I recently graduated with a BS in CS at a mid tier school. I have done 4 ML internships, 2 at Big N (think salesforce, nvidia, Cisco), 1 at big pharma. Been doing a lot of AI + digital pathology/Genomics research work. I have deferred my Masters offers till next year (UCB, UCSD) bioeng/ML. I got into healthcare/biotech cause I thought sciences are cool and wanna help patients, and AI seems like a good way. Cutting edge is also cool. But I feel like the TC is peanuts compared to my SWE peers, and they also productionize way faster while I work on research projects that never make it to production (not gratification there). Getting tired of research, I want to build tangible products. What should I do? Should I just pivot to SWE at a pure tech. Rn I’m interviewing with biotech startups like Insitro, neuralink as a compromise I’m hoping I work on more product related roles while at a cutting edge fast growth startup.
Apply at Scale AI or one of the other big AI companies - they pay super well.
What else
I noticed if you go into big tech then come back to biotech, they will pay just as much as big tech. That’s my situation anyways.
Rly? At what companies
🧢
Doctors will never allow such AI to go out. They have so much power in politics that the medical system will never be fixed.
It's already in wide use...
You should commit yourself to a nunnery.
im in a similar situation right now, got rejected from tempus and insitro, currently some EHR research at Anthem, but wondering if I should switch to more typical tech companies and rebrand as a swe
*currently doing
I’m almost 40. My take is… go software for a bit get some stacks. Get your cool “toys” and a house. Grow a bit. Get into medical later. That’s what I did.
Thought ur supposed to take risk in ur 20s then do stable stuff when u hit 30s
Except medical doesn’t respect it’s own. Pharma will always need swe and tech smarts. Healthcare delivery, especially startups, are gatekeeper by recruiters that want brand name over people that know healthcare, hence more will hire from tech. Healthcare delivery especially will repeat its mistakes for another 5-6 years, before fhir will be more mainstream. After 10 years in medical startups, I’m going back into tech. I’ll come back in 5-10 when healthcare delivery actually has a chance to be disrupted.
From my own experience: healthcare is highly regulated, risk averse, dominated by entrenched monopolies (in medical records) with decades of legacy systems. These solutions should have been invented years ago -- they haven't been because regulations prevent you from getting data. And even if you had data, the medical records systems won't integrate with you. And the companies pay 🥜
Right. There’s a reason it hasn’t been already done. And that reason ain’t for lack of trying
Integrate vertically. You just need the right team that is marketable to folks with deep pockets. Many VCs are at least of the face talking about warming up to slow meaningful ideas. Maybe someone will give the money to this
Your third option is to found your own startup in the digital pathology space, there’s an abundance of opportunity and not enough business minded technical/scientific experts going after those opportunities. With the current market you would likely have an easier time raising funds, and companies orgs like Y Combinator are always looking for scientific minded founders to incubate. Worst case scenario, you fail upwards and have a unique experience the market will likely pay you a premium for. Best case scenario, you make a significant difference and get you some of that “fuck you money”.
So many startups in DP already
Feel free to DM for Tempus questions. I joined recently and am loving it. I’m more on the product side vs the ML scientist side but I work with them regularly. From a TC perspective, I figure in the long run my TC will end up being higher when I’m working on a product that I’m deeply passionate about vs some random product at a big tech company.
What role are you? DS? SWE? Curious who handles the ML work for Tempus and what the DS role actually does (from BI to actually building models)
I'm also joining Tempus as an ml engineer in the coming January. Glad to hear that ur loving it. :)
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You are on the right track. Figure it out yourself if you want to stay the course, or move to tech. But insitro is a great place to be, and can potentially open many doors. You won't know unless you try. Give it a shot. You can always pivot to tech in a couple of years if you feel unsettled. Move fast, just don't lose time.
Have you work at insitro?
I have not, but I would consider if the right opportunity shows up. I am looking only for director-level opportunities at this time. That said, someone who I know recently moved to Insitro. I'll bet on Daphne Koller any day than the chumps who run Roche (what's her name Christine Bakan? Not the smartest person in the room).