Hiring Programmers in Academia

Jeff Kaufman 🔸

Hiring Programmers in Academia

Jeff Kaufman 🔸

2 min readJul 24, 2022

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Larks

Sounds like part of the purpose of BERI?

aog

This seems like a great opportunity for independently funded engineers to work with professors without receiving funding from their universities. My understanding is that the Fund for Alignment Research (FAR) does exactly this. They hire their own software engineers with their own funding, and then choose researchers who need engineering talent to work with on a project basis. FAR only focuses on AI Safety, but this kind of organization could be valuable for other fields. Individuals could also do this on an freelance basis with a grant from e.g. FTX or LTFF.

Chris Kerr

I have worked as a programmer in academia (at a scientific research institute rather than a university), as my first job after a PhD in a natural science field where I had done some programming for data analysis etc. My main motivation was to get a CV entry with "software developer" in the job title, such that I would then have an easier time finding a software job in the private sector. (With hindsight I don't think this was necessary, but there are probably many people now under the same misapprehension that I was then.) Depending on the kind of programming skills you are looking for, it might be possible to find someone in a similar situation.

calebp

That the money is coming from a grant doesn't resolve this: the university would still not let you pay a higher salary because you need to go through university HR and follow their approach to compensation.

Would the following solution work?
1. academic applies for funding but ask for it not to be paid out until they make a hire
2. academic finds a hire
3. uni pays hire as normal
4. funder tops up the hires salary to market rate (or whatever was agreed on)

Alternatively, you can just get rid of step 3 but maybe the hire loses benefits like a uni affiliation, pension contribution etc.

ryancbriggs

This aligns with my somewhat similar experiences. I hear about profs setting up companies sometimes and I used to think it was done to make a bunch of money taking some idea to market. Lately I've been coming to think that it's done in large part to dodge university bureaucracy.

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