are some thoughts:

1\. You're almost certainly likely to make more money doing something else,
like web development or finance. Scientists get paid very little money
relative to their education and abilities, with the trade-off of
interestingness. If you go into it, it shouldn't be for the money. So
basically yes in re (2). So for you, doing bioinformatics would probably have
to be a goal in your life that you're willing to make sacrifices for.

2\. If you want to work on life saving drugs or curing cancer, you could learn
how to make some contributions with a MS, but realistically would need a PhD
to have more autonomy. Depends on what matters to you.

3\. The main benefit would probably be working with a good mentor and helping
to decide if you want to go for the PhD. Not sure about your prospects in
industry with an MS however.

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mathattack
I'm not in the field, but a few thoughts...

\- If you can code, you don't need the degree.

\- If you want professional respect in science, you need the Phd. If it's a
quantitative Phd, it can be useful outside of bioinformatics.

\- You're more likely to get sponsored for the Phd.

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joeclark77
I had a conversation with some researchers at a major biology/genomics
research lab in Maine last week and they pushed back hard when I asked if they
were mainly looking to hire PhD candidates. Apparently it's a real problem
that grad students and postdocs come onto their projects for just a couple of
years and then move on, leading to frankenstein code and unfinished projects
that no one can easily pick up and continue. They claim that they would very
much like to hire developers who wanted to work long-term on bioinformatics
software not just as a means to a PhD.

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jhbadger
In regard to 4, probably the best option is to me to be a truly 21st-century
biologist that is comfortable both with the bench and computational analysis.
But I'm talking about PI level, so a Ph.D is needed.

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IndianAstronaut
I have a bench biology background. Have looked into bioinformatics as a career
option before, but I just went the straight corporate route and got into a
finance company as an analyst and then engineer. Just not enough good paying
jobs to go around in bioinformatics.

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aheilbut
Your assessment is correct.

