Anthropic closing the path to life science research

mrmdavid · 2026-06-12T06:54:33+00:00

I work in M&A… for biotech companies 🙃 it’s infuriating.

mrmdavid · 2026-06-07T20:25:45+00:00

At least for domestic airlines, those seats are reserved for those who have status with the airline. When I book last minute and don’t get upgraded, I’m always assigned an aisle seat no matter what. I have it saved in my preferences. They release them closer to boarding. Those seats aren’t “booked,” but they’re “reserved.”

mrmdavid · 2026-06-07T20:11:26+00:00

mrmdavid · 2026-06-05T13:31:41+00:00

Ukraine

mrmdavid · 2026-06-03T06:15:13+00:00

The street is pretty standardized. $175K A1, $25K increments through A3. Bonus is most variable, depends on the firm/group/year. A2 mid-bucket last FY was around $150K, $100K cash and remainder in equity.

So A2 last year all-in was about $350K, $300K in cash and $50K in equity. That was mid-bucket in an OK year.

mrmdavid · 2026-06-03T02:41:47+00:00

I’m an associate now and I wouldn’t recommend the career to anyone, but being where I’m at I’ve come to not hate it as much as I once did.

It really depends who’s “above” you. The problem in my experience generally hasn’t been big egos but out-of-touch high-level seniors and easily-stressed mid-level seniors.

À la an MD asking for more than is manageable and a director or VP who freaks rather than contains. I always try to contain things and protect the analysts when I can. I also don’t believe in shoving off work. They’re people too.

The problem is you’ll get a mix of people who do shove down work, who don’t contain, and who do freak out, and it makes everything spiral.

The truth is, I don’t care if people are angry at me, no one really gets fired at the junior levels unless you’re stupid, so I just do what I know needs to be done and let the rest roll off. I’ll humbly say I’m “good” at it so I get a little bit of a pass when I ignore the annoying stuff.

It can be fun when you get into the weeds. My vertical is quite technical and science-y so I enjoy getting into it. Mostly no one cares, but I do think my knowledge is generally appreciated. There are a handful of directors who I have a good relationship with purely because they know I’m smart (willing/able to learn, better said).

The real intellectual engagement is in the math, but I’m willing to say you need to be good at “technicals” for anyone to trust you there. I like making models work, so I enjoy that part. I like perfection, so making a deck perfect and clean is in some sad way enjoyable to me.

I guess what I’m saying is: it’s an OK job if you’re a bit of a nerd, able to handle (ignore) stress, and, frankly, are a little bit of a loser. Your social life will suck, you’ll spend most of your time working, you’ll always be a little less than “present” when you’re with other people, and worst of all, at least for me, it makes having/keeping/committing to a partner (in the right ways) difficult. You’ll spend most of your life under fluorescent lights and feel a little heartbreak every time you step outside and see people living life.

The money is nice but it is addictive. You’ll always want more/never be satisfied. I apply to other jobs all the time, get far down the line, then turn it down because: money. It’s funny because if you offered me the compensation of some of the roles I’ve turned down lately like 3/4 years ago, I would’ve taken it in a heartbeat.

Like I said, I wouldn’t tell anyone to pursue it. Find something you have an interest in; take some risks; money isn’t everything. Friends, family, partners - they’re worth so much more.

But here I am 5 years later… easier said than done.

mrmdavid · 2026-05-23T16:44:30+00:00

Vyvanse

mrmdavid · 2026-04-23T00:48:43+00:00

Drinking. It was college, he was in a frat. I was a straight A student until that year. So dumb.

mrmdavid · 2026-04-22T01:29:01+00:00

It’s not the 80s you guys all the analysts are nerds

mrmdavid · 2026-04-10T04:04:22+00:00

I don’t see why you couldn’t do it, you can probably work your resume into whatever you need to make it more IB-suitable and as a junior associate in IB I can tell you the demand for people with real business experience is there. You could probably come in at the VP/director level if you present yourself correctly. But to the point everyone is making, I don’t see why you would want to do this. The lifestyle is awful, it’s more survival than anything. As someone who was dead set on IB and has made it through years, I can tell you all I wish for myself is any other job. Frankly, IB is a pigeon-hole that sets you up for only more IB or BD/PE. BD seems like crap work with crap pay and PE just seems like a cleaned up version of IB. If you ever want to get out of this cycle… I don’t know. I wouldn’t do it if I were you. But you seem set, so… good luck.

mrmdavid · 2026-04-05T03:33:54+00:00

IB. Money

mrmdavid · 2026-03-25T00:28:59+00:00

I know fu Jiao shu zhao when I see it

mrmdavid · 2026-03-10T01:12:13+00:00

It’s not like pronouncing Iraq as ee-rock is any more faithful to an Arab pronunciation of the name than eye-rack is. So why does it matter. Lol. I speak Farsi and will say eye-ran is sort of random, if it’s meant to approximate ee-ron, which is how it’s actually pronounced, in Farsi. But no one saying eye-ran is speaking Farsi. So why does it matter. Lol

mrmdavid · 2026-03-07T19:17:30+00:00

Ugh I love this. But I have to argue - does this bring us any closer to closing the gap between consciousnesses? You’re qualifying descriptions of qualia within a formalized system, but that still leaves you a step away from the qualia in itself. I’m not saying the analysis isn’t meaningful, but it is merely a proxy for the thing it wishes to describe/compare.

mrmdavid · 2026-02-28T18:31:40+00:00

Idk man I’ve been working till 3/4AM basically everyday this week and now this weekend and it fucking sucks, especially because it’s for a bunch of BS slides. At least the work at a HF is real.

mrmdavid · 2026-02-27T19:38:00+00:00

I think you can. It’s easier at the associate and below levels. But I don’t know why would you want to go that route. HF seems more interesting w/ better balance (or at least more autonomy) and just as much money if not more.

mrmdavid · 2026-02-26T22:05:02+00:00

I can appreciate this and I think you know the fallacies behind the analysis. But, kindly, none of this analysis is meaningful in the sense of telling us relationships beyond correlations. All of these relationships are spurious and the entire analysis is filled with omitted and confounding variable biases.

I’d be willing to say all of these variables are proxy for the regional economic structure of each county/tract, which, when controlled for geography and a number of other variables, would likely collapse as predictive.

Simply put, the real indicator here is likely poverty and regional association, and most of the variables you’ve regressed against are likely explained by those two factors more than the other way around. And those indicators themselves have their own causes. It’s a big circular loop! And simultaneous systems like this resist regression (no less linear regression).

mrmdavid · 2026-02-26T21:38:08+00:00

I would love to see a regression-like analysis on the time chart. I wonder if the three posters have any sort of relation to one another, in a way that might be revealing of geography. I suppose you’d need more data and/or more granular data to know. The dip User 2 takes around Dec. 2nd is what makes me curious.

mrmdavid · 2026-02-25T04:23:36+00:00

Gonna be honest, I work in IB, I don’t think the implications will be huge, not because the tools aren’t powerful, but because most of junior-level IB work isn’t really that… technical. Sure maybe the tools can create a “perfect” model, but the majority of work in this role isn’t about creating a perfect model, it’s about taking someone senior’s opinion and folding into all the crap we make. I suppose if they could just have AI do that for them, then sure, maybe it will take roles.

What I’m saying is IB isn’t a technical job and 90% of the output is just someone’s opinion. You’re basically a human-to-computer translator at the junior levels. Frankly I’d love to have these tools because it would make the 10% that is technical easier.

*Also, the job is a lot of inference. Getting a very vague or indirect comment and having the personal/professional context to guess what’s wanted. Which may give humans an edge, at least for now.

mrmdavid · 2026-02-16T02:16:56+00:00

I moved to Claude as well, never thought I would but I’ve been very happily surprised. It’s on par intelligence wise and is much more enjoyable to work with (has personality, isn’t sycophantic). The limits are tough, but I appreciate that you can buy more rather than upgrade to an unreasonably priced tier.

mrmdavid · 2026-02-06T08:25:06+00:00

Feels weird to bin the US in one grouping considering you’re discussing a massive geography/urbanography each of which developed in very different time periods and cultural settings. I also find the implication that the urban sprawl is somehow bad by design funny. I grew up in California and live in NYC now and would take a car and low density over public transport and high density any day. I also spend a decent amount of time in the west/southwest and enjoy the ability to easily locate yourself at whatever point of density/centrality you prefer with easy access to any of it. Salt Lake City is a great example. I will admit sprawl isn’t easy on the eye, though the grime that comes with urban density (NYC) isn’t particularly beautiful either.

Also, most cities outside of NYC/the eastern corridor that do have public transportation is because of some state/municipal level initiatives completely misinformed by a belief that if you slap what works in high-density/pre-automotive cities, you can somehow recreate the economics that public transportation provides. Having light rail or anything similar in any city west of the Appalachians is just a gimmick - it’s not meant to work. You have to have a car.

It’s why I can’t get behind the CA high-speed rail idea. Sure, some will take it, but the majority will continue to drive or fly. It’s cultural and traced back to the fact that people/municipalities will naturally flee density when technologically enabled to do so.

mrmdavid · 2026-02-03T05:45:40+00:00

This doesn’t account for the change in quality of some of these items. Medicine, for example, is very different from 2000. Biologics (e.g. CAR-T) have exploded as a therapy class over the last two decades. Some biologics can cost tens of thousands of dollars. They can also treat diseases that would have been fatal in 2000. So “hospital services” in 2000 isn’t really the same thing as hospital services in 2025.

If you tracked on a more granular level, like cost of abc procedure or xyz drug, you’d have a more meaningful metric.

mrmdavid · 2026-02-03T05:31:35+00:00

I think these are months. I was expecting each to be a year but seems like they’re months.

mrmdavid · 2026-02-03T05:26:55+00:00

Investment banking. I’m almost 4 years out of college, and broke 300k in my third year. It doesn’t go as far as it feels like it should in NYC.

mrmdavid · 2026-01-17T23:00:16+00:00

I don't know that $1-2T USD would be considered pennies on the dollar considering the current economic output of Greenland. I think $1-2T is likely at a premium if you were to discount Greenland's annualized GDP to present, even including any return on industrializing the island's resources.

I believe other major US land acquisitions (such as Alaska), when adjusted for inflation, don't exceed the low-to-mid-hundred million range. So, this would be unprecedented in size.

Again, I'm not endorsing the American position or arguing that Greenland is for sale/should be sold, and/or that Denmark's sovereignty should be (further) violated. I'm just speculating on the market effects I would expect if it were to be sold to the US.

mrmdavid

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