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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1072 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 10, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I had no idea the bio job market payed so poorly. I would highly caution my undergrad CS students about taking such a position. I'd be telling the CS phds to run screaming for the hills. I'd think you'd get a much better deal at a shitty postdoc at some tier3 university. I'd be shocked if your advisor would tell you differently (but please correct me if I'm wrong... it's always eye-opening to see what non-CS folk put up with).

About the equity: I can't imagine this company is on track to a >100 million exit that would be required for any non-founder equity to be worth more than toilet paper. The standard advice in the CS world is to treat non-founder equity as a possibly nice bonus that you'll get in 5 years. I've basically never heard of someone's equity being worth more than their annual salary at exit except in the unicorn google-esq cases.

The idea is that I would get paid more after a year or two when the company grows. Postdoc salaries around 65-75k.

I don't know about bio startups, but I will say that there's a 90+% chance that a company saying "we'll reevaluate your salary in a few years" is lying through it's teeth. I have never seen that happen for anyone after about 1998. Maybe it can happen, but I've never seen it.

Startups will constantly reevaluate your salary. That is, reevaluating whether to make your salary 0 because you're no longer useful to them.

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